Description
Meet Amanda,
Who at the age of 17 started a nomadic lifestyle, bartending across 10 different countries, seizing every opportunity, before settling down with her family in Copenhagen.
Amanda shares her reverse culture shock when moving back to the US, and more about life, culture shocks and the wonderful work-life balance in Denmark.
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Credits:
Intro outro Ice tea, Not the king
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Transcription
guess what i'm moving country again i don't know maybe a year maybe more where's home home's everywhere i'm an expat hi it's pauline from with the expats today i am with amanda who is clearly a serial expert. She's moved to 11 countries. and is today a global mobility specialist, American, but living in Copenhagen. So we'll talk a little bit about the Nordics also. Hi, Amanda. How are you?
Hi, Pauline. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's so interesting. You have a platform and a perspective for all of us nomads.
Great to have you today and your long experience in traveling.
um let's start with you i'll let you introduce yourself briefly and then we'll dive into the very first moves how they happened uh yeah absolutely um so i'm originally from washington dc i was born and raised there um and left when i was 17 so i moved my first yep i had to get a passport and everything never had been out of the country before i moved um to england to london for the first time. Um, originally I told my parents I was visiting friends, but in fact, I was applying to a school there.
Oh, wow.
So I kind of, I kind of hoodwinked them into that. And, um, so I had my passport. I was in London for three or four months, and then I moved to Liverpool and attended John Morris university there. Um, and kind of bummed around and was there for maybe, maybe two and a half, three years. And then back in London, um, from London, we went to Belgrade. with the intention of settling there, but there was a massive revolution. Milosevic was being toppled. And so we were kind of stuck in country for three months while that flattened out. And then we went to Cyprus. And I was in Limassol for a year. And from Limassol, I was in Amman in Jordan for almost nine months, 10 months. From there, I was in New York City, New York City for almost a year. I was in Charlottesville. I got the great idea that I was going to go. do yoga in the forest. All condoms are cut the same. So that lasted six months before I got hungry and had to go from there. Um, what did I do after that? Oh, I went to St. Thomas. I had a friend who was bartending in St. Thomas and said, you want to come? And I said, yeah, absolutely. So St. Thomas. And then we, it's such a convoluted story. We had another person that we you who was opening a bar in Yaco, Costa Rica. They wanted bartenders and people to build a restaurant. So we went there. So it was just following whatever,
whatever life takes you.
It was free as a bird. And then I ended up in Yaco, Costa Rica, and I did the same thing in Oaxaca, Mexico. And then from Mexico, I was in Savannah, Georgia. And then Savannah, Georgia, DC, DC, London, London, California, California. Copenhagen. Over what span of time? For six, seven years now. So from 2017 to 40 is how long. Wow.
Amazing.
I know. It was super fun. Not only was it super fun, most of it was super fun.
There's always downs, but the fun took over. Okay. So what was... driving you to leave you say at 17 you you left for the uk what was the driver for you uh just to start moving around like that yeah family situation what was kind of my family's wonderful but it was unstable at that time okay
um i had never been out of the country i was raised in dc in an area with a constant like transition of everybody was government ngo whoo whoo army Yeah. Marines, military. So people were on a constant. I saw people come in and out of my life and tons of internationals. And I kind of wanted to, I was always jealous of it. Okay. Yeah.
What is that like?
My friends would leave to go to Germany for two years and then they would go to Korea. Then they would, the new people would come in. So I was really jealous. And then I had a really good friend who was a British national and two years older than me and was going to university in Liverpool. And again, it was that weird look where they say... do you want to come with? And you go, yeah.
Okay. Yeah. But you still have to seize that opportunity and actually like dare to do it, which is not that easy at that age. Although I feel like we're a bit more naive and don't have, don't see all the impact of what we do, but.
Yeah, I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like I'm still still naive in that respect. Like if, if all of a sudden, Oh, a hundred percent. I have two kids in their teens now and Copenhagen. And if somebody came to me and says, do you, do you want to, what about Madagascar? Do you want to run a cafe there? I'd be like, yep, I sure do. I don't think I ever lose that. It's just kind of the, you know, the, everything becomes more narrow, you know, your circle becomes more narrow, your things like that. It kind of flattens out.
Okay. All right. And so what kept you going for all those years of being a nomad and just switching, moving, trying this new adventure constantly?
So what I learned was if you can't put your finger on one particular skill, you can always bartend. And it's always a high-demand thing. Yeah,
there's always a need.
Right, there's always a place. So I just bartended my way around. And that was fine. It was super fun.
Was it always just like following the opportunities or at any point did you say to yourself, oh, I want this country, like this is the goal that I'm setting? Or it's just, oh, someone would talk and say, okay, why not?
I don't know. I just never did. I never was in a place where I long enough with enough concern. I mean, call it just luck that I like had to kind of reassess. and refocus. It was just kind of the thing of like, then the next thing happened, then the next thing happened. And then the next thing happened. And so like the move, the move to Belgrade, Cyprus and Amman, and then back to New York was all because of, you know, you had a boyfriend, right? So he was teaching at the university at the new school in New York. And that's why we moved back there. He had an offer. So it wasn't, it wasn't just me. Some of it was in tandem. The last couple of rounds have been because of my husband's job. on being back in London and then the United States and then Copenhagen was because of his job.
Okay. Well, then how do you go to that very nomadic life of bartending to moving with corporate? How did that switch come?
It didn't, it didn't come easy. I'm still kind of like, I don't, I don't think I could have settled down in the suburbs and had a normal married life. the only reason why. We're kind of good at this or I've become good at it is because it suits me, you know, and it's to each his own. There's I meet a million people who can only do it for two years and hate it and want to be close to family and close to like what they know, you know, what they're comfortable with. And I get that. I totally get that. And I think it's just our levels of comfort. I'm I'm perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't fear it. It's not weird. I love a language. I can't hear a culture that I have. have questions about. I don't mind being lost. It's all these kind of elements that kind of like create the perfect beast of, and then like blind faith in yourself. Like, you know, you're just kind of like, well, that'll be fine. We'll sort it out. And again, it's those things that all the challenges that expats face, all the things that we face, this infrastructure, the bureaucracy, the systems, the logistics, right? The new friendships, the having to like, how are you going to start your life from scratch? It becomes routine. And so it's not as uncomfortable.
Yeah. Once you start knowing what to expect, I feel like you get a bit more into a mood of, you know what's coming so you can plan ahead and you know what to do to make it better. So it's no longer as uncomfortable.
Totally.
Totally. But I think my question was more around. So you were moving around bartending, but you mentioned I also moved with corporate. So how did you go from one to the other? More as in when did the more nomadic type lifestyle stop? Oh, when I got married. Then start. Yeah.
Yeah. Pure domestic. Yeah. That's all I can say. I can seek it out. Again, it was pure chance. I started dating somebody who had a corporate job. And the next thing you know, it's going to be. one thing happens one thing happens and um i was always open to moving again yeah yeah so it didn't and you probably knew very well how to do it exactly if somebody was going to put their hand up and they were all international companies and so it worked out so if somebody was going to take a transfer it would happen okay and
so this time more as in the secondary partner than less Although you say previously you had moved for your boyfriend, but the type of move I think is very different when it's more of that nomadic lifestyle versus settling completely with a company and you have to make your home. You're talking about having, you have kids now also. How is your... approach completely different and also how did you live it and go through it?
I think it's harder as a spouse. I face more challenges and it's not because of the added having children. I think as a spouse, it's almost more alienating. It's hard to say because it's It's not that you want to put it as a role. But there is a natural fluidity that comes from having an agenda. If you're transferred as the person who's working, then you have a built-in network. You have the office space. You have, you know, you have a directive every day, right? There is some structure, whereas in some respects, when you're left with this wide open space, like you have to organize the chaos, right? And that's equally challenging.
So how did you start organizing your chaos?
Again, blind faith. I had two small kids who are like 18 months apart, not even just barely. So you had like one here and one here and it just became the normal routine of every day something had to happen. Right. And I'm not a stay at home person. So every day something had to happen. So you had to create things. And neither of us have close family, any support with the kids or anything like that. So I had to, I left my position. right as we moved to California to stay home with the kids. One of that considerations, and again, the reason why on the plus side of being nomadic and living in Europe is easier is because you do have that built-in infrastructure of the safety nets and the social system, right? You have kindergarten and nursery and things like that where everything had to be put behind when we went to California. And so then had to be restarted once we were in Copenhagen. It's more difficult for a spouse in that way, right? Somebody has got to give up the, not all the time, but in this case.
In some cases, yeah.
Exactly, right. I was giving up my professional role in order to do this. And, you know, that comes with pluses and minuses. You get to be home. You get to sit on a beach in California. That's not a bad thing, right? Like, I'm not complaining.
It could be worse, yeah.
Right, right. Until 10 years later when you try to start your career again. Yeah. what do you do just find the gap yeah i don't know i don't know what i do so i guess you know it it's it's yeah i think life always has pressure points right we always have pressure points and in this sense they're just at different spaces um
and so and you learn to roll with it over time okay be flexible be flexible yes and patient I think. In these times, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, you touched a little bit about the differences in Europe, living in Copenhagen, specifically around the social security. Is there anything else that you think can make it either harder or more easier, especially for the secondary partner?
So, in Europe, unlike the United States, but it's not just true in Europe. You see it in Asia, in any major city, really. Being an international, especially, you know, what we typically call an expat, which is really what we're talking about is Americans. Let's be real. That's what everybody kind of underlined what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean that. And the intent is not to mean that. But there are these groups of people. And of course, social media now makes it easier to find, sharing information, things like that. But you have to be very careful not to get in the bubble. It's very easy to fall in the bubble. Yeah,
it's a closed bubble.
Right, exactly. Go with what you know, and then everything becomes limited. Because just like the cycle is on any career, any tenure, any profession, it can be limited to two years. So now your social circle is also changing every two years, and you've become dependent on that.
Yeah, it's how do you get out of that bubble to be able to actually have longer lasting. relationships.
