Nina Morri
Web Developer, Photographer, and Art Director in Finland
Hey, I’m Nina .For two years now I have been living in a small town in the south of Sweden. Before that, almost 10 years ago, I lived for two semesters in Stockholm. At that time I came to study right after university and had no plans to stay. It seemed that an interesting life awaited me in Moscow. This is partly what happened: when I returned, I met my future husband. On our first trip together, I decided to show him my Sweden. He also liked the country, its nature and mentality and after that we went to Sweden almost every year. When the political situation in Russia began to scare us both, we decided that if we were to "leave", we should only go to Sweden.
In Moscow, I worked in the field of culture, so it was clear from the beginning that working in another country would be difficult. Now I'm studying at a Swedish university in the hope to retrain and work in the cultural heritage of Scandinavia. My husband worked in IT, it was much easier for him in that sense. On the other hand he had to bear the main burden of implementing our relocation plan: to learn English in order to go to a Swedish university and to succeed in it in the technical field. This process took two years and was hard for both of us, because we did not know if we would succeed or not.
After getting accepted, obtaining a residence permit, renting an apartment by correspondence, the move itself was not so difficult. Technical moments basically rested in a question of money. On the spot has already begun local Swedish bureaucracy, which is composed of legends. Personally, it did not seem that scary to me! Slow, slow-witted, slightly uncoordinated - yes, but unlike Russian bureaucracy, Swedish bureaucracy is pleasantly predictable. There were many milestones - getting a personal number, opening an account in a Swedish bank, finishing language courses for migrants, but I finally realized that I had moved when my parents left, too, and sold their apartment in Moscow. I had nowhere to stay in my hometown. Now my home is in Sweden.