Now that the days are getting warmer and the sun is staying out longer, life in Sweden seems to be getting more and more awesome.
Football season starts next week. I haven’t played competitive league football since 1985 (!!!), so this could get messy. Details to follow.
Shannie and I decided to take advantage of the gorgeously sunny weather today go for lunch, fika, and a stroll through downtown. While we were out, we managed to see some sights that you don’t normally run into in everyday life. Photo opportunity!
Our day started by meeting one of my coworkers at Heaven 23, a restaurant/lounge on the (go figure) 23rd floor of a downtown hotel. Their specialty is their Prawn Sandwich. If you like prawns, yeah, it’s pretty much the greatest thing ever made. We ran into yet another coworker of mine who’s parents are visiting from England right now, so we ended up sitting there for quite a while. Moving on from there, we strolled around the Haga area of town, known for it’s many shops, cafés, old buildings, and general good tiOH MY GOD THAT CITROËN IS ON FIRE.
It’s not every day that you happen upon a blazing inferno in the middle of a downtown city street, so many photos were taken. There was nobody in the car, and nobody nearby seemed to have any idea where the driver was.
Pretty sure it was a write off.
From there, we wandered around a bit more, had afternoon coffee, and have now made our way back home just in time to start thinking about supper.
Well, we’ve been here for a week now, time to check in and update the world with how things have gone so far.
Moving here went about as easily as it possibly could have. I picked up a 9-passenger van from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam on Thursday night, January 21, and a few friends of ours helped pack all of our junk up in it. Bright and early the next morning, Shannie and I along with two friends of ours, Kyla and Matthijs, hit the highway for the 12-ish hour drive from Amsterdam to Göteborg. We had fantastic weather for mid-January, the roads were clear the entire way (which was handy, considering our van was equipped with summer tires as I found out the day we picked it up). Our route took us east into Germany, across a ferry north into Denmark, and then across a second ferry north into Sweden. Smooth sailing the entire way, including the friendliest, chattiest customs official that I’ve ever met coming into Sweden (years of crossing between Canada and the US have instilled a deep loathing for customs officials in me, something I may need to reverse now).
We found our (tiny!) apartment, got the van unloaded by about 10pm that night, and proceeded to spend the next couple of days playing tourist with Kyla & Matthijs who, by the way, deserve an incredible shout out for helping us move that weekend and then driving the rented van back to Amsterdam afterwards. A one-way van rental was roughly 3x the cost of returning it to Amsterdam, so we got the dual benefit of spending a weekend with two good friends of ours AND saved a bundle on moving. Everyone should be so lucky as to have friends like that in their lives.
Among other things that weekend, we found time on Sunday afternoon to take yet another ferry out to the small archipelago off the coast from Göteborg. A series of tiny, rocky islands each inhabited by a couple of hundred people or so with cute little cottage-style houses, zero vehicles, and some of the most beautiful landscape I’ve ever seen. Matthijs took the photo of me “at land’s end” above, and there’s some more below. It was cold but very pretty, and apparently has some fantastic beach spots in the summertime, so a trip back out will definitely be on the menu.
Over the last week, we’ve registered at the Swedish Tax Office, received our national identity numbers, started our Remedial Swedish For English Speaking Buffoons class (“Jag heter Scott. Jag talar engelska och lite franska. Jag arbeter på reklambyrå. Scott och Shannon är gyft.“) and I managed to find time to start putting a few full days in at the new office. Work’s going really well so far, my co-workers have been extremely friendly and welcoming. As it turns out, I’m the only Canadian in the office, but I’ve already asked if it’s going to get weird when Canada beats Sweden in ice hockey at the Olympics next month, and have been assured that they won’t gloat too much when Sweden wins. We’ll see who gets the last laugh.
Also, semla. Good lord. Amazing.
More adventures to come!
Poe and Vargos have been dropped off at their new home for the next 120 days. It’ll be interesting to hear how they get along with the dog who already lives there.
We got word yesterday that, thanks to the geniuses at Sunridge Veterinary Clinic in Calgary, our cats can’t come to Sweden with us for one hundred and twenty days. Nice work on maintaining their immunization documents there, fellas. I mean, I understand that not screwing up handwriting, a skill you learned in grade four, is really really hard but still.
I know that it’s the EU, and there really aren’t any border crossings to speak of. I’ve been told by a number of people that I should just take the cats anyways, without the proper documentation or immunizations, because nobody’s going to check their paperwork and it’ll be no problem. A sound plan, in theory.
The thing is, I don’t know if that’s entirely a risk I’m willing to take. What happens, I mean what happens if somewhere along the trip for whatever reason some overzealous, I don’t know, person of authority asks to see their pet passport? What happens if, 6 months after we arrive, one of the cats gets sick and we have to go to vet only to be discovered that our cats are in the country illegally? I’m not certain if I have the finances and I know I don’t have the heart to put them in a lousy kennel.
Still not entirely sure how we’re going to get around this problem, and we sure as hell don’t have a lot of time to solve it.
Anyone in Amsterdam feel like babysitting two cats for 4 months? Poe [below left] and Vargos [below right] would be eternally grateful, as would their anxious humans.
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.