So there is the thing that it is easier because there is, in some cases, there is that built-in bubble, but it can be like the best thing and the worst thing. It just, it depends on who you are as a person. It depends on how you navigate it. And it also, thank gosh, it's a lot easier to access now for sure, which is really nice. But I think. I think if I had to do it in reverse and go back to that, that was my hardest move was moving from London to California. That was there. There's no infrastructure. I didn't know anybody. My kids were at an age where they would chew young for school in the American system. you And there's no childcare. There's no childcare. Right. And my, my spouse was working in Korea two weeks out of the month, which is why we had split the difference to California because they had another office there, um, versus us going to Korea, which again, it's, it's the intensity of something like that, raising kids in a high rise and having the spouse, whoever's working is working 20 hours a day. In some cases we had to split a difference and make a happy medium somewhere. And so we opted for California. But that was really, I mean, I think a lot of it was idealistically a didn't vibe, which is I thought, I thought, I thought, having never been to California, I thought, surely this would be great. I've lived on the West Coast before. Yeah. Yoga and chai, living a liberal life, kombucha every day. Yeah. This is going to be wonderful. Orange County was not that experience.
Really?
Yeah. It is a very. It's very conservative. Okay. It's very conservative. 80% of people who are from there stay there, live there, in the same place. They all know each other. It's a huge amount of people. It's beautiful. But we were also moving into the Trump administration at that time. Context with strangers. Right, right. We were right before the election. And I was like, this is not going to fly. We're not. We're not doing that. So I think there was a lot of divisiveness. And you know what? I hadn't lived in America as an adult for a really long time.
Yeah, so you left, you were a teen.
Well, you do things in reverse, right? I hadn't lived in a bank account in America in a long time.
It's funny. I had that last episode that came out just this week. exact same conversation with a french woman though where she left she was 16 18 came back as an adult in her 40s and and suddenly she doesn't have social security numbers she doesn't have a bank account she has to go through all the administration of her own country but doesn't know how it works and yeah you feel like to me it's as if you moved abroad again when you're starting from scratch yeah
Yeah. And I think, I think people experience that on the, on the reverse. It'd be interesting to hear stories of people who go through that on the flip side. Yeah. The,
the, the, the reverse is brutal, but I think even more when you've, you haven't, you left before you were in that dot and you didn't go through the usual admin things because you don't have those basics.
Yeah. And like one of the, one of the, in the United States, of course, everything's run on a credit score. Well,
right.
We, we don't, we didn't have that. like yeah you know so but as a corporate move again it's it's those things where they kind of front up for a lot of stuff makes it a bit easier yeah so it wasn't all you know tears and cheap wine it was fine yeah okay
so yeah challenge is moving back to the u.s and then the main challenge is yeah moving without a job where you're the one that has to create Thank you. that rhythm, that bubble for yourself, obviously. And so how did you become a relocation expert specialist?
Go with what you know, right?
Yeah.
Go with what you know. Somebody recommended me for the position. I flubbed my way through an interview. The woman who owned the company was very kind and was like, what you don't know, I can teach you, right? So you have to come from the place of, you don't know what you don't know. And with bureaucracies, when you approach it, when you do the travel, when you do the shipping, you just don't know what you don't know. And you're meeting people. I think the reason why you're kind of a special breed, if you can handle it, because it's you're meeting people at the most stressful point of their life. In some cases, they've never moved before. They are. They may have family coming with them. They're managing how to move a family. They don't understand the intricacies of the language or the system. They have shipping. They have shutting their life down at home. They have, you know, the logistics of just physically moving and starting a new job on top of that. And so it becomes this, you meet the worst person on their worst day every time. Yeah.
But you become their best friend in a way.
Like you are their therapist, I feel. You have your assignee and you are the rent-a-friend for them. time period. You get them, you get the families in, you get them in, you get the system visa immigration. like familiarization um local registration and um kind of any questions on the side like everything how do i turn the gas on to to where should i live my apartment yeah what neighborhood yeah what neighborhood yeah like what do where do i buy groceries but that's a big one yeah i mean it's crazy like i remember when i did it on the reverse and the first time i i had walked into a costco since i was maybe 6 17 i mean i couldn't i it was like wild to me i was like There's too much going on. It was overwhelming. Like, yeah, it was so, I remember it was so loud all the time. Like the gas stations had TVs going and there was music going everywhere. And the ambient noise was so loud. I was, it took me a minute.
I get it. Okay. About life in Copenhagen then in general, maybe let's go through a little bit of the difference in atmosphere versus the U.S. And then we can do the recommendations from.
So one of the big things in this particular move in Copenhagen, it really, it wasn't my first love. I love the architecture. I love it now. It's my home now. I am used to equatorial, not equatorial culture, but there's a lot of cultures that are so open, you know? Yeah. Well, it's the Nordics. Yeah. Exactly. Like so expressive. so, so open. And so from the perspective, a personal perspective, and this sounds stupid, but one of the things that would struggle with not, it's not only, it's not only the darkness, it's the kind of, so you're, you feel like you're isolated, isolated, unisolated. The darkness comes in, in the winter, as you know, the Nordics are famously three o'clock, sun goes down, doesn't come up the next day until 10, but people, they don't. And it's, it's not what they mean to be. It's just, it's. people are more flat. They have the same amount of passion, the same amount of interest. They don't show it. Right. The same amount of curiosity. There's just a different affect to it. So it takes a minute to become familiar with that. The passion and the love is there, but it just takes a second. You've got to kind of judge it a little bit to like to, and understand there's a lot of subtleties. Danish is a very formal language. And so I think in a way, people mirror that people people the way people speak and the way people interact mirror that so do you see it even in the vocabulary or how the language is structured yeah you feel oh wow there's no word for please in danish and somebody correct me if i'm wrong but that's my understanding after my measly two years of speaking like there's there's there's just when you read there's a lot of therefore um okay for an example um blue The written language and the spoken language are a little bit different. Danish is a very kind of formal written language, but spoken, it can be a lot more casual. But I think that that's one of the things that kind of, in my humble opinion, which dictates kind of that kind of what a lot of people feel like is a steely front. And again, it's a lot of subtleties. So there's a lot more, you pick up on it. People are warm, people are open, people are kind. You just, it just takes a minute to be adjusted to. Yeah, for sure. That's one of the big ones. One of the things that people don't prepare you for, the work-life balance is absolutely amazing.
That I've heard, yeah.
It is absolutely amazing. Employers are very flexible. They're understanding. People have second things they do. Families fit in seamlessly with their work life. There is a system that is placed on value and not necessarily, I don't know if Al... puts the right word. Productiveness is yes, but not necessarily like immediate.
Okay.
Right. But I think a lot of people struggle with Danish corporate culture because famously it's advertised as a flat circle.
What do you mean by a flat circle?
Well, the ideal in Wajute philosophy is that it's a flat circle and that we are kind of all equal and we bring, you bring ideas.
The same amount of value as.
Effort to the table and very rudimentary. explanation. And you are, so you, your place in, in the system is not any higher necessarily. Your needs are not any higher than someone else. Right. And every organization has structure, right? Every organization to a certain extent is like that structure, but you see that really reflected in organizations and it's, it's a cycle of meetings to get to agreements. where everything feels like they're heard. And so that can be a good or a bad thing. It just depends. Yeah, it can take time. Yeah, like, you know, the joke, this could have been an email. But if you take that element away, there is such an important reinforcement of that value that comes from that, that engagement and that experience that that is that is such a cornerstone of not only how in the professional sense, everybody communicates, but I know and how they interact. And that's it's, you know, as I see a lot of expats in my job who find frustrations with that quite. early on yeah um to which you just have to say chill it's yeah you're gonna find how it is yeah it's the way it is you're gonna find your happy space in it you're gonna find your warm fuzzy but this is it's gonna take a second and this is this is kind of what the expectation is yeah
of course it's gonna be a shock when you come from a place where it's all about competition about standing out about being the one who brings the idea and just bring brings it through also um Does it actually bring more collaboration? Are people more collaborative because they know they're not necessarily in competition with each other? And there is this thing of everyone has to pitch in.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think part of that is very correct. I think people are more collaborative because they're not in competition for the most part. You're organizationally, I would say you're more driven organizationally. but also you're not high-minded. So it's not the thing of everybody has to acquiesce or like fall in line, but it's the common goal. And if your team is doing something that's parallel to this other team, conversations can happen and freely happen without any fear of negating the role, or the task, or overstepping, or overlap. Like an overlap is a great way to find a solution, but I think in a lot of corporate... culture, you don't necessarily want that because the fear of elimination of a role project, individual worth, it becomes a challenge, right? And this isn't the case as much. I think within corporate structure hierarchy, like leadership roles, C-suite, there is always the formalities. But I think, again, that's a lot flatter as well. People refer to themselves, refer to the colleagues as the first person with their first name. Doors seem to be a lot more open.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah.
All right. So what about your go-to recommendations, like cafe, restaurant, or place of choice?
So if you're here, you always have to try Prologue Coffee. I don't know why it's so great, but the coffee is great. It really is. Okay. It's not a cafe. It's just a good coffee. That's one of the things. Within, there's so many nice restaurants now. Within our neighborhood, Ulsterboro, I always recommend Cafe Boba. It is this gorgeous little, almost French style outdoor eatery. Has inside as well, that in the winter has this like really beautiful hearth that's going like a fireplace and the service is terrible and the bathroom is all, and there's like stacks of plates everywhere. It's pretty gnarly. But it is also one of the coziest, loveliest, tucked away little courtyard places. And it's the reason why I moved to our apartment. I literally based my apartment search off the cafe.
Off that place.
Like, this is the radius I'm willing to be in to surround myself and make sure that I'm near Bopa. Like, walking distance of Bopa.
Okay, got it.
Stumbling, comfortable stumbling. But I mean, in reality, it was just... Yeah.
All right. And last question. What is your X-Fact song?
It's got to be like, it's got to be 90s rave music. 100%. It's got to be some kind of like garbage, Euro trash 90s rave music, right as like the EDM scene was hitting.
Okay. Back to your bar days then.
Totally.
All right. Well, the locations will be linked in the comments, your profile also. Thank you. Thank you for sharing from that completely nomadic lifestyle to settling in Copenhagen, at least for now. Yeah.
Yeah, it was so nice to finally meet you.
Thank you.
