And all it took was Shannie and I standing in line at the Swedish Embassy in Den Haag today. Well, that and sending a bunch of paperwork in 6 weeks ago.

If it hadn’t been for our train getting delayed on the way back to Amsterdam, I still could have made it into the office this afternoon.

Next step: figure out how to move our junk from Point A to Point B. Details forthcoming on that front.

In what may be, for some of you, the worst-kept secret in the history of the internet, I’ve now got the go-ahead to make this all public.

Shannie and I are moving to Göteborg, Sweden. Soon. Like, before the end of January soon.

My contract at 180 Amsterdam, where I’ve spent the last year building a few websites for adidas, has come to an end leaving Shannie and I at a crossroads. As was contracted before we moved here in the first place, there was always the option of returning to Calgary and going back to working at Critical Mass. CM was a great employer, and career-wise this would have been a very good decision. However, nothing against Critical Mass, but they’re in Calgary. We hated Calgary and its godless hockey team.

We’ve been in Europe for a year, and going back to Canada after living overseas for such a comparatively short time would have felt like, I dunno, well, it just wouldn’t have felt right. We’ve wanted to live in Europe for a long time, and really, we just didn’t feel like we were “done” here yet.

Of course, the need to have a steady income and keep food in the fridge was still present. Of course, we’ve known this for a while, so a few months ago I started pounding the pavement and blanketing Amsterdam with my resume. Had phone calls. Went to interviews. Went to second interviews. Received a few emails that ended with some iteration of the phrase “…but we wish you the best of luck in your job search.” Actually got a couple of job offers in pretty short order, but were turned down by me because of a myriad of various reasons — you see, I’ve always felt that life is too short to spend 8+ hours per day doing something that you don’t enjoy or aren’t a good fit for, and so I’ve always been pretty picky about where I’ve chosen to work. I had a couple of offers that, while they would have been great places to work, I just couldn’t see them being a good long-term fit for me.

Rewind history about 15 months with me for a sec.

In October of 2008, I was sitting minding my own business when I received an email from a recruiter asking if I was interested in applying for a developer position at their company. Working in the field I’m in, I get these across my desk a few times a week, and I was prepared to bin this one as I generally tended to do so. Something, however, caught my eye: the company logo at the bottom of the email. The email had come from a recruiter at a company called Crispin Porter + Bogusky. If you don’t know the advertising industry, CP+B is the creme of the crop when it comes to ad agencies. If you love watches, you want to own a Rolex. If you’re an ad man, you want to work at CP+B. The long and short of it is that through a series of interviews, CP+B actually offered me a position in their office in Boulder, Colorado. However, as fate would have it, the very next week I was offered the opportunity to move to Amsterdam. I thanked CP+B very graciously for their offer, told them how flattered I was that a company of their caliber had chosen me, but because of this other opportunity I wasn’t able to accept. They understood, and wished me all the best.

Fast forward a year.

Last summer, CP+B acquired a Swedish advertising agency and rebranded it as Crispin Porter + Bogusky Europe. In, oh, early November or so, I noticed that CP+B Europe had a posting for an open developer position. I contacted the same recruiter who had reached out to me a year earlier, let her know that I was still around and was interested, and was there a possibility here?

Turns out there was. As soon as we can get to Göteborg I’m starting as a Senior Interactive Developer in the CP+B Europe office and I couldn’t be any more excited about it. I’ve actually had the offer burning a hole in my inbox for a few weeks now, but it wasn’t until 9:30 this morning that I finally learned that my Swedish work/residency Visa had been approved. So, Monday morning, Shannie and I hope a train for Den Haag to visit the Swedish embassy for passport-stamping and photo-taking.

We’re both going to miss the hell out of Amsterdam. It’s been an incredible year of growth and exploring here for both of us, we’ve made some great friends that we demand come and visit us (upon pain of death), and I’ve come to love this city more than I thought possible. However, new travels and new adventures bring new experience and new challenges, and I couldn’t be any more excited about what’s coming next.

And for those of you reading this in Amsterdam, you can already count on us coming back for Queen’s Day in the spring. Wouldn’t miss that street party for the world.

Details to follow.

… hmm, a few plugins to update, gimme a sec here…

… done!

Ok, back to the issue at hand. Some people may know that on October 23, Shannie and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. Ten wonderful years of her putting up with me is no small feat, and as such deserved to be celebrated. We’d always talked about doing a European trip for our 10th, and since we’re already here now, suddenly the process of doing so became a whole heck of a lot easier.

Italy is always a country I’ve wanted to visit, so for our anniversary we decided to spend 10 days in the boot. Our plan involved flying from Amsterdam into Venezia, spending 4.5 days there, then taking a half-day train to Roma, followed by another 5 days.

