Cords’s ´13/´14 TR from Åre, Sweden
Hey everyone
Bit late getting this started, but better late than never, I guess!
This is going to be a tale about myself (Margie, 31) and my swedish husband Fredrik (32). As the title suggests we are living and working in the Swedish snow resort of Åre.
We have done one season here before, way back in ‘08/‘09 and I have visited a few times before that, so it kind of feels like home here. Here is our vid from that season way back when, when I first learnt to snowboard.
We then lived in Australia for 3 years, and came back to sweden last season and worked in the town of Sälen. Here is the vid i made from last season:
After last season in Sälen, we had a super awesome end of season trip to the amazing resort of Hemsedal in Norway. I’m actually going to be making a vid of that trip in the next month or so, but in the mean time, here a couple of pics:
The week after we went to England and I caught up with my best friend from high school who was living in london, and then we went up to Liverpool and on my 31st birthday we went to watch the liverpool derby (Liverpool vs Everton) at the famous Anfield stadium…a dream of mine come true!
We then spent the northern spring and most of the summer in the same resort and went downhill mtn biking on our days off…super fun. Here is a vid Fred made of that fun experience!
On August 20, we flew to New York, visited one of my best mates in Washington DC, bought a van and drove 16,000kms all around the place seeing as much as we could and enjoying ourselves immensely, before flying out of LA home to Sydney
End of October and November was 5 weeks of bliss at home in Australia, just going around having fun with my family and all our friends. There was lots of time in the ocean, including an awesome day surfing tiny fun waves down the south coast.
The trip home culminated in going to the wedding of one of our best mates two days before we flew back to sweden. Such good times.
Sweden is a country that not too many Aussies know anything about, so here is a map for you.
Åre where we are this year is circled in red at the top
Sälen where we were last year is circled in red in the middle
Sjötorp, Fred’s hometown is the bottom place circled in red
Arctic circle = line at the top!
I reckon that is more than enough from me for now…til next time!
This is awesome, cords. I will be keeping a close eye your trip report. 
Did you want a special short URL for this thread? i.e. http://bwblog.co/are1314
Please let me know if you do and we will set it up.
Thanks Jez and thanks for the offer of the short URL….but what would I actually do with it? haha
How we got our season accommodation!
We arrived up here in Åre on December 7th. We had started trying to organise our accommodation for the winter back in August before we left sweden. We knew it was going to be difficult to organise while we were traveling in the USA and not necessarily with ease of access to internet, ease of being able to call and talk to a potential landlord who was in Sweden etc. There were a few ads around at the time but none of them were the kind of thing we were looking for or in the right place, or the right price.
I then tried the trick that worked for us last winter, which was to find all the ads advertising places hired out weekly for holiday makers and families etc and ask if they might be willing to hire out to us for the whole season. Being an over 30, a married couple with no children or pets and non smokers, we aren’t the worst sounding tenants. We also had a solid reference from last season in Sälen.
Landlords can make more money hiring out weekly, but the risk of bad tenants who wreck and/or don’t clean the house during that time, and also the risk of it being empty for a few weeks and not making the money can mean they can be keen to have a steady income on their place instead.
We didn’t have any luck there though and we were leaving for the US soon. We then tried something we were sure would never work,but it did! The idea was to put an ad on the Swedish version of gumtree (its called blocket here) saying that we were looking to hire a place for the winter, a bit about us, what kind of place and what price we were willing to pay. We were so surprised when we already got a couple of offers before we left USA but none of them were what we were really after.
When we were in New York though, we got an email from a guy and it sounded perfect. We had a to wait a couple of weeks and some emails sent back and forth with photos of the place and whatnot and then we were sorted. We paid two months rent deposit and he said we could sign the contract when we got here….PERFECT!
Here are a few pics:
Our house is actually a small quarter of a really big house. Pretty common for houses up in the mountains in Sweden. There is me pointing like a dork to our part of the house.
This is the view straight out from our place at 9 in the morning in mid december. Stunning!
If you stand on our front door step and turn your head left, this is the view.
The main slope of Tegefjäll with the new chairlift at the end of our street in the foreground, and the slopes of the main part of Åre in the background.