Description
Meet Amanda,
Who at the age of 17 started a nomadic lifestyle, bartending across 10 different countries, seizing every opportunity, before settling down with her family in Copenhagen.
Amanda shares her reverse culture shock when moving back to the US, and more about life, culture shocks and the wonderful work-life balance in Denmark.
Follow for more expat stories:
📱TikTok
Credits:
Intro outro Ice tea, Not the king
Hosted on Ausha. See ausha.co/privacy-policy for more information.
Transcription
guess what i'm moving country again i don't know maybe a year maybe more where's home home's everywhere i'm an expat hi it's pauline from with the expats today i am with amanda who is clearly a serial expert. She's moved to 11 countries. and is today a global mobility specialist, American, but living in Copenhagen. So we'll talk a little bit about the Nordics also. Hi, Amanda. How are you?
Hi, Pauline. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's so interesting. You have a platform and a perspective for all of us nomads.
Great to have you today and your long experience in traveling.
um let's start with you i'll let you introduce yourself briefly and then we'll dive into the very first moves how they happened uh yeah absolutely um so i'm originally from washington dc i was born and raised there um and left when i was 17 so i moved my first yep i had to get a passport and everything never had been out of the country before i moved um to england to london for the first time. Um, originally I told my parents I was visiting friends, but in fact, I was applying to a school there.
Oh, wow.
So I kind of, I kind of hoodwinked them into that. And, um, so I had my passport. I was in London for three or four months, and then I moved to Liverpool and attended John Morris university there. Um, and kind of bummed around and was there for maybe, maybe two and a half, three years. And then back in London, um, from London, we went to Belgrade. with the intention of settling there, but there was a massive revolution. Milosevic was being toppled. And so we were kind of stuck in country for three months while that flattened out. And then we went to Cyprus. And I was in Limassol for a year. And from Limassol, I was in Amman in Jordan for almost nine months, 10 months. From there, I was in New York City, New York City for almost a year. I was in Charlottesville. I got the great idea that I was going to go. do yoga in the forest. All condoms are cut the same. So that lasted six months before I got hungry and had to go from there. Um, what did I do after that? Oh, I went to St. Thomas. I had a friend who was bartending in St. Thomas and said, you want to come? And I said, yeah, absolutely. So St. Thomas. And then we, it's such a convoluted story. We had another person that we you who was opening a bar in Yaco, Costa Rica. They wanted bartenders and people to build a restaurant. So we went there. So it was just following whatever,
whatever life takes you.
It was free as a bird. And then I ended up in Yaco, Costa Rica, and I did the same thing in Oaxaca, Mexico. And then from Mexico, I was in Savannah, Georgia. And then Savannah, Georgia, DC, DC, London, London, California, California. Copenhagen. Over what span of time? For six, seven years now. So from 2017 to 40 is how long. Wow.
Amazing.
I know. It was super fun. Not only was it super fun, most of it was super fun.
There's always downs, but the fun took over. Okay. So what was... driving you to leave you say at 17 you you left for the uk what was the driver for you uh just to start moving around like that yeah family situation what was kind of my family's wonderful but it was unstable at that time okay
um i had never been out of the country i was raised in dc in an area with a constant like transition of everybody was government ngo whoo whoo army Yeah. Marines, military. So people were on a constant. I saw people come in and out of my life and tons of internationals. And I kind of wanted to, I was always jealous of it. Okay. Yeah.
What is that like?
My friends would leave to go to Germany for two years and then they would go to Korea. Then they would, the new people would come in. So I was really jealous. And then I had a really good friend who was a British national and two years older than me and was going to university in Liverpool. And again, it was that weird look where they say... do you want to come with? And you go, yeah.
Okay. Yeah. But you still have to seize that opportunity and actually like dare to do it, which is not that easy at that age. Although I feel like we're a bit more naive and don't have, don't see all the impact of what we do, but.
Yeah, I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like I'm still still naive in that respect. Like if, if all of a sudden, Oh, a hundred percent. I have two kids in their teens now and Copenhagen. And if somebody came to me and says, do you, do you want to, what about Madagascar? Do you want to run a cafe there? I'd be like, yep, I sure do. I don't think I ever lose that. It's just kind of the, you know, the, everything becomes more narrow, you know, your circle becomes more narrow, your things like that. It kind of flattens out.
Okay. All right. And so what kept you going for all those years of being a nomad and just switching, moving, trying this new adventure constantly?
So what I learned was if you can't put your finger on one particular skill, you can always bartend. And it's always a high-demand thing. Yeah,
there's always a need.
Right, there's always a place. So I just bartended my way around. And that was fine. It was super fun.
Was it always just like following the opportunities or at any point did you say to yourself, oh, I want this country, like this is the goal that I'm setting? Or it's just, oh, someone would talk and say, okay, why not?
I don't know. I just never did. I never was in a place where I long enough with enough concern. I mean, call it just luck that I like had to kind of reassess. and refocus. It was just kind of the thing of like, then the next thing happened, then the next thing happened. And then the next thing happened. And so like the move, the move to Belgrade, Cyprus and Amman, and then back to New York was all because of, you know, you had a boyfriend, right? So he was teaching at the university at the new school in New York. And that's why we moved back there. He had an offer. So it wasn't, it wasn't just me. Some of it was in tandem. The last couple of rounds have been because of my husband's job. on being back in London and then the United States and then Copenhagen was because of his job.
Okay. Well, then how do you go to that very nomadic life of bartending to moving with corporate? How did that switch come?
It didn't, it didn't come easy. I'm still kind of like, I don't, I don't think I could have settled down in the suburbs and had a normal married life. the only reason why. We're kind of good at this or I've become good at it is because it suits me, you know, and it's to each his own. There's I meet a million people who can only do it for two years and hate it and want to be close to family and close to like what they know, you know, what they're comfortable with. And I get that. I totally get that. And I think it's just our levels of comfort. I'm I'm perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't fear it. It's not weird. I love a language. I can't hear a culture that I have. have questions about. I don't mind being lost. It's all these kind of elements that kind of like create the perfect beast of, and then like blind faith in yourself. Like, you know, you're just kind of like, well, that'll be fine. We'll sort it out. And again, it's those things that all the challenges that expats face, all the things that we face, this infrastructure, the bureaucracy, the systems, the logistics, right? The new friendships, the having to like, how are you going to start your life from scratch? It becomes routine. And so it's not as uncomfortable.
Yeah. Once you start knowing what to expect, I feel like you get a bit more into a mood of, you know what's coming so you can plan ahead and you know what to do to make it better. So it's no longer as uncomfortable.
Totally.
Totally. But I think my question was more around. So you were moving around bartending, but you mentioned I also moved with corporate. So how did you go from one to the other? More as in when did the more nomadic type lifestyle stop? Oh, when I got married. Then start. Yeah.
Yeah. Pure domestic. Yeah. That's all I can say. I can seek it out. Again, it was pure chance. I started dating somebody who had a corporate job. And the next thing you know, it's going to be. one thing happens one thing happens and um i was always open to moving again yeah yeah so it didn't and you probably knew very well how to do it exactly if somebody was going to put their hand up and they were all international companies and so it worked out so if somebody was going to take a transfer it would happen okay and
so this time more as in the secondary partner than less Although you say previously you had moved for your boyfriend, but the type of move I think is very different when it's more of that nomadic lifestyle versus settling completely with a company and you have to make your home. You're talking about having, you have kids now also. How is your... approach completely different and also how did you live it and go through it?
I think it's harder as a spouse. I face more challenges and it's not because of the added having children. I think as a spouse, it's almost more alienating. It's hard to say because it's It's not that you want to put it as a role. But there is a natural fluidity that comes from having an agenda. If you're transferred as the person who's working, then you have a built-in network. You have the office space. You have, you know, you have a directive every day, right? There is some structure, whereas in some respects, when you're left with this wide open space, like you have to organize the chaos, right? And that's equally challenging.
So how did you start organizing your chaos?
Again, blind faith. I had two small kids who are like 18 months apart, not even just barely. So you had like one here and one here and it just became the normal routine of every day something had to happen. Right. And I'm not a stay at home person. So every day something had to happen. So you had to create things. And neither of us have close family, any support with the kids or anything like that. So I had to, I left my position. right as we moved to California to stay home with the kids. One of that considerations, and again, the reason why on the plus side of being nomadic and living in Europe is easier is because you do have that built-in infrastructure of the safety nets and the social system, right? You have kindergarten and nursery and things like that where everything had to be put behind when we went to California. And so then had to be restarted once we were in Copenhagen. It's more difficult for a spouse in that way, right? Somebody has got to give up the, not all the time, but in this case.
In some cases, yeah.
Exactly, right. I was giving up my professional role in order to do this. And, you know, that comes with pluses and minuses. You get to be home. You get to sit on a beach in California. That's not a bad thing, right? Like, I'm not complaining.
It could be worse, yeah.
Right, right. Until 10 years later when you try to start your career again. Yeah. what do you do just find the gap yeah i don't know i don't know what i do so i guess you know it it's it's yeah i think life always has pressure points right we always have pressure points and in this sense they're just at different spaces um
and so and you learn to roll with it over time okay be flexible be flexible yes and patient I think. In these times, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, you touched a little bit about the differences in Europe, living in Copenhagen, specifically around the social security. Is there anything else that you think can make it either harder or more easier, especially for the secondary partner?
So, in Europe, unlike the United States, but it's not just true in Europe. You see it in Asia, in any major city, really. Being an international, especially, you know, what we typically call an expat, which is really what we're talking about is Americans. Let's be real. That's what everybody kind of underlined what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean that. And the intent is not to mean that. But there are these groups of people. And of course, social media now makes it easier to find, sharing information, things like that. But you have to be very careful not to get in the bubble. It's very easy to fall in the bubble. Yeah,
it's a closed bubble.
Right, exactly. Go with what you know, and then everything becomes limited. Because just like the cycle is on any career, any tenure, any profession, it can be limited to two years. So now your social circle is also changing every two years, and you've become dependent on that.
Yeah, it's how do you get out of that bubble to be able to actually have longer lasting. relationships.
