Exodus to Amsterdam Göteborg

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!

göteborg, work, you big tourist immigration, sweden, travel

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.

amsterdam, göteborg, work adidas, crispin porter + bogusky, immigration, jet lag, queen's day, RIOT, sweden, travel

Details to follow.

amsterdam, work emigration, immigration, lufthansa baggage tossers, travel

Oh.

Um, hello there.

I think a bunch of people are under the impression that I don’t blog anymore, or that I fell into a canal and got washed into the ocean or somesuch.

Actually, as it turns out, I’ve essentially been working 100 hours a week for the last 3 weeks, as the team I’ve been a part of has been pushing to get a MASSIVE project out the door.

About an hour and a half ago, we succeeded. And, being the narcissistic ego-tripper that I am, I’m going to tell you all about it here.

As I’ve mentioned in an earlier post, I’m working for an advertising agency in Amsterdam that’s currently working on a number of advertising campaigns for adidas. As you may or may not be aware of, the NBA All-Star game is this coming weekend, and adidas, having a very large presence in basketball, wanted to make a splash.

This weekend, Dwight Howard of the NBA’s Orlando Magic (who happened to be the record-setting fan ballot leader to start in the all-star game and also won the Slam Dunk contest last year) is going to be walking around all weekend shooting photos, video, and sending text messages, essentially documenting the entire weekend from his perspective. Our agency built the website around this, and the system that will collect and consolidate all of the content he creates.

See a preview below, and visit adidasbasketball.com for the full experience!

Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s 3:40 in the morning, and do I ever need to go to sleep. With a little luck, our regular posting schedule should resume shortly, though Shannie’s been doing a marvelous job of making sure people know we haven’t forgotten about them G’night!

amsterdam, work adidas, nba, radio silence, RIOT

It was my (Scott’s) first day at work today (more on that in a bit), so while I got to trundle off and sit in the office for the day, Shannie got to boot down to the street market that appears right outside our temp apartment on Saturdays and Monday mornings. Saturdays are more “Farmers Market-esque” days, whereas Mondays are more “Flea Market-esque.” Used clothes, antiques, vinyl records, chandeliers, and the like. And, since the market appears out of nowhere only to vanish completely a few short hours later, it’s not exactly… how would you say… “organized.”

Items for sale in haphazard stacks and piles, yet everyone who was there shopping seemed to know exactly where to go and what to look for. People seemed to know that they could “part the sea” and find exactly what it was that they wanted.

Today was also a bit damp, which is why Shannie only spent 10 minutes out at the market, instead of the much longer walk she had originally planned.

Shannie also, through the course of the day, managed to figure out and solve the problem we had in our temp apartment with it always being REALLY STINKIN’ COLD, and why we could feel the wind blowing IN our living room.

I hope the people who own this place don’t mind that we used their placemats to plug the fully 1″ wide gap in the window. Replacing placemats is probably cheaper than the heating bill being jacked up by essentially having no windows.

As was mentioned, it was my first day at work today. I don’t have any photos of the office (yet), which is fine since we’re apparently all moving in a couple of weeks anyways. Seems like a really good group of people to work with, and do we EVER have our work cut out for us over the next little while. Kinda wish I’d been here a month ago to start working on some of this stuff.

Shannie tells me that many of “her people” have been asking exactly what the heck it is that I DO for a living that brought us here in the first place. Long story short, I’m a computer nerd. When you go to a web page on the internet that lets you do all sorts of fun things, that’s what I do. I make things on the internet work. Other people make pretty pictures, I make them functional. The company I was working for in Calgary partnered with a company here to work on a number of advertising campaigns for a small athletic apparel interest headquartered in Amsterdam that you may or may not be familiar with.

Apartment update: We got word back today that we are indeed getting the first place we looked at last Wednesday (Apartment #8, for those of you keeping score at home). Requisite paperwork has been delivered, and we should be moving in on Friday. Anyone in Amsterdam that wants to come and help us haul boxes for 4 blocks just might be rewarded with beer.

amsterdam, work, you big tourist adidas, apartment, living in sin, market, rain, RIOT