I’ve lived in my new home for two weeks now. These are some thoughts that have accumulated so far.

• The nice but deaf lady downstairs keeps cranking up the volume on her TV so the whole house shakes. I’ve already talked to her twice, but it doesn’t help. I may have to call the landlord next week. She is now affectionately known as “the TV lady”.
• The town so far is interesting. It’s an entirely new paradigm in citybuilding. There isn’t a straight 90-degree angle in the entire city. Houses are built almost on top of each other; little alleyways emerge where it is impossible to drive cars though; homes are built directly on the side of the mountain in crazy angles. It’s very, very different.
• There’s less nature than I thought. It’s mostly just cliffs and water. Granted, the ocean is nice, but I’m longing for more green stuff. Maybe that’ll come out the further we get into spring.
• The store in town has everything. Even Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough Ice Cream.
• It is, however, absolutely impossible to find a Der Spiegel or Süddeutsche Zeitung in Skärhamn. Strange, you’d think with all the German tourists there’d be a couple of foreign newspapers around.
• There is far, far less military here. No soldiers in training sneaking down the street with automatic carbines, no troop movements, no distant 20mm guns firing in the evenings. There are a few boats from the Coast Guard though, but that really isn’t the same thing. I’m not sure whether this is good or bad yet, but it’s different.
• I miss the city parks a little bit. I miss going to the mall late at night, browsing through the isles. I miss Wal-Mart, I miss the skyscrapers, and I miss having a cup of coffee at the train station. Or going to McDonalds at 10pm, just for the heck of it.
• The State Church is completely dead here, too.
• When you stand on top of Tjörne Huvud in the evening and watch the sun set over the ocean, the view is absolutely breathtaking.