So there is the thing that it is easier because there is, in some cases, there is that built-in bubble, but it can be like the best thing and the worst thing. It just, it depends on who you are as a person. It depends on how you navigate it. And it also, thank gosh, it's a lot easier to access now for sure, which is really nice. But I think. I think if I had to do it in reverse and go back to that, that was my hardest move was moving from London to California. That was there. There's no infrastructure. I didn't know anybody. My kids were at an age where they would chew young for school in the American system. you And there's no childcare. There's no childcare. Right. And my, my spouse was working in Korea two weeks out of the month, which is why we had split the difference to California because they had another office there, um, versus us going to Korea, which again, it's, it's the intensity of something like that, raising kids in a high rise and having the spouse, whoever's working is working 20 hours a day. In some cases we had to split a difference and make a happy medium somewhere. And so we opted for California. But that was really, I mean, I think a lot of it was idealistically a didn't vibe, which is I thought, I thought, I thought, having never been to California, I thought, surely this would be great. I've lived on the West Coast before. Yeah. Yoga and chai, living a liberal life, kombucha every day. Yeah. This is going to be wonderful. Orange County was not that experience.
Really?
Yeah. It is a very. It's very conservative. Okay. It's very conservative. 80% of people who are from there stay there, live there, in the same place. They all know each other. It's a huge amount of people. It's beautiful. But we were also moving into the Trump administration at that time. Context with strangers. Right, right. We were right before the election. And I was like, this is not going to fly. We're not. We're not doing that. So I think there was a lot of divisiveness. And you know what? I hadn't lived in America as an adult for a really long time.
Yeah, so you left, you were a teen.
Well, you do things in reverse, right? I hadn't lived in a bank account in America in a long time.
It's funny. I had that last episode that came out just this week. exact same conversation with a french woman though where she left she was 16 18 came back as an adult in her 40s and and suddenly she doesn't have social security numbers she doesn't have a bank account she has to go through all the administration of her own country but doesn't know how it works and yeah you feel like to me it's as if you moved abroad again when you're starting from scratch yeah
Yeah. And I think, I think people experience that on the, on the reverse. It'd be interesting to hear stories of people who go through that on the flip side. Yeah. The,
the, the, the reverse is brutal, but I think even more when you've, you haven't, you left before you were in that dot and you didn't go through the usual admin things because you don't have those basics.
Yeah. And like one of the, one of the, in the United States, of course, everything's run on a credit score. Well,
right.
We, we don't, we didn't have that. like yeah you know so but as a corporate move again it's it's those things where they kind of front up for a lot of stuff makes it a bit easier yeah so it wasn't all you know tears and cheap wine it was fine yeah okay
so yeah challenge is moving back to the u.s and then the main challenge is yeah moving without a job where you're the one that has to create Thank you. that rhythm, that bubble for yourself, obviously. And so how did you become a relocation expert specialist?
Go with what you know, right?
Yeah.
Go with what you know. Somebody recommended me for the position. I flubbed my way through an interview. The woman who owned the company was very kind and was like, what you don't know, I can teach you, right? So you have to come from the place of, you don't know what you don't know. And with bureaucracies, when you approach it, when you do the travel, when you do the shipping, you just don't know what you don't know. And you're meeting people. I think the reason why you're kind of a special breed, if you can handle it, because it's you're meeting people at the most stressful point of their life. In some cases, they've never moved before. They are. They may have family coming with them. They're managing how to move a family. They don't understand the intricacies of the language or the system. They have shipping. They have shutting their life down at home. They have, you know, the logistics of just physically moving and starting a new job on top of that. And so it becomes this, you meet the worst person on their worst day every time. Yeah.
But you become their best friend in a way.
Like you are their therapist, I feel. You have your assignee and you are the rent-a-friend for them. time period. You get them, you get the families in, you get them in, you get the system visa immigration. like familiarization um local registration and um kind of any questions on the side like everything how do i turn the gas on to to where should i live my apartment yeah what neighborhood yeah what neighborhood yeah like what do where do i buy groceries but that's a big one yeah i mean it's crazy like i remember when i did it on the reverse and the first time i i had walked into a costco since i was maybe 6 17 i mean i couldn't i it was like wild to me i was like There's too much going on. It was overwhelming. Like, yeah, it was so, I remember it was so loud all the time. Like the gas stations had TVs going and there was music going everywhere. And the ambient noise was so loud. I was, it took me a minute.
I get it. Okay. About life in Copenhagen then in general, maybe let's go through a little bit of the difference in atmosphere versus the U.S. And then we can do the recommendations from.
So one of the big things in this particular move in Copenhagen, it really, it wasn't my first love. I love the architecture. I love it now. It's my home now. I am used to equatorial, not equatorial culture, but there's a lot of cultures that are so open, you know? Yeah. Well, it's the Nordics. Yeah. Exactly. Like so expressive. so, so open. And so from the perspective, a personal perspective, and this sounds stupid, but one of the things that would struggle with not, it's not only, it's not only the darkness, it's the kind of, so you're, you feel like you're isolated, isolated, unisolated. The darkness comes in, in the winter, as you know, the Nordics are famously three o'clock, sun goes down, doesn't come up the next day until 10, but people, they don't. And it's, it's not what they mean to be. It's just, it's. people are more flat. They have the same amount of passion, the same amount of interest. They don't show it. Right. The same amount of curiosity. There's just a different affect to it. So it takes a minute to become familiar with that. The passion and the love is there, but it just takes a second. You've got to kind of judge it a little bit to like to, and understand there's a lot of subtleties. Danish is a very formal language. And so I think in a way, people mirror that people people the way people speak and the way people interact mirror that so do you see it even in the vocabulary or how the language is structured yeah you feel oh wow there's no word for please in danish and somebody correct me if i'm wrong but that's my understanding after my measly two years of speaking like there's there's there's just when you read there's a lot of therefore um okay for an example um blue The written language and the spoken language are a little bit different. Danish is a very kind of formal written language, but spoken, it can be a lot more casual. But I think that that's one of the things that kind of, in my humble opinion, which dictates kind of that kind of what a lot of people feel like is a steely front. And again, it's a lot of subtleties. So there's a lot more, you pick up on it. People are warm, people are open, people are kind. You just, it just takes a minute to be adjusted to. Yeah, for sure. That's one of the big ones. One of the things that people don't prepare you for, the work-life balance is absolutely amazing.
That I've heard, yeah.
It is absolutely amazing. Employers are very flexible. They're understanding. People have second things they do. Families fit in seamlessly with their work life. There is a system that is placed on value and not necessarily, I don't know if Al... puts the right word. Productiveness is yes, but not necessarily like immediate.
Okay.
Right. But I think a lot of people struggle with Danish corporate culture because famously it's advertised as a flat circle.
What do you mean by a flat circle?
Well, the ideal in Wajute philosophy is that it's a flat circle and that we are kind of all equal and we bring, you bring ideas.
The same amount of value as.
Effort to the table and very rudimentary. explanation. And you are, so you, your place in, in the system is not any higher necessarily. Your needs are not any higher than someone else. Right. And every organization has structure, right? Every organization to a certain extent is like that structure, but you see that really reflected in organizations and it's, it's a cycle of meetings to get to agreements. where everything feels like they're heard. And so that can be a good or a bad thing. It just depends. Yeah, it can take time. Yeah, like, you know, the joke, this could have been an email. But if you take that element away, there is such an important reinforcement of that value that comes from that, that engagement and that experience that that is that is such a cornerstone of not only how in the professional sense, everybody communicates, but I know and how they interact. And that's it's, you know, as I see a lot of expats in my job who find frustrations with that quite. early on yeah um to which you just have to say chill it's yeah you're gonna find how it is yeah it's the way it is you're gonna find your happy space in it you're gonna find your warm fuzzy but this is it's gonna take a second and this is this is kind of what the expectation is yeah
of course it's gonna be a shock when you come from a place where it's all about competition about standing out about being the one who brings the idea and just bring brings it through also um Does it actually bring more collaboration? Are people more collaborative because they know they're not necessarily in competition with each other? And there is this thing of everyone has to pitch in.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think part of that is very correct. I think people are more collaborative because they're not in competition for the most part. You're organizationally, I would say you're more driven organizationally. but also you're not high-minded. So it's not the thing of everybody has to acquiesce or like fall in line, but it's the common goal. And if your team is doing something that's parallel to this other team, conversations can happen and freely happen without any fear of negating the role, or the task, or overstepping, or overlap. Like an overlap is a great way to find a solution, but I think in a lot of corporate... culture, you don't necessarily want that because the fear of elimination of a role project, individual worth, it becomes a challenge, right? And this isn't the case as much. I think within corporate structure hierarchy, like leadership roles, C-suite, there is always the formalities. But I think, again, that's a lot flatter as well. People refer to themselves, refer to the colleagues as the first person with their first name. Doors seem to be a lot more open.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah.
All right. So what about your go-to recommendations, like cafe, restaurant, or place of choice?
So if you're here, you always have to try Prologue Coffee. I don't know why it's so great, but the coffee is great. It really is. Okay. It's not a cafe. It's just a good coffee. That's one of the things. Within, there's so many nice restaurants now. Within our neighborhood, Ulsterboro, I always recommend Cafe Boba. It is this gorgeous little, almost French style outdoor eatery. Has inside as well, that in the winter has this like really beautiful hearth that's going like a fireplace and the service is terrible and the bathroom is all, and there's like stacks of plates everywhere. It's pretty gnarly. But it is also one of the coziest, loveliest, tucked away little courtyard places. And it's the reason why I moved to our apartment. I literally based my apartment search off the cafe.
Off that place.
Like, this is the radius I'm willing to be in to surround myself and make sure that I'm near Bopa. Like, walking distance of Bopa.
Okay, got it.
Stumbling, comfortable stumbling. But I mean, in reality, it was just... Yeah.
All right. And last question. What is your X-Fact song?
It's got to be like, it's got to be 90s rave music. 100%. It's got to be some kind of like garbage, Euro trash 90s rave music, right as like the EDM scene was hitting.
Okay. Back to your bar days then.
Totally.
All right. Well, the locations will be linked in the comments, your profile also. Thank you. Thank you for sharing from that completely nomadic lifestyle to settling in Copenhagen, at least for now. Yeah.
Yeah, it was so nice to finally meet you.
