I thought before I started blogging about my experiences to come in Sweden I would post up a little something of my life here in Western Australia, to give some level of contrast to what I'm coming from and where I am going.
So for the last few years I've been living in Joondalup, it's supposed to be a city outside of Perth (our capital) in the Northern Suburbs. It's home to Edith Cowan University, TAFE, WA Police Academy and everything is within walking distance from the train station, shops and industrial centre. It's a really convenient place to live. Even to get to Perth it is only 25/30minutes on the train.
Joondalup is pretty quick to get around by bicycle and most of the roads in this area have a designated lane for cyclists.
Perth, and Western Australia is quite an expensive place to live even in comparison to the rest of Australia. Joondalup is a bit cheaper as it is more or less a student town, however with the cheaper rents you also get in much of the lower income working class, who can often be a little bit on the dodgy side.
I suppose you have to take the negatives with the positives, though. If you want a completely safe area you are always going to have to pay a lot more rent or you wouldn't have such easy access to the train station. So all in all this area works pretty well for me :-) Even though I would normally travel into Perth for work, it's good living so close to Uni where you can pop in and out as you please.
It's less than a week now 'till I set off to Sweden. I got my invoice for advanced rent payments from Gothenburg and at first my eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when I saw 8,600...but then I realised it is in Swedish Krona (SEK) and not Australian Dollars (AUD). So that's just over $1,000 for two months rent. Don't know what that means for Swedes but for Australians that is dirt cheap!
The excitement is starting to come but the reality hasn't really sunk in yet, maybe it will at the airport? We'll see! Maybe in the meantime I should start learning a bit more Swedish?
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