In Living in London on September 17, 2009 by Michael Tagged: ann, London, moving, willesden green
So my final days in Prague came to and end faster than I had expected but I’ll save that for a later blog post.
Photo by pnoid00
Tuesday afternoon I arrived in London in the pouring rain and it was raining a lot. Ann has been saying that London weather is not as bad as people make it out be to but this day she was a bit off. I’m not complaining tho. Ann had cooked me a nice English meal of Shepard’s Pie and showed me around our new home. Mmm, our new home. It’s been almost exactly two years since we went on our first date in Prague and now we are finally living in the same country :)
The next day the weather was a lot nicer so while Ann went to university I could get out and explore the neighborhood. The picture above is of the house we live in. We are in the house on the left with the red door on the first floor where we share a two bedroom flat with an Aussie/Brit couple.
Our neighborhood is covered with streets of terraced houses – all looking the same but also very different. It’s an interesting place to walk around and see how these maybe 80 year old houses have evolved differently depending of different styles and owners. Some are very nice and others are falling apart.
London is a very multiethnic city which also shows in our neighborhood with all sorts of exotic shops and restaurants. Compared to Prague which is very homogeneous (if you don’t count in the tourists) it’s a quite different atmosphere with all these cultures mixed amongst each other. On my trip I remember seeing Polish, Jamaican, Brazilian, Pakistani, Indian and South African and I’m sure I forgot a few. Also I’ve seen one synagogue, two mosques and a couple of churches and this place:
There is plenty to explore still and I’m looking forward to tasting the different foods and seeing what else there is to explore in this area.
Before I made it home I came across this piece in a school yard, “Share My World” – what a nice welcome :)
In Trips to England on September 22, 2008 by Michael Tagged: ann, martin, moving
After a week in Prague Ann and I went to London to get her set up. Ann was going to live at a student residence called Maria Assumpta in Kensington a really nice area of town close to Hyde Park and Kensington Palace.
My cousin Martin had moved to London four weeks earlier so I visited him and we did some sightseeing together. Here we are in front of Buckingham Palace where the queen lives.
London greeted us with nice weather and we had a couple of nice days getting familiar with the city. I stayed in London for three days. It’s my third visit to London but the first time I’ve really like and enjoyed London. I’m looking forward to exploring more of it with Ann 
In Living in Prague on June 21, 2007 by Michael Tagged: entrepreneur, expat, moving, Prague, starting-company, starting-over
- When we told people that we were moving to Prague for six month – everyone without exception asked why? . The why? was usually accompanied with a frowning face and a look that said are you crazy? . Let me try and see if I can explain it
Our goal of starting our own company has been to enjoy life and gain experiences while making money building software that works. We started this company to let us try something we probably wouldn t experience if we were working for an employer.
After setting up the company and working in Copenhagen for about 8 months we realized that it is not crucial for us to be stationed in Denmark to work for Danish clients. We had Danish clients but also clients we d never met and who were sitting in US, UK and Germany. We were web workers and all we needed was (roughly) a chair and good Internet and we could do our work. When we truly realized this fact and our lease in Copenhagen was nearing an end, we started to look at a map – in the beginning just for fun – but quickly it became apparent that we had to try to move to a different country.
We settled on Prague for a number of reasons – cost of living is cheaper (since we are still paid by Danish rates), trains and flights are frequent and cheap to Denmark and the rest of Europe and finally Prague is a beautiful metropolis with a thriving night life.
Our plans for our Prague adventure is to stay here for six months as a work holiday where we can get more value for our buck while we focus on developing products for other companies and one of our own products. Arb Design the company is still based in Denmark in terms of tax, VAT – it s just the two owners that are sitting in Prague for a while.
- After explaining this some people said I guess it makes sense in a way or I wish it was me – and a few continued to shake there head.
We have now been in Prague for nearly three weeks and moved into our new apartment Sunday and it already feels like home. At times we have asked ourselves whether or not it was a good idea to make this move – now I know it is.