Thank you.
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Meet Amanda,
Who at the age of 17 started a nomadic lifestyle, bartending across 10 different countries, seizing every opportunity, before settling down with her family in Copenhagen.
Amanda shares her reverse culture shock when moving back to the US, and more about life, culture shocks and the wonderful work-life balance in Denmark.
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guess what i'm moving country again i don't know maybe a year maybe more where's home home's everywhere i'm an expat hi it's pauline from with the expats today i am with amanda who is clearly a serial expert. She's moved to 11 countries. and is today a global mobility specialist, American, but living in Copenhagen. So we'll talk a little bit about the Nordics also. Hi, Amanda. How are you?
Hi, Pauline. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's so interesting. You have a platform and a perspective for all of us nomads.
Great to have you today and your long experience in traveling.
um let's start with you i'll let you introduce yourself briefly and then we'll dive into the very first moves how they happened uh yeah absolutely um so i'm originally from washington dc i was born and raised there um and left when i was 17 so i moved my first yep i had to get a passport and everything never had been out of the country before i moved um to england to london for the first time. Um, originally I told my parents I was visiting friends, but in fact, I was applying to a school there.
Oh, wow.
So I kind of, I kind of hoodwinked them into that. And, um, so I had my passport. I was in London for three or four months, and then I moved to Liverpool and attended John Morris university there. Um, and kind of bummed around and was there for maybe, maybe two and a half, three years. And then back in London, um, from London, we went to Belgrade. with the intention of settling there, but there was a massive revolution. Milosevic was being toppled. And so we were kind of stuck in country for three months while that flattened out. And then we went to Cyprus. And I was in Limassol for a year. And from Limassol, I was in Amman in Jordan for almost nine months, 10 months. From there, I was in New York City, New York City for almost a year. I was in Charlottesville. I got the great idea that I was going to go. do yoga in the forest. All condoms are cut the same. So that lasted six months before I got hungry and had to go from there. Um, what did I do after that? Oh, I went to St. Thomas. I had a friend who was bartending in St. Thomas and said, you want to come? And I said, yeah, absolutely. So St. Thomas. And then we, it's such a convoluted story. We had another person that we you who was opening a bar in Yaco, Costa Rica. They wanted bartenders and people to build a restaurant. So we went there. So it was just following whatever,
whatever life takes you.
It was free as a bird. And then I ended up in Yaco, Costa Rica, and I did the same thing in Oaxaca, Mexico. And then from Mexico, I was in Savannah, Georgia. And then Savannah, Georgia, DC, DC, London, London, California, California. Copenhagen. Over what span of time? For six, seven years now. So from 2017 to 40 is how long. Wow.
Amazing.
I know. It was super fun. Not only was it super fun, most of it was super fun.
There's always downs, but the fun took over. Okay. So what was... driving you to leave you say at 17 you you left for the uk what was the driver for you uh just to start moving around like that yeah family situation what was kind of my family's wonderful but it was unstable at that time okay
um i had never been out of the country i was raised in dc in an area with a constant like transition of everybody was government ngo whoo whoo army Yeah. Marines, military. So people were on a constant. I saw people come in and out of my life and tons of internationals. And I kind of wanted to, I was always jealous of it. Okay. Yeah.
What is that like?
My friends would leave to go to Germany for two years and then they would go to Korea. Then they would, the new people would come in. So I was really jealous. And then I had a really good friend who was a British national and two years older than me and was going to university in Liverpool. And again, it was that weird look where they say... do you want to come with? And you go, yeah.
Okay. Yeah. But you still have to seize that opportunity and actually like dare to do it, which is not that easy at that age. Although I feel like we're a bit more naive and don't have, don't see all the impact of what we do, but.
Yeah, I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like I'm still still naive in that respect. Like if, if all of a sudden, Oh, a hundred percent. I have two kids in their teens now and Copenhagen. And if somebody came to me and says, do you, do you want to, what about Madagascar? Do you want to run a cafe there? I'd be like, yep, I sure do. I don't think I ever lose that. It's just kind of the, you know, the, everything becomes more narrow, you know, your circle becomes more narrow, your things like that. It kind of flattens out.
Okay. All right. And so what kept you going for all those years of being a nomad and just switching, moving, trying this new adventure constantly?
So what I learned was if you can't put your finger on one particular skill, you can always bartend. And it's always a high-demand thing. Yeah,
there's always a need.
Right, there's always a place. So I just bartended my way around. And that was fine. It was super fun.
Was it always just like following the opportunities or at any point did you say to yourself, oh, I want this country, like this is the goal that I'm setting? Or it's just, oh, someone would talk and say, okay, why not?
I don't know. I just never did. I never was in a place where I long enough with enough concern. I mean, call it just luck that I like had to kind of reassess. and refocus. It was just kind of the thing of like, then the next thing happened, then the next thing happened. And then the next thing happened. And so like the move, the move to Belgrade, Cyprus and Amman, and then back to New York was all because of, you know, you had a boyfriend, right? So he was teaching at the university at the new school in New York. And that's why we moved back there. He had an offer. So it wasn't, it wasn't just me. Some of it was in tandem. The last couple of rounds have been because of my husband's job. on being back in London and then the United States and then Copenhagen was because of his job.
Okay. Well, then how do you go to that very nomadic life of bartending to moving with corporate? How did that switch come?
It didn't, it didn't come easy. I'm still kind of like, I don't, I don't think I could have settled down in the suburbs and had a normal married life. the only reason why. We're kind of good at this or I've become good at it is because it suits me, you know, and it's to each his own. There's I meet a million people who can only do it for two years and hate it and want to be close to family and close to like what they know, you know, what they're comfortable with. And I get that. I totally get that. And I think it's just our levels of comfort. I'm I'm perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't fear it. It's not weird. I love a language. I can't hear a culture that I have. have questions about. I don't mind being lost. It's all these kind of elements that kind of like create the perfect beast of, and then like blind faith in yourself. Like, you know, you're just kind of like, well, that'll be fine. We'll sort it out. And again, it's those things that all the challenges that expats face, all the things that we face, this infrastructure, the bureaucracy, the systems, the logistics, right? The new friendships, the having to like, how are you going to start your life from scratch? It becomes routine. And so it's not as uncomfortable.
Yeah. Once you start knowing what to expect, I feel like you get a bit more into a mood of, you know what's coming so you can plan ahead and you know what to do to make it better. So it's no longer as uncomfortable.
Totally.
Totally. But I think my question was more around. So you were moving around bartending, but you mentioned I also moved with corporate. So how did you go from one to the other? More as in when did the more nomadic type lifestyle stop? Oh, when I got married. Then start. Yeah.
Yeah. Pure domestic. Yeah. That's all I can say. I can seek it out. Again, it was pure chance. I started dating somebody who had a corporate job. And the next thing you know, it's going to be. one thing happens one thing happens and um i was always open to moving again yeah yeah so it didn't and you probably knew very well how to do it exactly if somebody was going to put their hand up and they were all international companies and so it worked out so if somebody was going to take a transfer it would happen okay and
so this time more as in the secondary partner than less Although you say previously you had moved for your boyfriend, but the type of move I think is very different when it's more of that nomadic lifestyle versus settling completely with a company and you have to make your home. You're talking about having, you have kids now also. How is your... approach completely different and also how did you live it and go through it?
I think it's harder as a spouse. I face more challenges and it's not because of the added having children. I think as a spouse, it's almost more alienating. It's hard to say because it's It's not that you want to put it as a role. But there is a natural fluidity that comes from having an agenda. If you're transferred as the person who's working, then you have a built-in network. You have the office space. You have, you know, you have a directive every day, right? There is some structure, whereas in some respects, when you're left with this wide open space, like you have to organize the chaos, right? And that's equally challenging.
So how did you start organizing your chaos?
Again, blind faith. I had two small kids who are like 18 months apart, not even just barely. So you had like one here and one here and it just became the normal routine of every day something had to happen. Right. And I'm not a stay at home person. So every day something had to happen. So you had to create things. And neither of us have close family, any support with the kids or anything like that. So I had to, I left my position. right as we moved to California to stay home with the kids. One of that considerations, and again, the reason why on the plus side of being nomadic and living in Europe is easier is because you do have that built-in infrastructure of the safety nets and the social system, right? You have kindergarten and nursery and things like that where everything had to be put behind when we went to California. And so then had to be restarted once we were in Copenhagen. It's more difficult for a spouse in that way, right? Somebody has got to give up the, not all the time, but in this case.
In some cases, yeah.
Exactly, right. I was giving up my professional role in order to do this. And, you know, that comes with pluses and minuses. You get to be home. You get to sit on a beach in California. That's not a bad thing, right? Like, I'm not complaining.
It could be worse, yeah.
Right, right. Until 10 years later when you try to start your career again. Yeah. what do you do just find the gap yeah i don't know i don't know what i do so i guess you know it it's it's yeah i think life always has pressure points right we always have pressure points and in this sense they're just at different spaces um
and so and you learn to roll with it over time okay be flexible be flexible yes and patient I think. In these times, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, you touched a little bit about the differences in Europe, living in Copenhagen, specifically around the social security. Is there anything else that you think can make it either harder or more easier, especially for the secondary partner?
So, in Europe, unlike the United States, but it's not just true in Europe. You see it in Asia, in any major city, really. Being an international, especially, you know, what we typically call an expat, which is really what we're talking about is Americans. Let's be real. That's what everybody kind of underlined what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean that. And the intent is not to mean that. But there are these groups of people. And of course, social media now makes it easier to find, sharing information, things like that. But you have to be very careful not to get in the bubble. It's very easy to fall in the bubble. Yeah,
it's a closed bubble.
Right, exactly. Go with what you know, and then everything becomes limited. Because just like the cycle is on any career, any tenure, any profession, it can be limited to two years. So now your social circle is also changing every two years, and you've become dependent on that.
Yeah, it's how do you get out of that bubble to be able to actually have longer lasting. relationships.
