How to move from Sweden to Continental Europe

With no car, family, movers, and money, all while writing a thesis.

This past spring I was able to experience the other side of the Swedish housing market and I sold my apartment in Bromma, the whole experience happened so quick! One moment you have a place, the next stylists are over re-arranging everything and its sold. I think the whole process took about a week to sell once the apartment was on the market. That still blows my mind how large the demand for housing is in Stockholm.

I made the move out date sometime in June before Midsummer so I was able to finish up my thesis before being without a place to live in Stockholm. Despite the fact that I thought it was good planning to leave two weeks after the thesis due date, I now realize simultaneously managing completing a thesis while also trying to pack up almost four years of things quite a lot to accomplish. I severely underrated the stress of a thesis and the stress of moving, let alone we did not have a car in Stockholm and had no idea how to bring the furniture and moving boxes to mainland Europe.. To eventually get to the Netherlands via Germany.

I'm not sure if this is the smoothest way of moving, but it was how Felix and I did it. I suppose the easiest would be hiring movers to come and pack everything up and haul it away, but hey we were students! We were both just trying to complete our theses, then start to think about executing the move.

Step 1. Research Phase

I did extensive research on moving companies specialized in cross-European moves and attempted to get quotes. None responded to our inquiries and I was worried about the lack of responses. I also tried to look at blogs about how to leave Sweden to move, there is not much information out there. Additionally, I wanted to have the cost as low as possible. This started around May, I would call this the denial and research step. I also realized at this step I was attached to my furniture and did not just want to sell everything. That also would have been easier, but I love my bed and wanted to keep it since I thought it would be a waste of money to have bought it new only to throw it away.

Step 2. Realization

After researching and realizing I wanted to keep some things we looked in to renting a car to do a road trip with the things over to Germany. This seemed like a good idea until we saw that renting a VW Polo to Germany would cost around €2,500... Too much for too small of car plus the drive was around 16 hours, and a one way rental was not really an option with the rental companies. So no to the road trip, no to movers coming... Then the brainstorming happened. Do we just throw everything away? How do we sell it? Do our friends want anything? How are we going to physically leave Sweden, do we fly, drive? All these questions to answers alongside answering my thesis question. I think I was asking all these questions in academic English in my head since I wasn't able to separate the thesis writing from my leisure time. I was consumed by the thesis and the looming due date plus move out date. Felix was also writing his Master's thesis while helping me brainstorm options to leave.

Step 3. Action

Since we realized time was counting down and we still did not have a decision or means of moving everything the best thing to do would be to start packing and emptying the apartment. So we came up with the idea to rent a storage unit. This saved us! This way even if the move out day crept up we would still have time to decide what to do with the things and the apartment would be empty in time. So we rented from Pelican Self Storage. I think around this time it finally hit me that I was leaving. The emotions started coming about the actual leaving of Sweden, my home for the past four years and going to this new strange non-Scandinavian continent. University was coming to an end, I was accepted to a Master's program, it was time for a new adventure. The packing was bittersweet and collecting your life into green boxes then into a larger storage box puts a visual to the emotions felt.

Step 4. Things are starting to get packed now how the hell do we transport it?!

One of the most challenging things about my experience in Sweden was not having a car. I'll admit I was car dependent, and so is my German. We are both from cultures that respect and appreciate 4-wheeled mobility. This dependency was extremely awakened when you need to transport furniture to the storage unit, IKEA shelves to the recycle station, and basically just moving things in general. So we realized we had to rent moving trucks. The first one I found was on Blocket. It was a cheap to rent old Peugeot with the gas "tank" between the two front seats. It was a DIY plastic gas container, I don't know what happened to the real gas tank nor do I want to know. The whole time I was just praying that we wouldn't get in to an accident that would hit this plastic gas contraption that would cause my inevitable engulfing of flames. Luckily we survived, I learned my lesson about cheap car rentals from the internet and we needed to re-figure out how to move things. Additionally, with these truck rental days we had to schedule our transporting to maximize the most of the day and the rental. Since we had only one day to rent the truck we were running around Stockholm dropping off things to friends, throwing massive amounts of items to the recycle station, and so on. Eventually we rented from Sixt or Europecar, or both. But we tried to plan to rent as little as possible and worked the entire day. From sun-up to the sun wasn't setting until super late because it was Swedish Summer by this time.

Exhausted, no makeup, and hanging in the storage unit.

