I've got a new job in Amsterdam!

It’s about time I wrote to update all my fellow job seekers that I’ve got a job in Amsterdam! I’ve been sorted for about 4 weeks now and I’m going to be working at Philips from the 24th September. In the end I didn’t find the role through a recruitment agency but managed to sort it out all by myself. Originally, I’d applied for a different job at Philips and had interviews at the beginning of the summer. I was disappointed that they turned me down for that role, but they later came back to me with a different role, which is more suited to me anyway.

So my recommendation, after limited success using recruitment agencies, is to trawl through company sites and apply directly for everything. By all means meet with the agencies, and go to any interviews they do get for you (I had about 5 through agencies) but in the end I was better off on my own.

For a head start on finding international jobs/companies in Amsterdam, don’t forget my useful list of companies, check out their vacancy boards and apply today!:
http://sdemul.blogspot.com/2007/06/international-companies-based-in.html


Good luck to anyone else out there that is searching!

Top 10 things to see in Amsterdam

I’ve had quite a few friends and family visits now and I’m starting to realize that I have a few favourite places to take these tourists when they are here in Amsterdam. I thought I’d share these, in my blog, for anyone thinking of visiting soon. I’m not going to pretend to know any important dates, designers, architects or historical facts, but I can tell you what I know without ripping-off a rough guide. If you are in Amsterdam and you want these details you’ll just need to buy a proper guidebook.

So here is Sarah de Mul’s Top 10 places to see in Amsterdam (shown in an exciting top 10 count down type way):

10. Bicycles at Centraal Station
If you are arriving in the Netherlands for the first time, and you haven’t yet realized how much the Dutch rely on this cheap, environmentally-sound mode of transport, you’ll be shocked, amazed and astonished to see the multi-storey bike park located next door to Amsterdam’s central station. For many people, the Centraal Station is the starting point to their weekend in the city, so it’s a quick and easy little side-trip to go and marvel at this really very Dutch sight. Central station would itself be interesting if it wasn’t in a constant state of repair. I first came to Amsterdam nearly 5 years ago, and I’ve never been to the station at a time when at least one quarter of the station hasn’t been covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting.

9. Tuschinski Theater
This is the cinema where all the big premieres open in Amsterdam (I’m very excited to write that I saw Rowan Atkinson outside there when Mr Bean the movie opened last year). Anyway, the cinema is amazing, it’s a frighteningly extreme example of 1920s art-deco Amsterdam with twin, evil-looking, towers on the outside, and opulent red carpets and brightly painted ceilings inside. The best way to see the theater is of course to see a film, but if there isn’t anything on that you want to see, don’t be afraid to poke your head inside the foyer to see the ceiling which magically changes colour every 20 seconds.

8. The van Gogh museum I like this museum because it is not a gigantic maze of artists you’ve never heard of or art you’ve never seen before and will never see again. This is a small, single artist gallery, nicely designed, and packed with famous paintings I just wish I could take home with me. The van Gogh museum is in the middle of the Museumplein, a vast, flat grassy area, surrounded by museums (such as the Rijksmuseum), the classical music hall, and one of the only Albert Heijns open on Sundays!

7. Rembrandtplein
I guess this is the equivalent of Leicester Square in London, although the cinemas are not on the square but on a street that runs of the square (Reguliersbreestraat). The most interesting parts of Rembrandtplein are the 3D version of Rembrant’s “Nightwatch” which was created by a couple of Russian artists and placed here about 2 years ago, the large light screen (think Piccadilly Circus) and a couple of nice restaurants/bars: De Kroon (funked-up gentleman’s club) and Café Schiller, an art-deco bar next to the Hotel of the same name.

6. Flower Market The flower market is quiet small, but you will never see so many bulbs in your life again. It floats along the bank of the Singel (canal), and consists of about 20 flower stalls in a row. The prices are reasonable as compared to the UK, but obviously rather more expensive than the rest of Holland as this is catering for the tourist trade. I have bought an Amaryllis from here and it was beautiful. The market runs parallel with Amsterdam gayest street, Reguliers Dwarsstraat, which has one of my favourite restaurants on it: Rosie’s Cantina (a Mexican restaurant).




5. Dam Square
Dam square isn’t really that exciting, but it’s the closest thing to Trafalgar Square in Amsterdam. To me it feels like the heart of Amsterdam, as it lies relatively centrally between Centraal station, the red light district, Joordan and Spui. The main attractions on the square are the Koninklijk Paleis (Royal Palace) where Queen Beatrix receives foreign dignitaries, the war memorial, and a tiny plaque dedicated to Saint Nicholaas (SintaKlaas) on the North side next between the Nieuwe Kerk (new church) and Nieuwendijk. Dam square plays host to concerts on New Years and other special days, but it more often than not is smothered with rather rubbish street performers (see "Invading Holland", Invader Stu’s blog, for more info on these guys).