So there is the thing that it is easier because there is, in some cases, there is that built-in bubble, but it can be like the best thing and the worst thing. It just, it depends on who you are as a person. It depends on how you navigate it. And it also, thank gosh, it's a lot easier to access now for sure, which is really nice. But I think. I think if I had to do it in reverse and go back to that, that was my hardest move was moving from London to California. That was there. There's no infrastructure. I didn't know anybody. My kids were at an age where they would chew young for school in the American system. you And there's no childcare. There's no childcare. Right. And my, my spouse was working in Korea two weeks out of the month, which is why we had split the difference to California because they had another office there, um, versus us going to Korea, which again, it's, it's the intensity of something like that, raising kids in a high rise and having the spouse, whoever's working is working 20 hours a day. In some cases we had to split a difference and make a happy medium somewhere. And so we opted for California. But that was really, I mean, I think a lot of it was idealistically a didn't vibe, which is I thought, I thought, I thought, having never been to California, I thought, surely this would be great. I've lived on the West Coast before. Yeah. Yoga and chai, living a liberal life, kombucha every day. Yeah. This is going to be wonderful. Orange County was not that experience.
Really?
Yeah. It is a very. It's very conservative. Okay. It's very conservative. 80% of people who are from there stay there, live there, in the same place. They all know each other. It's a huge amount of people. It's beautiful. But we were also moving into the Trump administration at that time. Context with strangers. Right, right. We were right before the election. And I was like, this is not going to fly. We're not. We're not doing that. So I think there was a lot of divisiveness. And you know what? I hadn't lived in America as an adult for a really long time.
Yeah, so you left, you were a teen.
Well, you do things in reverse, right? I hadn't lived in a bank account in America in a long time.
It's funny. I had that last episode that came out just this week. exact same conversation with a french woman though where she left she was 16 18 came back as an adult in her 40s and and suddenly she doesn't have social security numbers she doesn't have a bank account she has to go through all the administration of her own country but doesn't know how it works and yeah you feel like to me it's as if you moved abroad again when you're starting from scratch yeah
Yeah. And I think, I think people experience that on the, on the reverse. It'd be interesting to hear stories of people who go through that on the flip side. Yeah. The,
the, the, the reverse is brutal, but I think even more when you've, you haven't, you left before you were in that dot and you didn't go through the usual admin things because you don't have those basics.
Yeah. And like one of the, one of the, in the United States, of course, everything's run on a credit score. Well,
right.
We, we don't, we didn't have that. like yeah you know so but as a corporate move again it's it's those things where they kind of front up for a lot of stuff makes it a bit easier yeah so it wasn't all you know tears and cheap wine it was fine yeah okay
so yeah challenge is moving back to the u.s and then the main challenge is yeah moving without a job where you're the one that has to create Thank you. that rhythm, that bubble for yourself, obviously. And so how did you become a relocation expert specialist?
Go with what you know, right?
Yeah.
Go with what you know. Somebody recommended me for the position. I flubbed my way through an interview. The woman who owned the company was very kind and was like, what you don't know, I can teach you, right? So you have to come from the place of, you don't know what you don't know. And with bureaucracies, when you approach it, when you do the travel, when you do the shipping, you just don't know what you don't know. And you're meeting people. I think the reason why you're kind of a special breed, if you can handle it, because it's you're meeting people at the most stressful point of their life. In some cases, they've never moved before. They are. They may have family coming with them. They're managing how to move a family. They don't understand the intricacies of the language or the system. They have shipping. They have shutting their life down at home. They have, you know, the logistics of just physically moving and starting a new job on top of that. And so it becomes this, you meet the worst person on their worst day every time. Yeah.
But you become their best friend in a way.
Like you are their therapist, I feel. You have your assignee and you are the rent-a-friend for them. time period. You get them, you get the families in, you get them in, you get the system visa immigration. like familiarization um local registration and um kind of any questions on the side like everything how do i turn the gas on to to where should i live my apartment yeah what neighborhood yeah what neighborhood yeah like what do where do i buy groceries but that's a big one yeah i mean it's crazy like i remember when i did it on the reverse and the first time i i had walked into a costco since i was maybe 6 17 i mean i couldn't i it was like wild to me i was like There's too much going on. It was overwhelming. Like, yeah, it was so, I remember it was so loud all the time. Like the gas stations had TVs going and there was music going everywhere. And the ambient noise was so loud. I was, it took me a minute.
I get it. Okay. About life in Copenhagen then in general, maybe let's go through a little bit of the difference in atmosphere versus the U.S. And then we can do the recommendations from.
So one of the big things in this particular move in Copenhagen, it really, it wasn't my first love. I love the architecture. I love it now. It's my home now. I am used to equatorial, not equatorial culture, but there's a lot of cultures that are so open, you know? Yeah. Well, it's the Nordics. Yeah. Exactly. Like so expressive. so, so open. And so from the perspective, a personal perspective, and this sounds stupid, but one of the things that would struggle with not, it's not only, it's not only the darkness, it's the kind of, so you're, you feel like you're isolated, isolated, unisolated. The darkness comes in, in the winter, as you know, the Nordics are famously three o'clock, sun goes down, doesn't come up the next day until 10, but people, they don't. And it's, it's not what they mean to be. It's just, it's. people are more flat. They have the same amount of passion, the same amount of interest. They don't show it. Right. The same amount of curiosity. There's just a different affect to it. So it takes a minute to become familiar with that. The passion and the love is there, but it just takes a second. You've got to kind of judge it a little bit to like to, and understand there's a lot of subtleties. Danish is a very formal language. And so I think in a way, people mirror that people people the way people speak and the way people interact mirror that so do you see it even in the vocabulary or how the language is structured yeah you feel oh wow there's no word for please in danish and somebody correct me if i'm wrong but that's my understanding after my measly two years of speaking like there's there's there's just when you read there's a lot of therefore um okay for an example um blue The written language and the spoken language are a little bit different. Danish is a very kind of formal written language, but spoken, it can be a lot more casual. But I think that that's one of the things that kind of, in my humble opinion, which dictates kind of that kind of what a lot of people feel like is a steely front. And again, it's a lot of subtleties. So there's a lot more, you pick up on it. People are warm, people are open, people are kind. You just, it just takes a minute to be adjusted to. Yeah, for sure. That's one of the big ones. One of the things that people don't prepare you for, the work-life balance is absolutely amazing.
That I've heard, yeah.
It is absolutely amazing. Employers are very flexible. They're understanding. People have second things they do. Families fit in seamlessly with their work life. There is a system that is placed on value and not necessarily, I don't know if Al... puts the right word. Productiveness is yes, but not necessarily like immediate.
Okay.
Right. But I think a lot of people struggle with Danish corporate culture because famously it's advertised as a flat circle.
What do you mean by a flat circle?
Well, the ideal in Wajute philosophy is that it's a flat circle and that we are kind of all equal and we bring, you bring ideas.
The same amount of value as.
Effort to the table and very rudimentary. explanation. And you are, so you, your place in, in the system is not any higher necessarily. Your needs are not any higher than someone else. Right. And every organization has structure, right? Every organization to a certain extent is like that structure, but you see that really reflected in organizations and it's, it's a cycle of meetings to get to agreements. where everything feels like they're heard. And so that can be a good or a bad thing. It just depends. Yeah, it can take time. Yeah, like, you know, the joke, this could have been an email. But if you take that element away, there is such an important reinforcement of that value that comes from that, that engagement and that experience that that is that is such a cornerstone of not only how in the professional sense, everybody communicates, but I know and how they interact. And that's it's, you know, as I see a lot of expats in my job who find frustrations with that quite. early on yeah um to which you just have to say chill it's yeah you're gonna find how it is yeah it's the way it is you're gonna find your happy space in it you're gonna find your warm fuzzy but this is it's gonna take a second and this is this is kind of what the expectation is yeah
of course it's gonna be a shock when you come from a place where it's all about competition about standing out about being the one who brings the idea and just bring brings it through also um Does it actually bring more collaboration? Are people more collaborative because they know they're not necessarily in competition with each other? And there is this thing of everyone has to pitch in.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think part of that is very correct. I think people are more collaborative because they're not in competition for the most part. You're organizationally, I would say you're more driven organizationally. but also you're not high-minded. So it's not the thing of everybody has to acquiesce or like fall in line, but it's the common goal. And if your team is doing something that's parallel to this other team, conversations can happen and freely happen without any fear of negating the role, or the task, or overstepping, or overlap. Like an overlap is a great way to find a solution, but I think in a lot of corporate... culture, you don't necessarily want that because the fear of elimination of a role project, individual worth, it becomes a challenge, right? And this isn't the case as much. I think within corporate structure hierarchy, like leadership roles, C-suite, there is always the formalities. But I think, again, that's a lot flatter as well. People refer to themselves, refer to the colleagues as the first person with their first name. Doors seem to be a lot more open.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah.
All right. So what about your go-to recommendations, like cafe, restaurant, or place of choice?
So if you're here, you always have to try Prologue Coffee. I don't know why it's so great, but the coffee is great. It really is. Okay. It's not a cafe. It's just a good coffee. That's one of the things. Within, there's so many nice restaurants now. Within our neighborhood, Ulsterboro, I always recommend Cafe Boba. It is this gorgeous little, almost French style outdoor eatery. Has inside as well, that in the winter has this like really beautiful hearth that's going like a fireplace and the service is terrible and the bathroom is all, and there's like stacks of plates everywhere. It's pretty gnarly. But it is also one of the coziest, loveliest, tucked away little courtyard places. And it's the reason why I moved to our apartment. I literally based my apartment search off the cafe.
Off that place.
Like, this is the radius I'm willing to be in to surround myself and make sure that I'm near Bopa. Like, walking distance of Bopa.
Okay, got it.
Stumbling, comfortable stumbling. But I mean, in reality, it was just... Yeah.
All right. And last question. What is your X-Fact song?
It's got to be like, it's got to be 90s rave music. 100%. It's got to be some kind of like garbage, Euro trash 90s rave music, right as like the EDM scene was hitting.
Okay. Back to your bar days then.
Totally.
All right. Well, the locations will be linked in the comments, your profile also. Thank you. Thank you for sharing from that completely nomadic lifestyle to settling in Copenhagen, at least for now. Yeah.
Yeah, it was so nice to finally meet you.
Thank you.