Our place is small, but it is sick! The bathroom is newly renovated, fresh and clean with toasty floor heating, we have a decent sized sauna, a new washing machine and dryer,, the kitchen was newly renovated and we have a full sized fridge/freezer and a dishwasher…full on luxury! To top it off, the landlord is a snowboarder himself and installed this pic of him snowboarding into the sunset at the top of the hill we live on as the splashback on the kitchen bench!
Note to self: If I ever grow up and get a house, I am going to do something similar!
The unit also has two small bedrooms and a comfy lounge, and a decent sized TV. We don’t pay anything extra for electricity as it is included in the price (common in sweden) and we discovered when we got here there is about 10 pay tv channels hooked up as well. We pay the swedish equivalent of $215pw….Fairly safe to say we are on a winning wicket here!
To top it off, the landlord is a snowboarder himself and installed this pic of him snowboarding into the sunset at the top of the hill we live on as the splashback on the kitchen bench!
Note to self: If I ever grow up and get a house, I am going to do something similar!
Brillant!
Thanks Jez and thanks for the offer of the short URL….but what would I actually do with it? haha
Just an easy and quick way to access the blog, and easy to share with other people if you want them to check it out. Just easier and more convenient I think, but it’s up to you.
This photo is sick. I love the contrast between the houses and mountain. Looks like an awesome place to be living.
Congratulations on the house!
First things first…how is this for a sunrise!
This pic was taken at 10.30am this morning.
Here is the piste map for the resort we are working in this year:
As you can see, there are 4 different ski areas. Across the whole resort there are 43 different lifts and 109 different slopes.
We live in Tegefjäll, which is a relatively small area, second from the left.
Duved and Tegefjäll are connected to each other by t-bars but separate from the main part of Åre and Björnen. Only a 5 minute drive though. We love living in Tegefjäll because it is really quiet and uncrowded, but still close to the town and rest of the slopes. The difference in crowd is really quite pronounced.Last time we did the season here, I remember trying to go for a ride in the main park in Åre at easter time when it was busy. The lift line for the park t-bar was 45mins. I took the lift and left. Waiting in lines to ride takes all the fun out of snowboarding for me. I then went back and rode in Duved where there was a 2 minute lift queue.
It has been kind of strange but also very fun being back here in Åre again after 4 years away. When we first got here it was super strange. I felt so at home as I recognised everything and remembered how to get everywhere, but just kind of strange to be back in all those places again. Now it is just fun!
I pretty much learnt to ride a snowboard in this place, and it has given me a lot of happiness to come back here and have such vivid memories of the flat spots I always used to get stuck in, the t-bars I couldn’t make it up, the transports that were nearly the death of my feet, the slopes that were too steep etc and realise that even though it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, I have actually improved my riding and confidence a bit over the last few years.
Same thing goes for my swedish language skills as well. Last winter and spring and summer here, I really came a long way with that - thanks to my awesome Swedish for Immigrants teacher from Sälen and I’m reaping the benefits with being able to communicate with people at work etc. Still a long way to go but it is nice to feel the improvement!
We’ve had a couple of visits from Crackers’ little brother Tom who is also a really good friend of ours in the last few weeks. He’s heading back to Australia on Sunday for a few months, so it was really good to see him, hang out with him, lose to him in FIFA and of course ride our snowboards with him. I’ve decided I want to learn frontside boardslides this season and he helped me a bunch when I was too scared at first. Really looking forward to the prospect of him being back here in the spring, for the last month of the season (hopefully!)
Here is a pic of him from the other day.
I was wandering around town the other day killing some time before I picked up Freddy from work. This was outside someone’s house…
How sick would that be to go scope some backcountry spots with a couple of mates! haha
Weird things about sweden #3492048239048
Stuffed animals in the supermarkets:
You would think the Lynx would be with all the other deodorants, instead of with the toilet paper and cleaning supplies 
We were supposed to work today but the boss only ended up needing one of us…and then because we’ve been so good to them they found someone else to do that work and gave us the day off.
We got a bit over 10cm of fresh snow in the previous 24hrs but thought we’d missed the best while we were working yesterday…turns out either no one rode yesterday or the wind had filled in everyone’s tracks. Got an hour of riding some nice soft stuff in before coming home to watch the 2nd half of the sydney derby & the mighty Wanderers getting up for a late win. yesss!
Fred made this quick vid this arvo. Hope you enjoy it: