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

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

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