Of course moving abroad was never going to be a straightforward process. A whopping four months after our initial visa application, we were finally required to provide bio-metrics for our residence permit cards. Simple enough right? Well, not exactly. As it turns out, despite the fact that there is a Swedish Consulate in Cape Town, they use a ‘different machine’ to the one required for long stay visas. We would need visit the Embassy in Pretoria. So we begrudgingly made the (eye-wateringly expensive) trip up-country to take photographs and scan fingerprint, all of which took a full ten minutes to complete. Frustrating as the whole visa process has been, our application has been approved and our residence permits should be arriving within a fortnight (fingers crossed). On the upside, we got to experience the Gautrain for the first time. Colour me impressed!

It’s now just three and a half weeks until the big move. Let the packing commence!