4. The Red Light District Day or night, Amsterdam’s red light district is fascinating. The first time you see the ladies in the window’s you can’t quite believe it and everyone I’ve shown around this area of town has been totally intrigued, despite themselves. The most interesting parts of the Red Light District to me are: the areas around the Oude Kerk, which is the weirdest contradiction I’ve ever seen (prostitutes flaunting their wares right opposite a huge church), and the narrowest lanes which are wide enough to fit only one person, but still have windows on both sides.

3. Anne Frank’s House

This museum shook me up; I felt really melancholy for a whole week afterwards, and still feel differently about the city where I now live. I read Anne’s diary at school and this house brings all that to life in a very simple, respectful way. Inside the house you learn about the Frank’s lives before the war, the business they ran and the friends they had. Then you are taken behind the bookcase into the secret Annexe and you see the tiny rooms and space they occupied for two years during WWII, before they were found.

The area where I live in Amsterdam is the neighbourhood where Anne lived before she went into hiding. Her school is in the street parallel to mine, and she bought the books in which she wrote her diaries from the book shop on the corner, which I can see from my living room window. After the tour of the Annexe it took me days to stop picturing my street as it would have been during the war, with Nazi soldiers and tanks roaming where the cyclists, trams and cars roam freely today.

2. The Begijnhof
This is an amazing, secret, world hidden right in the shopping centre of Amsterdam. Behind Spui there are beautiful old house around a very well kept “village green” that are lived in by single women. The square was once a sanctuary for Catholic nuns, and it still has a very calm atmosphere, cut off from the hustle and bustle of city life. There are two churches within the square, one is a catholic chapel, the other an English Church. The square also protects Amsterdam oldest surviving wooden house. Tours are not allowed into the Begijnhof, and it feels like a privilege to be allowed to enter there at all, so if you do go, please treat the area and its occupants with respect and minimize the photos and noise you make.

1. Canal Boat Tour.
To round it all off, or better, as a starting point for a trip to Amsterdam you must take a Amsterdam canal boat tour. One of the best boat tours leaves from the Rokin (take Tram 4 to Spui or Tram 12 to Muntplein) and is called Rondvaart. This tour takes you all around Amsterdam, the Keizergracht, Prisengracht and Herengracht, you see the 7 bridges, the blue bridge, the Ijselmeer, and lots more. It lasts about one hour and I've taken this tour about 5 times now.

It’s best not to take a tour when it’s raining as the boat windows steam up, but if you don’t have any option and you’re in Amsterdam when it’s raining, bring lots of tissues with you to wipe the windows!

After the tour follow the small street behind the Rondvaart hut passed the Diamond shops and on the right there’s a really cute little pancake house, which you need to reach buy a near vertical staircase. There’s enough seating room for about 12 people inside and each pancake is made individually by a very interesting (very Dutch) old couple. The restaurant is called “Upstairs”.


For anyone looking for a good (and cheap) weekend guide book, this is one of the best available right now:

International Companies based in Amsterdam

The international companies below are listed in alphabetical order. They have all posted English-speaking job opportunities, based in Amsterdam, on their websites recently.

ABN Amro
Accor
AKZO NOBEL
Alliance Boots
American Express
Avery Dennison
Backbase
Belkin
Booking.com
Canon Europa
Cisco
Corporate Express
Diageo
DSM
Foot Locker
Forrester Research
Golden Tulip Hotels
Greenpeace
Heineken
HOYA
IKEA Group
ING
Intercontinental Hotels
Joost
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
Kyocera Mita Europe
K-Swiss
LogicaCMG
Marriott International
MediaCatalyst
Mitsubishi Motors Europe
Mattel
MEXX
NetApp
Nike
Novo Nordisk
Numico
Philips
Reed-Elsevier
Sara Lee
Sony
Stream
TomTom
Tribal DDB
Tommy Hilfiger
Unilever
UPC Europe
WebEx


If I've missed any of the international companies in Amsterdam please let me know and I'll add them to the list. Please provide a URL to the job vacancies pages and I'll add that too.

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The Dutch Equivalent of...#3: Bond Street

Continuing the shopping theme once again, this post is a comparison between the most expensive/luxury shopping streets in Amsterdam and London. These are:

Bond Street – London
Pieter Cornelisz Hooftstraat – Amsterdam

Where the street names come from
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft was a seventieth century poet, playwright and historian.