*Side note* In case you are unfamiliar with the Swedish Recycle Station I am talking about, this is a large facility that has massive metal containers with a giant crushing wheel with spokes to flatten the large items you throw in the container. There is also a section to donate furniture. The last day we were there after so many attempts to sell or donate my beloved pink couch we brought it to the donation section. The boy working there was too lazy to re-arrange the not too crowded room and said they had enough donations and then told us to throw away the couch. This was the most painful moment of the move. The untimely crush was too painful to watch and I was so upset at this forced waste of a perfectly functional sofa just because someone could not move two wooden chairs to make space!

RIP pink couch, you are missed.

Step 5. Have a Party!

The best part of the move was having a moving party. I invited my closest friends got out all of the stockpiled liquor bottles, the SystemBolaget made me a bottle hoarder! Then grab all the items you could not pack and throw a party where every item is a party favor. This was a great way to see everyone right before leaving and instead of wasting even more things I was able to give them new homes to be looked after. :)

Step 6. Decided on a mode of transport to depart from Sweden.

We decided to fly SAS to get to Frankfurt. This was the quickest way and I could book a one way youth ticket (under 26) for 400 kr one way including 2 free bags with my gold status. I was then able to purchase more bags for 150 kr each I believe. So naturally I added quite a few bags to the ticket...10... Much cheaper than gas to rent a car and quicker! We also had the storage unit almost packed and the apartment near empty.

Step 7. Finalize packing & Enjoy the last moments

In the final days it was difficult to see the end result coming together. It all felt like an impossible looming mountain that I had no idea how we would pull off. I have to thank Selam for being a great thesis partner and also helping us the last days to pull it all off. We needed the extra person to run around with us for the 15th x's 139308 recycle station run. I just remember the importance in this time of just getting some take-away Thai and walking around the neighborhood by the calming water with the sun still shining late in the evening as some of my fondest memories. Savoring the final moments of your old neighborhood knowing that you'll never have these strolls again in the same way. Listening to the birds chirping at 3 a.m. annoying you, but also missing the confused Swedish birds. The last moments were challenging and I did not think we would pull it off. We had our final dinner on a moving box with some paper plates while sitting on the floor. Then it was time to say goodbye to the apartment and go to a hotel before our flight.

Extremely tired, but happy the last items are out and the apartment is cleaned!

Step 8. Fly to Germany

We spent the night at the Story Hotel in Riddargatan, which was a great hotel, but bad planning by me to get to Arlanda the next morning, with 10 overfilled suitcases, and being in the middle of town. I booked the Flygbussarna door-to-gate bus to be able to fit all the bags, but I did not account properly for the time prior to our flight we would need to have at the airport. It was also Midsummer weekend so Arlanda was packed. We barely arrived at the airport within the 30 min bag checking time.... So I ran in and have never seen Arlanda that crowded, and of course we were the extra annoying ones with 10 giant suitcases and some carry-on house plants ready to move. It was a miracle that we made the flight because there was a delay right when we were at the check-in gate. Honestly, I did not think we would make the flight.

Step 9. Organize the storage unit haul

We flew out, signed all the paperwork, said bye to everyone, now one thing left.. Moving the items from the storage unit. We got extremely lucky by using German connections to hire a family friend mover to drive to Sweden and go to our storage unit and bring everything back. I do not know how we got so lucky there, but I had no idea how we would have retrieved the items otherwise. The items arrived in Germany in August so there was fun going through the items again and re-packing to head off to the Netherlands!

Conclusion.

Our unconventional DIY method of moving required a lot of work, patience, and luck. In general, I believe that moving between different countries will typically be different in every circumstance. I learned that storage units will save you if you need a quick stable storage option and do not have any family to help you out. Also having the determination to keep packing when it seems like a never ending task becomes more difficult with each passing day. Moving is completely exhausting. It was extremely difficult on an emotional level for me because I was moving from my stable home in Stockholm to my boyfriend's family's house for a temporary solution, to then know I would eventually be moving in to a Dutch dorm. I was freaking out about loosing the semblance of stability! My little Swedish home was my rock throughout the years and now I had no idea what to expect.

Moving out and moving on, closing the Swedish chapter.

There will always be a place in my heart for Stockholm, and I still feel like Stockholm is the closest to a "hometown" I have. I cannot explain how this city sticks with you but it does.

To conclude, if anyone needs to make the move out of Sweden, Scandinavia is huge! I did not realize how isolated from mainland Europe it actually is. (slight exaggeration, but 16 hours is crazy!) Sweden is such a long country and arranging movers was in our case extremely difficult. It would probably be easier if you had family there to store or sell things, for us it was all so last minute that I tried selling things but there was not enough time. Here is how we did it, so it was not impossible, it just took tons of running around, exhaustion, and will power.