2024W22: till Nyland 🇸🇪

Nyland is actually full of life.

The benefit of having a huge empty house is that you can dedicate a whole room to writing :D

On the way to Sweden

The workdays last week passed quickly, before the long trek to Nyland on Friday, together with my brother:

• wake up at 5:30am,

• hop on a plane at 7:30am,

• land in Stockholm at the same time (yay, timezones),

• wait five hours for the train without falling asleep,

• sleep on the train for a few hours,

• finally arrive in Nyland in the evening around 5:30pm.

Next time I’ll spend a bit more money and reduce the wait times/allow myself more sleep.

Making it all this way up north was exciting because, without the hustle and bustle of a city, time seemingly comes to a standstill.

After recovering from the trip, Roberto and I spent the weekend exploring this little village.

You need to look a bit more closely, but it’s easy to find entertainment here.

Writing is easy here

The whole idea behind buying the house here – at least while the world isn’t collapsing just yet – was to have a place to “retreat to”, where you can work on any kind of creative endeavor.

In my case, that’s writing a digital book, essentially summarizing the “Decode Estonian” workshop, which I can sell online at a lower price point.

I have 5 vacation days plus two weekends to make this work.

So writing is definitely my main activity while I’m here – and for this purpose, the house works really well.

While the interior design can be best described as “quirky” and at worst described as “needs a complete remodel”, you’ll get used to every floor being of a different make and all the walls having differently terrible wallpaper rather quickly.

Food is cheap and plentiful, the village supermarket has a wide selection that exceeds that of many supermarkets of similar size in Tallinn while offering most items at half or three-quarters of the price in Tallinn.

With all the basic necessities taken care of, it’s easy to focus on the thing I came to do.

The people of Nyland

Sunday was the most social day of our first 48 hours in Nyland and besides a hike through the beautiful landscape, we managed to start a few conversations in our limited Swedish and learn more about the place.

Impressions from a 4-hour hike through the hills

First, we met some of the neighbors - a young family with two kids, both parents being from Nyland and working in the region. After laboring through our broken Swedish, we got a break by speaking English and quickly agreed that it’s better for everyone if we keep trying Swedish. They were very friendly, offered help with any handiwork necessary around the house, and knew everyone in the village.

The highlight of which: apparently an Estonian family is living on the same street. They aren’t here right now, but knowing you can speak Estonian in Nyland is great.

They also mentioned a German-Estonian couple living in the village, which is another opportunity to speak Estonian 🙌.

On Thursday the new café will open in the village and hopefully, that’ll be an opportunity to meet everyone.

Besides Swedish, German, and Estonian, Roberto and I also had a 30-minute conversation with Oscar:

Born and raised in Stockholm to Uruguayan parents, he moved to Nyland after an accident that resulted in brain damage and now enjoys the tranquility of the area to speed up recovery.

Speaking Spanish to Oscar was a real joy for both of us!

Infinite work

There is an infinite number of things one can do around the house.

So far Roberto and I put two screws into a place where they were needed.

It’s a start.

The hardest part is figuring out what to change, then in which order, and also what a reasonable investment would be.

Sinking 100k or 150k EUR into this house is not difficult.

The question is rather one of leverage: what are small improvements that improve the feeling in the house noticeably?

You get used to the house really quickly and things I expected to be bothering in the beginning really aren’t.

In an ideal world, we leave Nyland with a plan, so next time we return, we can preorder tools, parts, paints, etc and just get started with the work.

Entrepreneurship++

Given my current life plans, I need to figure out how to make the house not burn a literal hole into my wallet next winter (likely my wallet will be much smaller then).

That means producing a lot of content now, so I can turn the house into (another) business.

One that hopefully breaks even soon.

I found this on the internet right in time for that realization:

If you want to stay in the house for a skiing vacation in winter (the season starts in November), or just a summer getaway, here is the pricelist and availability:

• 15th of June – 15th of October: all free, 100 EUR per week to cover electricity and utilities,

• 16th of October – 31st of March: all free, 200 EUR per week to cover heating, electricity, and utilities