Long story short: Italy was absolutely gorgeous. Everything we had dreamed it would be. The weather was extremely cooperative as well, only giving us rain on one day out of ten. Every other day was sunny warm. Really, we couldn’t have asked for anything better (except for maybe more days).

Still working our way through the roughly 800 or so photos that we took, but here’s a selection of pictures from Venezia. Highlights from this city include: attending a performance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons by a string group in authentic period costumes, eating delicious gelato 37 times a day, some of the most delicious red wine I’ve had in my life, an evening of Miles Davis music at the Venice Jazz Club, and taking a “bus” (read: “ferry”) trip around the entire island.

Click on an image to view it full-size. Note the little “Previous” and “Next” links at the bottom of the popup when you do so.

Roma pictures and a description of how I almost met the Pope to follow soon.

Bikely.com map of the route I rode

It was an absolutely gorgeous day, except for the blustery head wind off the ocean that I had to contend with for the ride out. However, this made the ride back home ridiculously fast.

Also, sunscreen would have been a nice idea. I’m, um, a little torched right now.

(These photos may take a while to load, I don’t have any photo editing software on the computer I’m using right now, so they’re all just pulled straight off the camera. Patience is a virtue, etc.)

The morning started by meeting at one of my co-worker’s apartments and hitting the streets at around 11 a.m. What followed was a good solid 12 hours of walking around and partying with roughly 1.5 million of my new closest friends. I have NEVER experienced an atmosphere like this before. DJ booths set up on street corners, people peddling their used junk, every doorway selling beer without liquor licenses, and public (VERY public) urinals scattered around in an attempt to keep things somewhat sanitary. The crowds were shoulder-to-shoulder everywhere you went, so all you could do was go with the flow and let yourself be carried along by the vibe. The weather was gorgeous, and everyone had the time of their lives.

I can hardly wait until next year.

(click images below for fullsize)

It’s been over a month since our last update?

Um… whoops?

Let’s see… in the last month, we’ve managed to: participate in a Red Cross Walkathon, travel to the small Dutch town of Delft, bike 30+ km to the small town of Zaandstad (twice), get lost in the Red Light District a few times, and generally have more amazing experiences than any expats should be able to have without getting arrested.

I (Scott) don’t mind telling you… there have been more than a few times where I’ve been riding my bicycle home quite late at night (usually quite well into my cups) and ridden past a cathedral, or bridge, or some other brick structure older than Canada, or taken a high-speed train from one town to the next, or have been tending the net at a field hockey matchup and thought to myself, “this activity, that I’m doing right now, I’m doing WHILE. LIVING. IN. EUROPE.”

After 3.5 months, I’m not (snicker) homesick for Calgary (guffaw), or miss hearing about mid-April snowstorms in the prairies, or even remotely upset that I didn’t get to watch my home team miss the playoffs for a 3rd straight season.

I’m mostly STILL blown away that, after 32 years of life, I’m actually living on another side of the planet.

Still blows my mind.

Anyways, as it goes, the cats have settled in nicely, the street in front of our apartment has been torn up for reconstruction, and tomorrow is Koninginnedag, a national holiday, where (from what I understand), the entire city of Amsterdam looks much like this:

And how have you been.

We had just returned back home from an afternoon at the market to find an anonymous jazz marching band coming up our street. No idea who they were, where they were going, what (if anything) they were celebrating, but on a warm, sunny Saturday afternoon… who cares?

Between outdoor markets, pub patios in the sun, and random marching bands, it’s been a pretty stellar day so far, and it’s just past 4:00 in the afternoon. I wonder what the rest of the day holds?

(backstory here)

As it turns out, we picked one of the coldest, rainiest days since our arrival to go on a bike-buying run.

Shannie hasn’t been able to ride hers that much, due to her tumble down our staircase a few weeks back, but my new bike has found use every day since. If, by looking at the photo above, you think that it looks a bit too small for me, you’re 110% correct. It was the biggest bike the shop had in stock, though, so I’m making do. Our bikes are probably 20 years old, rusty, and built like tanks. However, with the rate that bikes get stolen here, we didn’t want to fork out for anything expensive. I brought my Surly Cross-check with me from Canada, but it stays up in our apartment and isn’t used for daily commuting, since it would take about 30 seconds to get nicked.

Almost all bikes here are virtually identical, which is by design. It’s the bikes that stand out, the ones that look different that get pinched. However, this has the unpleasant side effect of often leaving me scratching my head, forgetting exactly where I’ve parked, wondering which one of the thousands of identical bikes is mine. Luckily, the inner nerd in me found a fairly inconspicuous way of telling mine apart.

I am SUCH a fanboy.