Description
Meet Amanda,
Who at the age of 17 started a nomadic lifestyle, bartending across 10 different countries, seizing every opportunity, before settling down with her family in Copenhagen.
Amanda shares her reverse culture shock when moving back to the US, and more about life, culture shocks and the wonderful work-life balance in Denmark.
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Transcription
guess what i'm moving country again i don't know maybe a year maybe more where's home home's everywhere i'm an expat hi it's pauline from with the expats today i am with amanda who is clearly a serial expert. She's moved to 11 countries. and is today a global mobility specialist, American, but living in Copenhagen. So we'll talk a little bit about the Nordics also. Hi, Amanda. How are you?
Hi, Pauline. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. It's so interesting. You have a platform and a perspective for all of us nomads.
Great to have you today and your long experience in traveling.
um let's start with you i'll let you introduce yourself briefly and then we'll dive into the very first moves how they happened uh yeah absolutely um so i'm originally from washington dc i was born and raised there um and left when i was 17 so i moved my first yep i had to get a passport and everything never had been out of the country before i moved um to england to london for the first time. Um, originally I told my parents I was visiting friends, but in fact, I was applying to a school there.
Oh, wow.
So I kind of, I kind of hoodwinked them into that. And, um, so I had my passport. I was in London for three or four months, and then I moved to Liverpool and attended John Morris university there. Um, and kind of bummed around and was there for maybe, maybe two and a half, three years. And then back in London, um, from London, we went to Belgrade. with the intention of settling there, but there was a massive revolution. Milosevic was being toppled. And so we were kind of stuck in country for three months while that flattened out. And then we went to Cyprus. And I was in Limassol for a year. And from Limassol, I was in Amman in Jordan for almost nine months, 10 months. From there, I was in New York City, New York City for almost a year. I was in Charlottesville. I got the great idea that I was going to go. do yoga in the forest. All condoms are cut the same. So that lasted six months before I got hungry and had to go from there. Um, what did I do after that? Oh, I went to St. Thomas. I had a friend who was bartending in St. Thomas and said, you want to come? And I said, yeah, absolutely. So St. Thomas. And then we, it's such a convoluted story. We had another person that we you who was opening a bar in Yaco, Costa Rica. They wanted bartenders and people to build a restaurant. So we went there. So it was just following whatever,
whatever life takes you.
It was free as a bird. And then I ended up in Yaco, Costa Rica, and I did the same thing in Oaxaca, Mexico. And then from Mexico, I was in Savannah, Georgia. And then Savannah, Georgia, DC, DC, London, London, California, California. Copenhagen. Over what span of time? For six, seven years now. So from 2017 to 40 is how long. Wow.
Amazing.
I know. It was super fun. Not only was it super fun, most of it was super fun.
There's always downs, but the fun took over. Okay. So what was... driving you to leave you say at 17 you you left for the uk what was the driver for you uh just to start moving around like that yeah family situation what was kind of my family's wonderful but it was unstable at that time okay
um i had never been out of the country i was raised in dc in an area with a constant like transition of everybody was government ngo whoo whoo army Yeah. Marines, military. So people were on a constant. I saw people come in and out of my life and tons of internationals. And I kind of wanted to, I was always jealous of it. Okay. Yeah.
What is that like?
My friends would leave to go to Germany for two years and then they would go to Korea. Then they would, the new people would come in. So I was really jealous. And then I had a really good friend who was a British national and two years older than me and was going to university in Liverpool. And again, it was that weird look where they say... do you want to come with? And you go, yeah.
Okay. Yeah. But you still have to seize that opportunity and actually like dare to do it, which is not that easy at that age. Although I feel like we're a bit more naive and don't have, don't see all the impact of what we do, but.
Yeah, I'm kind of like, I kind of feel like I'm still still naive in that respect. Like if, if all of a sudden, Oh, a hundred percent. I have two kids in their teens now and Copenhagen. And if somebody came to me and says, do you, do you want to, what about Madagascar? Do you want to run a cafe there? I'd be like, yep, I sure do. I don't think I ever lose that. It's just kind of the, you know, the, everything becomes more narrow, you know, your circle becomes more narrow, your things like that. It kind of flattens out.
Okay. All right. And so what kept you going for all those years of being a nomad and just switching, moving, trying this new adventure constantly?
So what I learned was if you can't put your finger on one particular skill, you can always bartend. And it's always a high-demand thing. Yeah,
there's always a need.
Right, there's always a place. So I just bartended my way around. And that was fine. It was super fun.
Was it always just like following the opportunities or at any point did you say to yourself, oh, I want this country, like this is the goal that I'm setting? Or it's just, oh, someone would talk and say, okay, why not?
I don't know. I just never did. I never was in a place where I long enough with enough concern. I mean, call it just luck that I like had to kind of reassess. and refocus. It was just kind of the thing of like, then the next thing happened, then the next thing happened. And then the next thing happened. And so like the move, the move to Belgrade, Cyprus and Amman, and then back to New York was all because of, you know, you had a boyfriend, right? So he was teaching at the university at the new school in New York. And that's why we moved back there. He had an offer. So it wasn't, it wasn't just me. Some of it was in tandem. The last couple of rounds have been because of my husband's job. on being back in London and then the United States and then Copenhagen was because of his job.
Okay. Well, then how do you go to that very nomadic life of bartending to moving with corporate? How did that switch come?
It didn't, it didn't come easy. I'm still kind of like, I don't, I don't think I could have settled down in the suburbs and had a normal married life. the only reason why. We're kind of good at this or I've become good at it is because it suits me, you know, and it's to each his own. There's I meet a million people who can only do it for two years and hate it and want to be close to family and close to like what they know, you know, what they're comfortable with. And I get that. I totally get that. And I think it's just our levels of comfort. I'm I'm perfectly comfortable being uncomfortable. It doesn't bother me at all. I don't fear it. It's not weird. I love a language. I can't hear a culture that I have. have questions about. I don't mind being lost. It's all these kind of elements that kind of like create the perfect beast of, and then like blind faith in yourself. Like, you know, you're just kind of like, well, that'll be fine. We'll sort it out. And again, it's those things that all the challenges that expats face, all the things that we face, this infrastructure, the bureaucracy, the systems, the logistics, right? The new friendships, the having to like, how are you going to start your life from scratch? It becomes routine. And so it's not as uncomfortable.
Yeah. Once you start knowing what to expect, I feel like you get a bit more into a mood of, you know what's coming so you can plan ahead and you know what to do to make it better. So it's no longer as uncomfortable.
Totally.
Totally. But I think my question was more around. So you were moving around bartending, but you mentioned I also moved with corporate. So how did you go from one to the other? More as in when did the more nomadic type lifestyle stop? Oh, when I got married. Then start. Yeah.
Yeah. Pure domestic. Yeah. That's all I can say. I can seek it out. Again, it was pure chance. I started dating somebody who had a corporate job. And the next thing you know, it's going to be. one thing happens one thing happens and um i was always open to moving again yeah yeah so it didn't and you probably knew very well how to do it exactly if somebody was going to put their hand up and they were all international companies and so it worked out so if somebody was going to take a transfer it would happen okay and
so this time more as in the secondary partner than less Although you say previously you had moved for your boyfriend, but the type of move I think is very different when it's more of that nomadic lifestyle versus settling completely with a company and you have to make your home. You're talking about having, you have kids now also. How is your... approach completely different and also how did you live it and go through it?
I think it's harder as a spouse. I face more challenges and it's not because of the added having children. I think as a spouse, it's almost more alienating. It's hard to say because it's It's not that you want to put it as a role. But there is a natural fluidity that comes from having an agenda. If you're transferred as the person who's working, then you have a built-in network. You have the office space. You have, you know, you have a directive every day, right? There is some structure, whereas in some respects, when you're left with this wide open space, like you have to organize the chaos, right? And that's equally challenging.
So how did you start organizing your chaos?
Again, blind faith. I had two small kids who are like 18 months apart, not even just barely. So you had like one here and one here and it just became the normal routine of every day something had to happen. Right. And I'm not a stay at home person. So every day something had to happen. So you had to create things. And neither of us have close family, any support with the kids or anything like that. So I had to, I left my position. right as we moved to California to stay home with the kids. One of that considerations, and again, the reason why on the plus side of being nomadic and living in Europe is easier is because you do have that built-in infrastructure of the safety nets and the social system, right? You have kindergarten and nursery and things like that where everything had to be put behind when we went to California. And so then had to be restarted once we were in Copenhagen. It's more difficult for a spouse in that way, right? Somebody has got to give up the, not all the time, but in this case.
In some cases, yeah.
Exactly, right. I was giving up my professional role in order to do this. And, you know, that comes with pluses and minuses. You get to be home. You get to sit on a beach in California. That's not a bad thing, right? Like, I'm not complaining.
It could be worse, yeah.
Right, right. Until 10 years later when you try to start your career again. Yeah. what do you do just find the gap yeah i don't know i don't know what i do so i guess you know it it's it's yeah i think life always has pressure points right we always have pressure points and in this sense they're just at different spaces um
and so and you learn to roll with it over time okay be flexible be flexible yes and patient I think. In these times, yeah. Okay. So, yeah, you touched a little bit about the differences in Europe, living in Copenhagen, specifically around the social security. Is there anything else that you think can make it either harder or more easier, especially for the secondary partner?
So, in Europe, unlike the United States, but it's not just true in Europe. You see it in Asia, in any major city, really. Being an international, especially, you know, what we typically call an expat, which is really what we're talking about is Americans. Let's be real. That's what everybody kind of underlined what it means. It doesn't necessarily mean that. And the intent is not to mean that. But there are these groups of people. And of course, social media now makes it easier to find, sharing information, things like that. But you have to be very careful not to get in the bubble. It's very easy to fall in the bubble. Yeah,
it's a closed bubble.
Right, exactly. Go with what you know, and then everything becomes limited. Because just like the cycle is on any career, any tenure, any profession, it can be limited to two years. So now your social circle is also changing every two years, and you've become dependent on that.
Yeah, it's how do you get out of that bubble to be able to actually have longer lasting. relationships.
