Amsterdam...

Para ver a versão portuguesa deste post, clique aqui

Now, for my international friends :)

I've been writing a blog, on and off since 2012. My plan is to repost older posts (the most interesting ones) translated to english. This blog is about everything that comes to my mind.

And when I posted the portuguese version of this post I realized that the last one had been in May 2016... awful...and since then a lot of things changed...the most important thing was to have moved to Amsterdam :)

It was an adventure. I had never been to Amsterdam, didn't know the city. The only contact I had with the city was a long ago, that I came to a job interview for the European Space Agency (if only job interviews could be added to the cv...AHAHAHAHAH!!!!) and basically I arrived at Schipol, with J, got a taxi to Noordwijk, had dinner, went for a walk, went to bed, in the next morning I had the interview that didn't go well (they needed someone with more experience) and then we went to the airport. At the time something that I found funny was walking around Noordwijk, thinking I was looking through shop windows, and suddenly I realized I was looking into people's homes, reading, watching TV, cooking, whatever....

(After geting to know these "strange" people I think that don't care much about other peoples lives, so it's ok, but we, the portuguese people are too nosy)

Meanwhile, after sending lots of CVs, to everywhere (I mean: England and Netherlands), I received a proposal to go to England and afterwards, I received a call for an interview here in Amsterdam.

After the interview I walked a bit around downtown (the Dam, and the streets around it), I went to see the Red Light District (who knew when I would return to Amsterdam) and went to the airport. When I receive the job offer I was a bit indeciseful, but I like the feeling of the city, more than England's. It looked to me a very relaxed city, with better quality of life than the one we would have in England, and more child-friendly...the biggest con would be the language, especially because of the little J., but still I decided to take the chance. I was still 4 weeks in England, wich is good to compare, and on the 30th of October 2016 I came to Amsterdam, alone...

Was it hard? I really, really missed both J.s (saudade - portuguese word withou translation...). On the other hand It felt good to get to know the city on my own pace, and be able to read, and colour (my adult colouring books)...and start to let the language sink in.

After one year the outcome is really positive. About everything... Of course...not everything is perfect... Weather sucks, but I've seen snow falling for the first time and played in the snow, and I've seen more rainbows this year than I've ever seen in my whole life :) Food sucks, specially the fact they eat sandwiches for lunch, but my thermomix is still my best friend...



And this is it...