Slowly becoming Swedish

In order to be a fully functional member of Swedish society, you need a personnummer. This number gives you access to lots of things. It’s been around since 1947 and is essential if you want to live in Sweden. Today we went and applied for ours.

In order to apply, you have to visit a service centre. Our closest is in a place called Brandbergen (which Mirinda calls Brandenberg) and is located inside the souless, under construction Brandbergen Centrum, where the parking is difficult to find.

As Mirinda has often said, the only thing that would have resulted in our getting divorced was my appalling navigation, which has often led to massive arguments in the car. The advent of satnav helped a lot but sometimes, it fails, and we’re left to cope on our own. Which is never good.

Today it was finding parking.

The problem with the satnav is that Max needs his brain updating. I should be able to update the software but the Mini app doesn’t work. That’s a whole other story and one which infuriates me. So I’ll not bother going into it. I’ve no doubt moaned about it before, anyway.

Still, eventually we found a car park and walked back to the centrum.

I’m afraid I rate all centrums by my first – Tyresö Centrum. And Brandbergen is no Tyresö.

Still, it does have the service centre, so there is that. And, to be fair, the service centre is pleasant enough, as were the staff. All jolly, all smiling. About as far as you could get from a British equivalent. It might be because they don’t sit down in Sweden.

Anyway, we took a number then a seat for a long wait but, finally, we were seen, processed and then left. The woman who served us said the longest waiting time is currently 18 weeks, which is a bit long. Mirinda asked what the shortest would be, but the woman shook her head and, smiling, said she couldn’t say. I said “Tomorrow.” I don’t think she agreed with that kind of timescale.

Having completed our mission, we walked back to Max and set off home. Well, Mirinda went home. She dropped me off at Tyresö, so I could do some shopping.

A constructive day. Though I think we could have both done without the argument. The upshot of which was that, I was so cranky, I didn’t take any photographs.