Exodus to Amsterdam Göteborg

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

Whew. That was a lot of photographs. All told, we took 889 pictures plus one 12 second long video of, of all things, a three-legged cat (that we affectionally named “Tripod”).

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.

italy, you big tourist anniversary, boobies, italy, jet lag, pasta, rome, the pope, travel, venice

Whoa! Hey! A blog post! Haven’t done one of these for a while. Let’s see if I remember how Wordpress works…

… 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.

amsterdam, canals, italy, you big tourist anniversary, italy, jet lag, pasta, rome, travel, venice

(There, THAT should be a sufficiently attention-grabbing title.)

Today was another walkabout day, and if I thought that Shannie put me through my paces on Sunday, I was mistaken. The problem we’ve had so far is that jet lag has been a killer. Getting used to the 8 hour time-zone shift has been difficult. We’ve been taking naps every afternoon and then finding ourselves both wide awake at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. Our plan today was to be out all day, and not allow ourselves to be home to take naps at all until bedtime.

This plan involved us walkin, it would seem, through all of Christendom and back. We didn’t even get to every location on the agenda Shannie put together, and by the time we staggered back to the apartment to cook some dinner, we’d knocked well over 10 km out of ourselves.

Granted, there were some few extra kilometeres that weren’t factored into the original equation.

Fun game: decipher the map below to determine where the extra kilometers entered the schedule! First one to find a million wins!

Also, the aforementioned “Hooray for Boobies!” Yes, a good portion of our stroll took us right through the heart of the Red Light District. Now, Since Shannie and I strictly obeyed the “NO PHOTOS” sticker on every window, this’ll have to suffice, thanks to Google Image Search:

That’s basically what it is… girls behnd a street-level (secured) glass door, with a little intercom you can speak to them through. You talk to them, if they like you, they open the door. It’s all very businesslike (well, except for all of the exposed flesh and skimpy underwear), these girls are professionals (they’re unionized workers with full health benefits), and the only reason I know exactly how the entire process works is because I watched it happen right in front of me a good couple of dozen times over the course of a few blocks.  Let’s not kid around… legalized prostitution is a huge part of the economy here. Even the Lonely Planet tour guide book for Amsterdam has an entire chapter devoted to it (it has another chapter entirely devoted to the marijuana-serving “coffee shops,” but that’s for a future blog post).

Through the course of our day, we also managed to snap some architectural photos, some pictures of a huge Saint Bernard in someone’s living room, and drink wine in Rembrandt’s Corner, the little pub next to the Rembrandt Museum. Now that we’re home and supper has been consumed (pan-seared salmon with rice, garden salad, and white wine), we’re off to meet a couple co-workers for a nightcap. To the pub!

amsterdam, you big tourist boobies, jet lag, red light district, walking