Murphy was on holiday as well it seems....mostly.

Wow.

What a crazy, great month it has been.
I'll start off with some of the perfect timing events that happened and one irritating one before I get to a show and tell of our Nordic Tour.

Since I've been in Sweden, I stayed in a one-bedroom apartment which was perfect for me, but I had some doubts about how crowded it might get when my family arrives for our trip. Fortunately, we would only spend about 2 nights there with all 5 people, so I didn't worry too much.
As luck would have it, mid May I was told that one of the company's other apartments (one that is in the same town as my work and has two bedrooms and bathrooms) opened up and I was asked if I wanted to move. Naturally I agreed, but was told it would only be ready when I got back from our trip.
Bummer.

A week later, on the Monday before my vacation, I received a horrible sms from the bank.
"You're credit card has been stopped due to suspicions of fraud."
FRAUD?!
I took an early lunch and hastened to the bank, only to hear that due to "suspicious activities" they decided to cancel my current card and send me a replacement.
Yes. They regarded the use of my credit card in Spain, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden and some online orders I made (kindle from USA, cards from China, etc), all within +-5 months as suspicious.

Being used to South African service, I thought that I would not receive my new card before my vacation, which starts that weekend. Luckily I still have my S.A. card, so it wasn't a major problem, just a major hassle.
Great was my surprise when I got home Tuesday afternoon. My shiny new card was already there. Great stuff! Took it in on Wednesday to activate it and asked about my new pin code and the friendly lady told me I would receive that via post as well within 2 or 3 days. Which didn't happen.

On Friday, I was told that the other apartment is actually ready and I can move in whenever I want. My parents were due to arrive the next day at Arlanda airport, Stockholm, about 110km from here. I had decided to rent a car to pick them up and then we can drive around on Sunday and I can show them around easily etc. My initial idea was to book a car at the airport, drive down and around and then return it on the Monday, when we went to see Stockholm etc.
When I tried to book the car, I found to my surprise that all of the car rental places are CLOSED over the weekend. Which turned out to be another lucky break, even though at that moment it felt really silly and irritating to me..
I was "forced" to rent a car from the Friday afternoon and the typical Swedish car is a Volvo station wagon. This worked perfect for me, since I now had a vehicle that was big enough to move all my stuff the Saturday morning to the new place (I needed Friday night to pack up), which actually has 5 beds as well!
Which led to another very fortunate decision. Not needing to buy an air mattress, I used the money earmarked for that to buy a GPS, without which we'd probably still be driving around somewhere.
It was just a bit weird, after 6+ months without driving a car, to drive one on the "wrong" side of the road, with manual transmission and almost double the length (or so it felt) than I was used to! As it turned out, it wasn't that bad, and compared to driving the RV, a 6.99m long, 2.27m wide and 2.93m high monster, it was a small clown car.

The weekend and first week went great, except that I was still a bit disappointed that I had to use my S.A. card.
On the Thursday, I received a message from the company that asked if it was possible for me to drop the keys to the old apartment off so that they can clean it and get it ready for whatever.
We got back into town Friday at 12:00.
We grabbed a taxi to drop my parents off at the new apartment and grab the keys to the old apartment. I then took the taxi to the old apartment to just check if everything was okay, nothing forgotten and whether my pin had finally arrived (it hadn't).
Next I hastened to get to the bank before they closed at 15:00.
Luckily I made it (yes, I'm using "luckily" and "fortunately" a lot in this post) and was finally helped by a different friendly lady who looked at me in confusion.
"This is a replacement card, not a new card. You should be able to use your OLD PIN..."

My old pin worked perfectly. I dropped off the old keys at work and made my way to the apartment feeling a lot better.
Close to midnight my brother and his wife arrived at the local airport and the next day our 2 week RV / Motorhome trip through Sweden, Denmark and Norway began.

The trip was fantastic, except for one thing. Even though my card was now working perfectly, they hadn't told me that it only works perfectly IN SWEDEN.
That has also been rectified this week. I don't know what I would have done if this had happened during one of my solo trips and I hadn't had my S.A. card as well!
Fortunately (hehe), the timing of this hindrance was also...perfect.

Thus ends the "bad" experience of the past month. The next couple of posts will only be filled with some of the great stuff we saw and experienced during our tour.

If you're up on the north side of the planet, hope you have a great midsummer weekend.
If not, I hope you spend a great weekend warm under blankets watching movies.

Njoy