Amsterdam - Reflexions

To the surprise of most, my current home is a now called Amsterdam.

How on earth have I ended up here when my last foray into foreign lands was in Warsaw, Poland ?

Luck ? Opportunity ?

Maybe a bit of both.

I am working for a foundation called BiD Network, where a small group of motivated people believe that sustainable economic growth can be achieved by helping and promoting entrepreneurship in emerging economies. BiD Network has created an online meeting place for entrepreneurs, investors and experts who all share a common goal of making a difference. Part of my work involves assessing business plans, providing feedback, finding expert coaches that can provide guidance and finding investors to finance these businesses.



The work is very different to anything I have done before, which in itself is extremely exciting. The challenge now is to get up to speed as quickly as possible with the ins and outs of the processes in place and figure out how I can make a tangible contribution to the organisation.

So apart from work, I am slowly getting to grip with living in Amsterdam. When the sun is out, this city is absolutely glorious. Unfortunately, the sun seems to have other priorities at the moment (I am thinking the south of europe), so the weather has been a bit dull.

I have found it easy to feel comfortable and relatively at ease here. The transport system is excellent (trams and buses and bicycles), the people are friendly, speak english...what more could anyone ask for ?

Highlights and LowLights so far

1. most places do not take credit cards (I am talking supermarkets, restaurants, franchise shops..etc..etc) , which makes Holland the most financially backward european country to date.

2. Team lunches are a daily occurence. Food is purchased by one different team everyday and we all eat together, which makes for a nice time to catch up especially as the office is divided into two locations.

3. Bicycles. For those that have never been to Amsterdam, everyone here rides a bike. Bikes rule the road. I can't think of any negative point about this truly dutch tradition. The city is peaceful, there is very little noise pollution, people seem healthy, bike lanes make this a safe mode of transport ... and ultimately, given the combination of the terrible rainy weather and bike riding, it creates a no-nonsense type of person, where women in heels and men in suits, just ride to work under ponchos if it rains. People even seem to get married on their bikes (see below!)



4. Rent. Finding short term accomodation has been a bit of an adventure, but lady luck stood by me on this one. I am subletting a lovely flat, 10 min walk from my office and 2 min walk from a park. It is costing me 500 Eur a month, which I have heard is a bargain as flats here seem to go for over 1000 Eur a month. Yikes!

5.Making dutch friends. I am not sure if this is really going to happen. Amsterdam has a young and growing expat community and it just seems like the two don't really mix. Despite it being very similar to London, I somehow never felt like an expat in London. I was just a (ok half) foreigner in London. But here you definitely feel like an expat (if only the salaries would follow !!!) .

I had a great evening last night where complete randomness pushed me to meet an ecclectic group of people which included 2 argentinians, one mexican, one english, one american, one polish and one japanese. All have been living here for over 2 years and seemed happy about it. I guess that is the big difference with London, most foreigner would always moan or complain about wanting to go home...but here people actually seem happy and settled.

On the family front, my mum was over last weekend and we did all the tourist stuff (well the legal ones!). We saw Anne Frank's museum, walk around the Jordaan, passed through the red light district, went to a vernissage, had beautiful diners. I was happy that she got to come over and see where I would be staying for the next few weeks. Mum always seems to follow me :)



Next weekend Miss V is making her way over from Paris and the weekend after that it will be Miss C's turn. So busy weekends ahead! Bring it on ladies!!!