We Moved To Amsterdam: Let The Expatdition Begin!

We intend to live this life as citizens of the world and it starts now.

By the time you read this I will have spent my first morning in Amsterdam, the city I will now call home. This adventure is something wifey-pants and I have been planning for some time and we are excited for the new future we are carving out for ourselves.

But... I find myself having to explain that our move wasn't politically motivated. I mean, it certainly doesn't hurt, but that's not why we're cutting bait. Moreover I have to explain that not only to people here in the states, but to the people in Amsterdam as well. When we say we're moving to their city, the response is often, "yeah, I don't blame you." Which is a fair point, but, again, not why we're doing it.

Here is why Christine (wifey-pants) and I are actually making such a dramatic upheaval.

After we exited our respective businesses, and a beloved family member we cared for passed, we found ourselves in a strange "empty nester" position. We faced, not just two paths diverging in a yellow wood, but a wide open expanse of do-whatever-the-hell-you-want. Daunting? Sure. Tempting? Quite. Tantalizing? Oh, baby!

We always knew we would pick another city to find ourselves in. Do the snow-bird thing that is prevalent in our geography. We always assumed it would be New York City¹ (we are city mice²). It is the city where we met and checks a lot of our boxes, but on a recent trip we found the city had a been-there/done-that quality that was hard to shake. We started weighing other options. Europe? Tantalizing indeed! Yeah, why not Europe? But where in Europe? Good question. We gave ourselves some broad criteria:

NO CAR

When we lived in NYC we didn’t need a car and that probably spoiled us. We wanted to find a city that gave us the sense of freedom that comes without having to drive everywhere. And find parking. And, hell, you know, actually having to buy a car. I am not opposed to driving. In fact, I like it. But car culture is starting to really bother me. The way architecture and city planning revolve around their use. Blech. We’ll rent a car if we really need one: pay for the use of it, not the having of it. So our city needed to have a good public transportation system. That put London, Paris, and Amsterdam on our short list.

DIRECT FLIGHT

We wanted to keep the process of getting back to our friends and family as straightforward as possible. We didn’t want to have to make several connections and make an already long day of travel longer and more frustrating. Non-stop flights from Minneapolis³ put us at Heathrow, Charles de Gaulle, and Schiphol⁴.

LANGUAGE

I speak English. That’s it. I am not multilingual by any stretch. I’m not proud of it, but that’s what I’m working with. Wifey-pants is also unilingual. We are not opposed to learning a new language⁵, but didn’t want our lack of communication skills to suck the joy out of this adventure. Paris dropped off the list. London seemed to be the clear favorite here, but most Dutch speak English as a second language. Learning a new language where most everybody in the country can help you is a major bonus. So we were left with London or Amsterdam.

Amsterdam has canals⁶. Amsterdam wins!

WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT:

Pulling up roots and moving halfway around the world⁷ is fraught with excitement. There is nothing not exciting about it. That’s the whole point. Beside the obvious things that are apparent when you throw yourself into a new place like new restaurants, new shows, and new shops, there are some other considerations that really get my juices flowing.

BEING UNCOMFORTABLE

Habits are created to minimize decision making processes and eliminate “decision fatigue”. As such they are hard to break. Christine and my habits are weathered and worn and could probably use a good dusting. Throw them over a clothes line and beat them with a stick. Like a rug. It will feel good to force ourselves into a place where we don’t immediately know the directions. We will need to reconsider every single one of our previous habits. All those decisions we have curated through our lives are going to get shaken out of the fabric.

DISCOVERING NEW WAYS OF DOING THINGS

Travel has a way of teaching you things you didn’t know you needed learning. Different cultures often find novel solutions to everyday problems and when you see them it twists your brain around (in a good way). In China they have loose leaf tea thermoses with a mesh filter at the top to keep the leaves from pouring into your mouth when you drink from it. In Santorini one person’s deck is another person’s roof. In Italy they don’t cut their pizzas into slices. As a traveler I only catch glimpses of this wonderful phenomena. I hope that by living in a place my brain will get twisted in all sorts of new and interesting knots.

THE WEATHER

As I mentioned earlier, we are city mice. We are also temperate mice. Sun is fun, but we really do like our seasons. There is a groovy website called weatherspark that allows you to compare the climate of multiple cities anywhere on earth. You can really weather-geek out over there. I did.

Oooh, so much hygge!

As you can see, Amsterdam doesn’t get as cold as Duluth does in the winter and it doesn’t get as hot in the summer. Amsterdam is also further north than my hometown which means longer nights in the winter (mmmm, hygge) and longer days in the summer (mmmm, also hygge⁸).

The other oddball weather phenomenon I am actually looking forward to is the rain. In the central part of the US weather has a fairly predictable pattern. You can see the rain clouds forming to the west, wait a bit, and then it rains. Amsterdam has completely different—and apparently less predictable—weather patterns. I’m looking forward to experiencing that for myself.

TO SEE IF MY PHILOSOPHY HOLDS UP

I am a happy guy (if you couldn’t tell). Amsterdam consistently ranks as one of the happiest countries on the planet. This intrigues me: like a moth to the flame. Does my philosophy hold up against a nation of happy people? Do they see the world the same way I do? Maybe they see it completely differently but reach the same conclusion. I am fascinated to find out.