Sir Thomas Bond was the head of a syndicate of developers who purchased a Piccadilly mansion called Clarendon House in 1683 and proceeded to demolish the house and develop the area (source Wikipedia). "Bond Street" doesn’t actually exist: as the street is divided into two parts known as Old Bond Street and New Bond Street.

Shopping
Most shops along Bond Street are fashion boutiques, including outlets of top designer brands such as Emporio Armani, Burberry, Dolce & Gabanna, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren, Joseph, MaxMara and Prada. At the Old Bond Street end of the street there are also several jewelers including Bulgari and Cartier. Pascal bought my engagement ring from a tiny Bond Street jewelry shop called Moira, and both our wedding rings are also from that shop.

PC Hooftstraat is lined by pretty much the same list of boutiques. Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Bulgari, Cartier, Ralph Lauren, Dolce & Gabbana, Emporio Armani and Chanel are all here too.

The IT Crowd, and their cars
Both streets have pretty strict rules on parking, but you will usually see a large black Bentley or Porsche Cayenne parked up directly outside one of the shops. In England these cars will always have intriguing private number plates, which lead you to suspect you might know which famous person owns the car.

PC Hooftstraat is very popular for cruising in posh cars or SUVs. It’s a one-way street, but on a sunny day you’ll see many big cars pass slowly by several times with their roofs down, while the passengers check-out their surroundings, and more likely allow themselves to be checked out by pedestrians.

How expensive?
Here’s a shocking comparison for you…

Bond Street = Average of £650 per square foot per year for retailers (2006) (Source)
PC Hooftstraat = Between €800 and €1100 per square metre (2007) (Source)

This doesn’t sound so bad until you do the maths. By my calculations, this can be converted into the following Anglo/Euro friendly price lists

PC Hooftstraat Price List:

• Euro price for one square metre = 800 - 1100
• Pound price for one square metre = 542.30 – 745.67
• Pound price for one square foot = 165.33 – 227.34
• Euro price for one square foot = 243.90 – 335.37

Bond Street Price List:

• Euro price for one square metre = 3145.09
• Pound price for one square metre = 2132
• Pound price for one square foot = 650
• Euro price for one square foot = 958.87

The Dutch equivalent of…#2: Oxford Street

The main, affordable, shopping streets in London and Amsterdam are:

• Amsterdam - Kalverstraat
• London - Oxford Street

This post is about these two streets...

Shopping:
Oxford Street has more than 300 shops, I’m not sure how many there are on Kalverstraat. Never-the-less there are many shops which you can find at least one of on both streets including: River Island, Zara, H&M, Esprit, Mexx, Morgan, Miss Sixty, O’Neill, Nike, Foot Locker, Waterstones and stinking old Lush. Although this sounds like good news for an English girl in a foreign land, the Amsterdam versions of the shops are normally tiny in comparison to the size of the London ones.

History:
Oxford Street follows the route of a Roman road which linked Hampshire with Colchester and became one of the major routes in and out of London.

The oldest documented reference to ‘die Calverstraete’ dates from the January 1393. The name “Klaverstraat” refers to the previous trading in cows, oxen and calves which took place in the street until 1629. After the disappearance of the cattle-market, the Kalverstraat turned into a shopping street with broader appeal.

Opening hours:
Amazingly most of the shops on the Kalverstraat are open on Sundays, which is very unusual for Holland. During the week they all close at 6pm, except on Thursdays for late night shopping until 10pm. Most Oxford Street shops are open on Sundays too, and John Lewis opens at 11:30 for browsing until you’re legally allowed to buy things at 12noon. Most shops on Oxford Street are open until 8pm during the week and later on Thursdays.

Other interesting facts that don’t deserve headings of their own:
Kalverstraat is the equivalent of Mayfair on the Monopoly board, making it sound far more upmarket than it actually is. Oxford Street is part of the green set of streets on the British Monopoly board together with Regent Street and Bond Street. In Holland the green streets are represented by streets in Rotterdam, presumably because there are not enough interesting Amsterdam streets to fill an entire board (god knows what they do about getting hold of four famous stations).

Both streets have live webcams. The Kalverstraat one updates freakishly often – it’s almost like live TV (big brother strikes again). The Oxford Street webcam is provided by Transport for London and is normally not working.

• Kalverstraat webcam: http://kalverstraat.webcam.nl/
• Oxford Street webcam: http://www.camvista.com/england/london/oxfordstreet.php

Top 10 things I love about living in Amsterdam

I realise that my last two posts about my life in Amsterdam were a bit on the negative side. I feel bad about that as generally I'm really enjoying living in Holland, and this captial city is beautiful. So, to even things out a bit, here is a Top 10 list of list that I love about living in Amsterdam.

