We want to move and are looking at properties on internet all the time. This is something you would never see in a Swedish property advert:
• Hot water 24 hours
• Double-glazing
• New carpets
• Fitted kitchen
• Central heating
• Power Shower
If this sounds like your ideal home, move to Sweden, however you would have to bring your own carpet. There is no Carpet World in Sweden.
When we bought our flat I’m now living in I didn’t really understand what central heating* was or what they meant with ‘hot water 24 hours’. I was focused on finding a flat that didn’t have carpets and had mixer taps in the kitchen/bathroom. Am I a snob?
Ok tell me: why does anyone want to have hot water in one tap and cold in the other? Even people that pay thousands of pounds for a new bathroom choose to have two taps. WHY? It makes no sense at all. I don’t understand it. Did the plumbers miss the class where they learnt how to mix the two? Is it an English thing to like to burn your hands in boiling hot water, or not wash them properly in cold? Am I a snob?
In Sweden ALL properties have hot water 24 hours. You could have a nice hot shower in the middle of the night if you fancy. Or maybe just have a spontaneous shower that you didn’t plan. Just like that! BTW all properties have showers and all of them are Power Showers.
This is not a joke, not everyone in the UK has a shower, but they have a bath and two taps.
If you live in a flat in Sweden you don’t have a boiler in your flat. There is one boiler for the whole building and it NEVER breaks.
That’s another thing I don’t understand: why does all boilers break down in October every year? I had never met a plumber before I moved here and now he’s one of the people I see regularly. Our boiler has broken down 3 times in 3 years. Touch wood, not again!
When we move in here of course the boiler were broken (its English standard) so we had two plumbers here sorting it out. Actually I was in a hotel because of stress with previous “plumber” that had just flooded our flat when he opened the boiler he believed was empty. Anyway I was asked when we wanted to have hot water so they could set the timer.
Me: Timer? I don’t need a timer I want to have hot water all the time.
Plumber: ALL THE TIME?! But that will be very expensive.
As a Swedish person I honestly didn’t understand what they where talking about. Now our timer is set on one hour in the morning and one hour at 6.30pm.
All properties have double or triple glazing and central heating in Sweden. When it’s cold outside its warm inside, and it can be very cold in Sweden.
My Swedish friends always bring thick socks and extra layers when they visit me. Not for our strolls in the park, its for when we sitting in the sofa drinking tea. I don’t have central heating. I have a fan heater and three electrical radiators. The electricity company is SO happy, the environment is SO sad. Am I a snob?
Carpets, I think they died out at the same time we stopped using cheques in the seventies. Or when we realised they are very difficult to put in the washing machine.
Do NEVER EVER put a carpet in the bathroom! Promise.
And lastly: why take your kitchen with you when you move? Don’t you have enough to pack and organise? When we move in this flat we had an oven but no hob.
If we now all decide to leave the kitchen when we move, it will save us all going to go a buy a new one when we move to a new property. OK?
*Element
February 2, 2007 at 10:59 am |
Let’s all move to Sweden!!
I think you need a new boiler, we have hot water all the time with our’s, I think it’s called a ‘combi-boiler’. You can choose to have it on a timer, or just instant.
I agree wholeheartedly about carpets, especially when I find my hair gathered in balls in the corner…if we had carpets this would just work its way into the fibres, urgh!
Oh, and the tap thing. Personally, I like two taps, I don’t know why and I can see the benefit of a mixer tap, but I just like two.
February 2, 2007 at 4:39 pm |
Ha-ha!
This sums up precisely what’s going on in my Danish head!
But hey, there’s a reason we’re here and not back home in practical,
well organised, rational Scandinavia – British Eccentricity never fails
to annoy, amuse and in some weird fashion, attract me.
February 3, 2007 at 3:00 pm |
Ida brought to my attention your astonishing attack on this great and glorious country, this green island, this paradise we call home….
firstly i will state, i have been to sweden and some of my best friends are swedish, however, i will leave my problems with your lack of understanding of how to brew beer to another time….
firstly, mixer taps, bloody rubbish! all the cold water goes up the hot pipes as the pressures are different, where i grew up, we didnt have hot water in our flat, only in the communal laundry on the landing, hot water, pah! showers, bloody rubbish! sit in the bath, it saves your knees from arthritis…
double glazing…if you scandle-navians like double glazing so much, why do you all like to sleep with the windows open? the much maligned sash window is a work of engineering genius only hindered by the rise of your outlandish ikea technology which has seduced people to buy clean white things intead of getting out in the garden with a paintbrush when winter thaws and spring breaks, still plenty of work for me! I would also point out we dont have double glazing as it’s not very cold here, a coal fire sufficed for the last 200 years or so, which the majority of housing’s ecosystem was designed for…plus we had a big sheep population and an industry based on factories producing wooly jumpers (Industrial Revolution 1816-1861)….this is also the main reasons ceiling collapse and fall down as the old ingredients of plaster were designed for ventilated coal fire heating….but since in the 50’s the smog got too bad, this little matter hasnt been put quite right yet…more work for me though…
i do agree carpets are rubbish…they were originally designed to keep walls warm in tents, leave ‘em there!
landlords are the main problem, installing cheap imported scandinavian products such as showers, central heating systems and taps…german products are superior, belgian surprisingly good…dont touch spanish and certainly never ever ever ever touch any ikea kitchen products, the units have no pipe space at the back and the plug hole kits are like a kinder egg toy!
stick to the eurovision way and you’ll be fine….one day when the beast that is britain wakes, the world will be sorry!
February 3, 2007 at 4:01 pm |
I am a lucky (?!) owner of 3 original massive sash windows: 250×136 cm (sorry don’t understand feet, inches, miles etc.). And again I didn’t realise from the start that this is something you want to have in your property. But I must say they are really beautiful and the original shutters are still there. The windows are both sound and draft proof but I don’t know how much that helped really. I can still hear everything people are whispering about on the street. When its cold outside the glass is absolutely freezing and therefore also makes the flat freezing.
I also have a beautiful Victorian fireplace but some smart person decided to block the chimney so we can’t use it. And if you knew my building you wouldn’t suggest clearing the chimney. It would be a massive job and would cost a million.
Thank you so so much Ingvar for opening IKEA in England. Walking around in IKEA looking at furniture only I know how to pronounce the names of. IKEA food market provides me with crayfish for the crayfish season, and all the Christmas food I need for Christmas and a lot of Swedish sweets. THANK YOU INGVAR I LOVE YOU AND IKEA!