February 20 is my one year anniversary in Amsterdam.I was just thinking that tonight reflects how much Amsterdam has become a part of me in the past year. I biked home from work and met up with my apartment cleaner. He's from Brazil and doesn't speak any English, so we communicate in broken Spanish. Then I ordered some Thai food in my kindergarten Dutch, biked over to the restaurant to pick it up along with some flowers and chocolate from the night market down the street, and continued on to the hospital to visit my good friend from Australia, who just broke her leg in a bike accident.
A year ago, I didn't know anyone in Amsterdam. I didn't speak any other languages besides English. I didn't think I would ever ride a bike here, let alone ride across town at night dodging taxis, trams, and pedestrians with take-out dinner and a bouquet of flowers poking out of my saddlebags.
It hasn't been 100% easy, getting to this point.
There have been humiliations and frustrations galore. Work is more stressful. I have a longer -- and generally wetter, darker, and colder! -- commute to the office. The last time I remember 5 days in a row without rain was last spring (everyone still refers nostalgically to "those great two weeks in April"). And I still have yet to drive a car here, or drink a tall glass of whole milk at lunch, so I guess I'm still far from being Dutch-ified.
But do I have regrets about moving here? Sure, although they mostly center around things like not buying a multi-voltage food processor while I had the chance. The move itself, I'll never regret.
All managers at my company are put on a 5-phase management improvement program. Phases 2 and 4 involved intensive off-site training for 4 days in Noordvijk and 2 days in Siena respectively. It's the best training program I've ever attended, and along with the on-the-job experience I had this year managing a larger group in a different department, makes me feel that taking this position would have been worthwhile even if it had just been to a place down the street instead of a place in another country.
But since I did move to another country, I'm learning a lot outside of work too. My overall language skills have improved (although half the time I'm saying 'ja' when I mean 'si' or 'oui' or vice versa). In the past year, I've been to France three times, and am heading there again in a month. I've been to Italy and London twice. I spent two weeks in Spain, including Christmas, New Year's Eve, and my birthday. There were also visits to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and in next week I'm going to Portugal. While it doesn't compare (in my own twisted, snow-obsessed mind!) to a season of weekends in Tahoe, all this travel is still a nice consolation prize.
The travel did include some snowboarding of course -- 6 days in Cham, 2 days in Switzerland, 2 days in Austria, 6 days in Les Deux Alpes, 4 days in Sainte-Foy, 1 day at SnowPlanet, 1 day on the conveyer belt (see my previous post: "Snowboarding IN Amsterdam"), and I have an upcoming week in Cham. So that makes the count so far 25 days, compared to roughly 35-40 during a typical Tahoe season. Not too bad, except when you consider that only 5 of this year's days involved riding powder.
By the way, here are some things I learned about snowboarding in Europe:
1. Indoor snow is like cold sawdust.
2. You can only survive an avalanche if they find you within 15 minutes.
3. Glaciers have crevasses that are hidden under a layer of snow.
4. Drag lifts are appropriately named.
5. You must be aggressive in lift lines (NB: Unlike in the USA, the liftee is not there to organize the lines. He's there to help Americans get on the drag lift. Otherwise, he's in the booth smoking a cigarette).
6. You need to buy supplemental health insurance for snowboarding trips, or you won't be covered at all.
7. Health insurance is a good idea (see points 2, 3, and 4)
8. Guides are expensive (350 Euros/day to hire "Fred" in Sainte Foy), but worth it.
9. Helicopters are expensive (120 Euro/person for a 10-minute ride to the top in Switerland), but worth it.
10. When I'm pulling my snowboard bag around the airport, the person who asks "you got a body in there?" is invariably British.
Well enough about lessons learned...
Whenever someone asks me how long I'm staying, I say another year or so, maybe a little longer. It's never once crossed my mind to actually live here. Then again, right now, it's hard to imagine going back to my old life too. It's hard to imagine owning a car and having to fill it up with gas, and not being able to bike anywhere in town within 15 minutes. It's hard to imagine not walking on cobblestones and not seeing canals every day. It's entirely possible that someday I'll miss Amsterdam as much as I miss San Francisco now.
Luckily, I still have at least one more year to figure out my next move and it should go by fast, with more travel and lots of visitors (at least 8 already confirmed from Feb-May). Once I quit my job, I'll probably put off looking for another job right away. What the hell. 2 years has always been about my limit for being a corporate slave. And then maybe by the time I actually make it back home, I'll be able to afford to buy more than a shack in the Bay Area.
I bought a Lonely Planet book called "A Year of Adventures", hoping it might inspire me. So far, it's convinced me that I should look into airfares to Corsica and the Sinai Peninsula. But the book is a bit too hardcore for me. For instance, I've already decided that I'm NOT going to do the Ironman Triathalon (p. 164), swim the English Channel (p. 111), climb Mount Everest (p. 156), or visit Chernobyl (p. 126). I haven't ruled out flying into outer space (p. 50), though; in fact I'm definitely going to do so as soon as I have a spare $102,000 in my pocket.
My research into possibilities continues, and ideas are welcome. Maybe I'll have some more epiphanies to share this summer...
