Exodus to Amsterdam Göteborg

Last weekend, Shannie and I took advantage of the fact that European countries are small, relatively close together, and connected by high-speed rail lines and spent two days in Belgium with two of my co-workers and one of their significant others. On Saturday morning we met up at Amsterdam Centraal Station with Matt, Kim, and Kyla and hopped a 4-ish hour train ride to the city of Brussels.

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.

you big tourist Belgium, Brussels, churches, pubs, rain, RIOT, statues, travel, walking

Like true good residents of the most bicycle-friendly city in the world, Shannie and I went out a couple of weeks back and purchased ourselves a couple of bicycles. We don’t own a car in Amsterdam. We have no plans to buy a car here, because for our lifestyle, we COMPLETELY don’t need one. Almost everywhere we’ll ever need to go to is within walking and/or biking distance within our apartment, and for the occasional times we need to go beyond that, both the public transit and high-speed rail system are more than adequate.

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.

amsterdam, you big tourist bicycles, rain, walking

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