We have officially "wandered in".

Yesterday was a big milestone: we went to the Skatteverket (Swedish tax authority) to officially immigrate (invandra) to Sweden. Based on dealing with certain government organizations back home you might expect this to be painful process. It wasn't.

The local Skatteverket office for us is in Mora. Mora is a cute town that is probably most famous as the setting for the Vasaloppet, an epic ski race commemorating the trek of King Gustav Wasa in 1520. He stopped in Mora to try to convince the people that they should king him and declare independence from tyranical Danish rule. The people of Mora initially turned him down, so Wasa had to take off again to stay ahead of the pursuing Danes. Then the people of Mora changed their minds, chased after Wasa on skis, and made him King, thus declaring an independent Sweden and creating a really cool backstory for a ski race at the same time.

But I digress. We drove to Mora, took care of some shopping, and quickly found free parking near downtown right next to the lake. We walked to the cute little city center, ate some pizza, and continued down the pedestrian street to the Skatteverket, which was in the bottom floor of a small building. The office was clean and spare, decorated in a typical Scandanavian fashion. A girl greeted us from behind an uncluttered, ergonomic desktop in a modern-looking, Swedish -designed chair, and told us not to bother taking a number since there was no line. When AS said that we were there because we were moving to Sweden, she said, "Oh, how exciting!"

We filled out a couple of simple forms with basic information, she made copies of our passports (AS's Swedish passport and my American one with a Swedish permanent residence permit) and entered our information into the computer. When we weren't sure how to fill out the form, she helped. She also explained to us how to sign up of for the state health insurance after I receive my person number, and printed out the necessary forms for us. We were done in a few minutes.

That was easy! We celebrated by fika, roughly translated as "having a coffee break". We now officially live in Sweden.
PS: Our internet connection is being slow, thus the small picture. We have more photos to upload when we get a better connection.