Football season starts next week. I haven’t played competitive league football since 1985 (!!!), so this could get messy. Details to follow.

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!

As promised, below are a bunch of photos of the second half of our Italian Adventure, spent in Rome. Our gorgeous little bed and breakfast was literally across the street from St. Peter’s Basilica, we could walk to the Coliseum in about 45 minutes, and we discovered a no-kill, volunteer run cat shelter in an unexcavated ruin in the middle of downtown. The Vatican Musem, Spanish Steps, the Sistine Chapel, Trevi Fountain, more granite/marble penises and breasts than I care to remember, the Pantheon, oodles of gorgeous Italian cathedrals, and maybe the most delicious red wine (tapped straight out of a cask, not out of a bottle) that I’ve ever had.

And yes, as one of the pictures attests, we were literally about 10 meters away from the Pope at one point. I’ve been papally blessed.

I wanna go back.

Hold on to your pants, there’s a lot of these.

… 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.)

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?

As a Canadian, the game of hockey has always been a big part of my life. I grew up watching the Edmonton Oilers win every Stanley Cup in the universe, beating the pants off of every other team in the NHL throughout the 1980s, making our neighboring Shelbyville Flames look every bit as bad as they’ve always been. Though wins have been pretty hard to come by for the last… um… 18 years for the Oilers, and despite the fact that the current inept regime of coaching and management seems hell-bent on destroying what was once a proud, honorable franchise, I’m still a huge hockey fan, and always will be.

So, when an opportunity to play on the company hockey team arose, I naturally jumped at the opportunity.

Wait, what? What kind of hockey?

Field hockey?

On Monday night, I strapped on the keeper’s pads and stood in stark defiance against the forces of… some other team… in defending the net of the 180 Amsterdam company (field) hockey team.

Field hockey. A sport I’ve never played before. Goalkeeper. A position I last played (in indoor ball hockey) twelve years ago.

Thankfully, my night went a little better than it did for this guy.

Actually, my night went pretty good, comparatively.

Not only did our team win my very first game as a goalkeeper, we got a shutout.

Scott’s lifetime record as a field hockey goaltender: 1-0. Lifetime goals against average: 0.00. I’m like the Jussi Markkanen of the Amsterdam co-ed recreational field hockey world.

–

So that was Monday. Wednesday was an entirely different beast.

On Wednesday, I went to my first pro European football (soccer, for the North American audience) match. The hometown Ajax FC were playing the second game of their 2-game set against l’Olympique de Marseille, and a co-worker of mine had bought me a ticket in thanks for helping him move a few weeks back.

Now, I’ve been to NHL playoff games. I was in Rexall Place in Edmonton the night that the crowd set the record for the highest decibel level ever recorded in an NHL arena. I’ve been to sporting events where you couldn’t hear yourself yell over the crowd. I’ve been inside arenas where the atmosphere can only be described as “electric.”

Last night’s football match made any NHL arena I’ve ever been in seem like a library.

Huge crowds of swaying, chanting, singing fans (all of whom had likely been drinking for 12 hours leading up to match time), passionate fans of both teams getting in fistfights, people climbing on each other’s shoulders and banging their hands, fists, and heads against anything that would make a noise, painted faces, flag waving, broken lights, thrown firecrackers…

…and that was all in the subway on the way to the game.

click for fullsize

As for the game itself, the home team lost, but it was still an amazing experience. Next time I go, I’ll have to get a solid 12 hours of drinking in ahead of time, as for major matches like this the entire ArenA (yes, that’s the correct capitalization, look it up) becomes an alcohol-free zone. Apparently a number of Marseilles fans were pulled over by the police on their way into Amsterdam for the game and had their weapons confiscated.

I like beer, but given the circumstances, I’m fine drinking soda for the evening if it keeps the armed, angry mob a little more subdued.

–

What did I do tonight? Lost a bunch of money in poker. You?

The next two days were filled with many walked kilometers, delicious beer, waffles, peeing statues, delicious beer, giant atomic structures, good food, subway rides, chocolate shops, and delicious beer. The weather, which was forecast to involve monsoon-like downpour, held out very nicely and actually gave us a mostly sunny day on Sunday other than some morning showers which mostly took place while we were eating breakfast (waffles, obviously).

Overall, Shannie and I took over 300 photos, a smattering of which are found below. Click on any thumbnail below to view the full photo.

Also, in other news, tonight was supposed to be my international rookie debut as a field hockey goalie on the company team, but unfortunately this evening’s match was cancelled. I like to think that it’s because the other team had to forfeit for some reason, granting us a technical win and, as such, making my lifetime record 1-0. Now the world will have to wait one more week.