That’s why we’re moving to Amsterdam. Those are our reasons. We are not moving because an election didn’t end the way we thought it would (in fact, I lost a bet I was so sure it was going the other way). We are expatriating for our own, very personal, desire to live this life to the fullest. We want to be citizens of the world and it starts today.

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THE POLITICAL RANT

I suppose I couldn’t write this article without addressing what everyone assumes is the reason we’re leaving the country—even though it is not the reason. So here it is:

What really sucks is America and Americans, for all their faults, up until recently were respected and appreciated around the world for our can-do attitude and general affability. I was looking forward to utilizing some of that goodwill we Americans had spent so many decades building up. Nope. Not now! It's amazing how fast that goodwill can evaporate. All of that history and *poof* we look like dipshits in an instant. Even if I did not vote for him, we (waving hands around the country) did. I have to atone for our collective shitty decision.

I am sure some red-hats will read this and say, "America first! If they don't like us, fuck 'em!" That's certainly one way to look at it. As a counterpoint, though, I believe that, whether we like it or not, we are all in this together and we'd all be better off if we all help each other out. That goes not only for individuals, but for nations as well. Find happiness in the happiness of others and accept joy when it's offered back to you—writ large.

There's a rot in American politics and the current administration was born from it. He is a symptom, not the disease. Our two party system is designed to polarize us. We are constantly being forced to choose between the lesser of two evils. Whatever the fuck is going on right now is a testament to its failings: this is what we get? This‽

Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm not seeing things clearly. Certainly our government needs fixing, and I am all for finding efficiencies, but this seems like a weird way to go about it. I would prefer to build systems that incentivize efficiencies, not force them down your throat. It's like looking at a car and saying, "you know, that thing doesn’t really need four wheels," and then yanking off one of the wheels without further consideration. Now you're driving down the highway all tilted, scraping an axle against the pavement, shooting sparks all over the place, hanging your head out the window, banging on the door screaming “Efficiency!” to anybody and nobody. You look like an idiot. Pretty soon you'll break down on the side of the road thinking, "I could solve this problem by adding a fourth tire." Ya, think?

I like Warren Buffet’s suggestion: if you want to have a balanced budget all you have to do is pass a law that says a congressperson can’t run for office again if they don’t pass a balanced budget. Boom! Efficiencies built into the system. But that ain’t going to happen.

We've got so much money flooding into politics it should be called bribery. Both the lobbyists who bribe and politicians who get bribed should be sent to prison. But here in these United States we call that type of bribery "freedom of speech". If you can take that money legally, you'd be a damn fool to say no to it. You certainly wouldn't vote against it. And you can bet your sweet ass that the current administration isn’t going to pass an executive order overturning the Citizens United ruling. Once money entered the picture, it was never going to leave.

We've built a system by planting a bunch of trees, but now the trees can't see the forest because of themselves.

There are many problems in the United States. MANY. Homelessness is considered a sign of lack of gumption. "Medical Bankruptcy" is an actual term. Depression is seen as a moral failing. Active shooter drills are just another thing to teach our children. This is merely a few of them. The enumeration of all of the problems in the country would put Santa’s list to shame. Naughty List? Hell, you ain’t seen nothing Klaus. There are proven ways of handling our problems. And I’m not suggesting we point at every (any) other industrialized nation and say "let's copy them". Hell, I'm all for coming up with brand new ways of fixing our easily recognizable problems if that's the goal, but for fuck's sake let's get on with it already. For far too long it seems that we’re not even talking about them. We’re too busy pointing our fingers at the other guy and yanking tires off of perfectly good cars.

The countries that rank highest on the happiness scale (if that's important to you. It is for me) have social safety nets in place that the general populations recognize and appreciate. They know if things go sideways, they're not going to be left as roadkill. They've built systems that will allow them, nay, help them course correct. I always thought America was a champion of that ideal. That we, by our very nature, would always have each other's backs. But that is not the case. We've built systems—in fact we argue in favor of systems—that kick you when you're down.

Am I leaving this country because of one idiot? No. Am I leaving for the fact that over 50% of my fellow Americans chose this as the lesser evil? No. But, it didn’t do anybody any favors.

This is less about leaving here and more about getting somewhere. There is a big wide world out there and I intend to live in it. I am not going to allow politics to prevent me from chasing that dream.

END RANT

Sorry about that.

1. ”Snow-bird” usually means migrating from north to south. Our west to east migratory path was definitely going to be unconventional, but it was still a migration.

2. Do people still understand the City Mouse, Country Mouse reference, or is that a relic of my old-timey education?

3. We hail from Duluth. There’s enough complication getting from there to Minneapolis without adding more layers.

4. Those are the names of their airports. It’s still London, Paris, and Amsterdam. I’m just trying to be cute.

5. We’re learning Dutch!

6. So does London, but I’m talking about extensive canals.

7. It’s actually 1/4 around the world, but who’s counting?

8. Hygge is not just a wintertime groove. Apparently you can also do it in the summer. Who knew?