This blog has not seen many updates while I’ve been in London for the past 2 years. Not because there hasn’t been anything to write about but more because of blogging fatigue.

Now that our time in London is quickly coming to an end I would like to try and reflect a bit on how it has been living here.

London was not one of the cities I would have moved to on my own devices. I moved here from Prague because Ann was studying here and we were fed up with travelling across Europe to meet each other and family. However I was ready to leave Prague and was really looking forward to living with Ann so it was not a difficult choice.

Living together has been great and over time I have also gone from a lukewarm to an affectioned relationship with The City. London is an amazing place no doubt about that but it took me a while to figure out how to I could use it.

First thing I loved about the city was that I could again talk to most people in the shops and on the streets. Although you hear a lot of non-English spoken everywhere and some thick English accents – I could again speak freely. Another thing that I really enjoyed was that the service level compared to Prague was in a different league – oh the joy of being greeted with a “How may I help you?” and a smile.

The place where London has really spoiled us in the cultural department. We have seen so many concerts, musicals, plays, films, performances, comedy shows and all other sorts of shows that can’t be easily categorized. Many of the museums here have free entrance which we have also enjoyed. Actually much of the stuff we have seen and done has been free. Either on purpose or because there are a number of schemes where you can win or get free tickets. I don’t think we will get anything like this anywhere else.

There are more advantages to living in Europe’s biggest city. The place is well connected to Denmark, Malta and most other places we have travelled and because of the volume of people going through London we have been able to get cheap tickets most of the time. The size and connections of the city has also meant that a lot of friends have come to see us from all over Europe. Either because London is a good tourist destination or because they were passing through.

Exploring the city on a bicycle has been magical for me. My sense of direction is pretty bad so quite often when I have been going places I have gotten a little lost but that has just meant that I’ve found small hidden places of London that I would have never come across. In Denmark bicycling is just what everybody does. While here in London there is an activism based around cyclism and an enthusiasm about trying to make London into a more bike friendly place. There is still a long way to go but I love the energy that surrounds the biker environment.

The last thing I want to highlight that I’ve really enjoyed has been the diversity and quality of the restaurants. Within 15 minutes walk we can go to eat food from restaurants of a dozen different cuisines, all good places and for decent prices.

What I will not miss about the city is how huge it is. In my case it’s probably more of a mental obstruction but sometimes being anonymous, a grain of sand on the beach of London can make me feel quite insignificant. In Prague (and Copenhagen and Ann Arbor before that) I quickly got a big network of acquaintances and a good number of good, close friends. I have not established that kind of network in London. There is probably a couple of reasons for that, first being that we are leading a couple lifestyle and do a lot together. Another reason however is that London is so big that the people we have made friends with live in places that are easy an hour away by public transport. Moving to a smaller place I hope it will be easier to again built up a local network.

Being a guy from “the sticks” where the closest traffic light was 20km away I’m use to having a bit more space. The masses of people in London and central London in particular can easily overwhelm me and make me wish I was somewhere calmer. I’m sure when I leave though, that I might also miss some of the hustle and bustle and energy that you see everywhere in London.

We got less than a weeks left in London now and then we head off to Denmark and more precisely the southern town of Sønderborg. Talk about contrast; going from a metropolis of diversity to a place where 90% of the 30,000 people are ethnic Danes.

It’s been 4 years now since I lived in Denmark and I am excited about going back to Denmark. It will be great showing Ann more of Denmark than we can experience on a quick trip. I’m hoping Denmark is nice to her.

To engage ourselves in everything Sønderborg we have set up a new joint blog called Hej Sønderborg. We hope to use the site to tell about things we see and do. So if you are in Sønderborg or want to see what we are up to do go to the blog and say “hej”.

Bye, London

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

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

- 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 wouldnt 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 wed 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 – its 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.

We have to leave the flat we are subletting in Copenhagen in about two weeks and weve just signed the contract for our next place – in Prague.

I ended up in Copenhagen by chance, started a company as a crazy idea turned real and now Im moving to Prague because I can. Im loving it and I cant wait to get set up in Prague.

Copenhagen is a great city and even though Ive seen a lot of it over the past couple of months I will probably return.

Min postnummer er 2000 og det har indtil videre været en god oplevelse at flytte til hovedstaden. Jeg har meldt mig ledig og skulle gerne få dagpenge fra fra slutningen af denne måned.

Imens jeg har været her i København har musikken især stået på Mikael Simpson, Love Shop og Jokeren – og det passer meget godt til byens stemning, sådan en sær blanding af det afslappede, poetiske og det fanden-i-voldske.

Roskilde var sjovt, men jeg tror jeg er ved at være blive for gammel til at holde festival en hel uge – eller også var det bare fordi jeg var ved at mættet for oplevelser. I hvert fald droppede jeg det meste af søndagens program, for at tage hjem for at sove.

Et par dage efter jeg var flyttet ind kom Alberto og Luiz fra Puerto Rico forbi, så jeg tog dem med rundt i byen og var rigtig turist. Her er lige en samling turistbilleder fra vores tur, I kender nok de fleste steder.

Copenhagen dreaming, Copenhagen time, Copenhagen mine

Inden jeg tog afsted fra Ann Arbor fik jeg sagt farvel med en omgang øl og chips på taget af kollektivet. Det var godt at samle de folk der var tilbage herover og få mulighed for at sige ordentlig farvel og få en sidste øl, og en snak om gamle dage.

Tyskland spiller i aften så folk er på gaden og synger og fester, som jeg aldrig har set tyskere før – det var en god oplevelse og jeg ville ønske jeg kunne blive her og se kampen, men det må blive en anden gang for nu går mit fly snart.

Julia er en af AIESECerne fra Michigan, som vi har festet med og jeg vidste hun var i Frankfurt for et praktikophold, så jeg fik koordineret at mødes med hende inde i byen til en kop kaffe med en par af de internationale venner hun havde herfra. De påstod at de ikke havde farvekoordineret, men hvis man placerede de tre piger ved siden af hinanden var de i de helt rigtige farver til dagen.

Glasset her på billedet er hvad jeg har fået til overs i løbet af de fem år jeg har boet i Aalborg.

Hvor meget tror du der var i? Der er en fadøl på Wharf når jeg kommer hjem til den der kommer tættest

Konkurrence stopper om en uge (18. juli 2005).