1. The Olde Worlde Architecture - Canal Houses
Amsterdam has the most beautiful lines of canal houses. To me they all look like dolls houses, with lots of big windows, different coloured brickwork, and beautiful gables. Because all these building are built on swamp they have long wooden stakes as foundations which are supposed to hold them upright. But given centuries of earth settlement many of the houses now lean incredibly, either against each other, or more startlingly into the street.

2. Terrace Culture
Dutch bars and cafes, much like those in Italy, love making the most of their wide streets and squares by casting their outdoor furniture into the sun. In Amsterdam this appears to happen in March, as soon as the first glimmer of sunshine pokes through the clouds. Once it's warm enough to sit there without your winter coat on it's one of the most relaxing ways to enjoy an evening, glass of Rose or Biertje in hand.

3. Florists on every street corner
This is no exaggeration. The Dutch grow flowers for export, but they must sell almost as many at home. Every single street will have at least one florist, bloemenwinkel or bloemenkunst. One single 100m stretch of street around the corner from where I live has 3 huge florists, and a flower stall. Then of course there's the actual flower market in town, which is a line of about 20 big stalls along a canal. All this flower trading makes for even prettier streets, and means that both my husband and I are more likely to buy flowers for the house.

4. It stays lighter later
Tonight I will get nearly an hour of extra sunshine because I live in Amsterdam rather than London. The sun sets at 21:43 local time in Amsterdam, and 20:53 local time in London. This is because The Netherlands is almost as west as you can get within the Central European Time zone, and then if you cross a few kilometres into England you're in the Greenwich zone.

5. Italian Ice Cream Bars
Not only do the Dutch have the Italian-style terrace culture, they have also taken up their love for icecream. There are two ice-cream bars close to where I live, and they both sell delicious home-made icecream. I recommend you try them both:

• Pisa Ijs - Scheldeplein
• IJssalon Venetië - Scheldestraat

6. Canals
There are more canals in Amsterdam than in the whole of Venice, and in my opinion the Dutch ones are much prettier. I'd love to buy a little canal boat for put-putting away sunny afternoons with a picnick and drinks. For the moment though, I love just being able to walk over the pretty bridges and take in deep breathes of that great canal water air. It's almost as good as being by the sea. Seriously!

7. Cycling is so easy
The Dutch don't realise how lucky they are with this one. I think, in a way, they look down on the rest of the world for not cycling. But, the fact that the country is completely and utterly flat makes for the easiest cycling tracks in the world. There's almost no need for gears here. My "Omafiets" (see picture) has three gears, but I rarely use them, except if I'm trying to conquer a big canal bridge! Cycling here is not challenging, it's relaxing, cheap and quick. It's the best way of getting across Amsterdam, that is if it's not raining.

8. Koekje Erbij?
It's incredibly offensive to serve coffee or tea in Holland without a "koekje erbij". This means that every warm drink you receive comes with some sort of small biscuit or cookie (the word cookie actually comes from the Dutch koekje, meaning "little cake"). Usually the biscuits are based on Speculaas (ginger biscuit) but once in a while you'll get a mini-stroopwafel. Stroopwafels can be found in Starbucks in other countries, but they come from Holland. The full-sized version is designed to fit over the top of your coffee cup so that the caramel inside melts. I actually hate caramel, except for in Stroopwafels. You can buy freshly made stroopwafels from a stall in the middle of the Albert Cuypmarkt (market) in Amsterdam.

9. Car sharing schemes
This is a brilliant invention and should be replicated in all large cities around the world. My husband and I are subscribed to Greenwheels. We pay a flat subscription fee of about 12 euros a month and then we pay per hour and kilometre that we use the car. There are greenwheels cars all around our neighbourhood in Amsterdam, the closest is about 80 metres away. All the cars are brand new - the company just replaced the fleet with the car that generates the least CO2 emissions, the Peugeot 107. Not only does this scheme save the environment, but it saves us a fortune too. We don't own a car now, so we don't have to pay for car insurance, parking permits, petrol, MOTs or any of those things which back in England were a real drain on cash.

10. Writing out addresses
Okay, this one may seem to be really silly, but it's so simple that I had to mention it. This may only apply to the difference between Dutch and English addresses, but it could be the case elsewhere too. Or maybe it's just England that is completely inefficient in creating postal addresses. Here's an example:

An address in England (6 lines):
12 The High Street
Part of the city
The city
The county
The postcode
England

An address in the Netherlands (3 lines):
Hogestraat 12
The Postcode, The City
The Netherlands

See what I mean?