So there is the thing that it is easier because there is, in some cases, there is that built-in bubble, but it can be like the best thing and the worst thing. It just, it depends on who you are as a person. It depends on how you navigate it. And it also, thank gosh, it's a lot easier to access now for sure, which is really nice. But I think. I think if I had to do it in reverse and go back to that, that was my hardest move was moving from London to California. That was there. There's no infrastructure. I didn't know anybody. My kids were at an age where they would chew young for school in the American system. you And there's no childcare. There's no childcare. Right. And my, my spouse was working in Korea two weeks out of the month, which is why we had split the difference to California because they had another office there, um, versus us going to Korea, which again, it's, it's the intensity of something like that, raising kids in a high rise and having the spouse, whoever's working is working 20 hours a day. In some cases we had to split a difference and make a happy medium somewhere. And so we opted for California. But that was really, I mean, I think a lot of it was idealistically a didn't vibe, which is I thought, I thought, I thought, having never been to California, I thought, surely this would be great. I've lived on the West Coast before. Yeah. Yoga and chai, living a liberal life, kombucha every day. Yeah. This is going to be wonderful. Orange County was not that experience.
Really?
Yeah. It is a very. It's very conservative. Okay. It's very conservative. 80% of people who are from there stay there, live there, in the same place. They all know each other. It's a huge amount of people. It's beautiful. But we were also moving into the Trump administration at that time. Context with strangers. Right, right. We were right before the election. And I was like, this is not going to fly. We're not. We're not doing that. So I think there was a lot of divisiveness. And you know what? I hadn't lived in America as an adult for a really long time.
Yeah, so you left, you were a teen.
Well, you do things in reverse, right? I hadn't lived in a bank account in America in a long time.
It's funny. I had that last episode that came out just this week. exact same conversation with a french woman though where she left she was 16 18 came back as an adult in her 40s and and suddenly she doesn't have social security numbers she doesn't have a bank account she has to go through all the administration of her own country but doesn't know how it works and yeah you feel like to me it's as if you moved abroad again when you're starting from scratch yeah
Yeah. And I think, I think people experience that on the, on the reverse. It'd be interesting to hear stories of people who go through that on the flip side. Yeah. The,
the, the, the reverse is brutal, but I think even more when you've, you haven't, you left before you were in that dot and you didn't go through the usual admin things because you don't have those basics.
Yeah. And like one of the, one of the, in the United States, of course, everything's run on a credit score. Well,
right.
We, we don't, we didn't have that. like yeah you know so but as a corporate move again it's it's those things where they kind of front up for a lot of stuff makes it a bit easier yeah so it wasn't all you know tears and cheap wine it was fine yeah okay
so yeah challenge is moving back to the u.s and then the main challenge is yeah moving without a job where you're the one that has to create Thank you. that rhythm, that bubble for yourself, obviously. And so how did you become a relocation expert specialist?
Go with what you know, right?
Yeah.
Go with what you know. Somebody recommended me for the position. I flubbed my way through an interview. The woman who owned the company was very kind and was like, what you don't know, I can teach you, right? So you have to come from the place of, you don't know what you don't know. And with bureaucracies, when you approach it, when you do the travel, when you do the shipping, you just don't know what you don't know. And you're meeting people. I think the reason why you're kind of a special breed, if you can handle it, because it's you're meeting people at the most stressful point of their life. In some cases, they've never moved before. They are. They may have family coming with them. They're managing how to move a family. They don't understand the intricacies of the language or the system. They have shipping. They have shutting their life down at home. They have, you know, the logistics of just physically moving and starting a new job on top of that. And so it becomes this, you meet the worst person on their worst day every time. Yeah.
But you become their best friend in a way.
Like you are their therapist, I feel. You have your assignee and you are the rent-a-friend for them. time period. You get them, you get the families in, you get them in, you get the system visa immigration. like familiarization um local registration and um kind of any questions on the side like everything how do i turn the gas on to to where should i live my apartment yeah what neighborhood yeah what neighborhood yeah like what do where do i buy groceries but that's a big one yeah i mean it's crazy like i remember when i did it on the reverse and the first time i i had walked into a costco since i was maybe 6 17 i mean i couldn't i it was like wild to me i was like There's too much going on. It was overwhelming. Like, yeah, it was so, I remember it was so loud all the time. Like the gas stations had TVs going and there was music going everywhere. And the ambient noise was so loud. I was, it took me a minute.
I get it. Okay. About life in Copenhagen then in general, maybe let's go through a little bit of the difference in atmosphere versus the U.S. And then we can do the recommendations from.
So one of the big things in this particular move in Copenhagen, it really, it wasn't my first love. I love the architecture. I love it now. It's my home now. I am used to equatorial, not equatorial culture, but there's a lot of cultures that are so open, you know? Yeah. Well, it's the Nordics. Yeah. Exactly. Like so expressive. so, so open. And so from the perspective, a personal perspective, and this sounds stupid, but one of the things that would struggle with not, it's not only, it's not only the darkness, it's the kind of, so you're, you feel like you're isolated, isolated, unisolated. The darkness comes in, in the winter, as you know, the Nordics are famously three o'clock, sun goes down, doesn't come up the next day until 10, but people, they don't. And it's, it's not what they mean to be. It's just, it's. people are more flat. They have the same amount of passion, the same amount of interest. They don't show it. Right. The same amount of curiosity. There's just a different affect to it. So it takes a minute to become familiar with that. The passion and the love is there, but it just takes a second. You've got to kind of judge it a little bit to like to, and understand there's a lot of subtleties. Danish is a very formal language. And so I think in a way, people mirror that people people the way people speak and the way people interact mirror that so do you see it even in the vocabulary or how the language is structured yeah you feel oh wow there's no word for please in danish and somebody correct me if i'm wrong but that's my understanding after my measly two years of speaking like there's there's there's just when you read there's a lot of therefore um okay for an example um blue The written language and the spoken language are a little bit different. Danish is a very kind of formal written language, but spoken, it can be a lot more casual. But I think that that's one of the things that kind of, in my humble opinion, which dictates kind of that kind of what a lot of people feel like is a steely front. And again, it's a lot of subtleties. So there's a lot more, you pick up on it. People are warm, people are open, people are kind. You just, it just takes a minute to be adjusted to. Yeah, for sure. That's one of the big ones. One of the things that people don't prepare you for, the work-life balance is absolutely amazing.
That I've heard, yeah.
It is absolutely amazing. Employers are very flexible. They're understanding. People have second things they do. Families fit in seamlessly with their work life. There is a system that is placed on value and not necessarily, I don't know if Al... puts the right word. Productiveness is yes, but not necessarily like immediate.
Okay.
Right. But I think a lot of people struggle with Danish corporate culture because famously it's advertised as a flat circle.
What do you mean by a flat circle?
Well, the ideal in Wajute philosophy is that it's a flat circle and that we are kind of all equal and we bring, you bring ideas.
The same amount of value as.
Effort to the table and very rudimentary. explanation. And you are, so you, your place in, in the system is not any higher necessarily. Your needs are not any higher than someone else. Right. And every organization has structure, right? Every organization to a certain extent is like that structure, but you see that really reflected in organizations and it's, it's a cycle of meetings to get to agreements. where everything feels like they're heard. And so that can be a good or a bad thing. It just depends. Yeah, it can take time. Yeah, like, you know, the joke, this could have been an email. But if you take that element away, there is such an important reinforcement of that value that comes from that, that engagement and that experience that that is that is such a cornerstone of not only how in the professional sense, everybody communicates, but I know and how they interact. And that's it's, you know, as I see a lot of expats in my job who find frustrations with that quite. early on yeah um to which you just have to say chill it's yeah you're gonna find how it is yeah it's the way it is you're gonna find your happy space in it you're gonna find your warm fuzzy but this is it's gonna take a second and this is this is kind of what the expectation is yeah
of course it's gonna be a shock when you come from a place where it's all about competition about standing out about being the one who brings the idea and just bring brings it through also um Does it actually bring more collaboration? Are people more collaborative because they know they're not necessarily in competition with each other? And there is this thing of everyone has to pitch in.
Yeah, I think, you know, I think part of that is very correct. I think people are more collaborative because they're not in competition for the most part. You're organizationally, I would say you're more driven organizationally. but also you're not high-minded. So it's not the thing of everybody has to acquiesce or like fall in line, but it's the common goal. And if your team is doing something that's parallel to this other team, conversations can happen and freely happen without any fear of negating the role, or the task, or overstepping, or overlap. Like an overlap is a great way to find a solution, but I think in a lot of corporate... culture, you don't necessarily want that because the fear of elimination of a role project, individual worth, it becomes a challenge, right? And this isn't the case as much. I think within corporate structure hierarchy, like leadership roles, C-suite, there is always the formalities. But I think, again, that's a lot flatter as well. People refer to themselves, refer to the colleagues as the first person with their first name. Doors seem to be a lot more open.
Okay. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Okay. Interesting.
Yeah.
All right. So what about your go-to recommendations, like cafe, restaurant, or place of choice?
So if you're here, you always have to try Prologue Coffee. I don't know why it's so great, but the coffee is great. It really is. Okay. It's not a cafe. It's just a good coffee. That's one of the things. Within, there's so many nice restaurants now. Within our neighborhood, Ulsterboro, I always recommend Cafe Boba. It is this gorgeous little, almost French style outdoor eatery. Has inside as well, that in the winter has this like really beautiful hearth that's going like a fireplace and the service is terrible and the bathroom is all, and there's like stacks of plates everywhere. It's pretty gnarly. But it is also one of the coziest, loveliest, tucked away little courtyard places. And it's the reason why I moved to our apartment. I literally based my apartment search off the cafe.
Off that place.
Like, this is the radius I'm willing to be in to surround myself and make sure that I'm near Bopa. Like, walking distance of Bopa.
Okay, got it.
Stumbling, comfortable stumbling. But I mean, in reality, it was just... Yeah.
All right. And last question. What is your X-Fact song?
It's got to be like, it's got to be 90s rave music. 100%. It's got to be some kind of like garbage, Euro trash 90s rave music, right as like the EDM scene was hitting.
Okay. Back to your bar days then.
Totally.
All right. Well, the locations will be linked in the comments, your profile also. Thank you. Thank you for sharing from that completely nomadic lifestyle to settling in Copenhagen, at least for now. Yeah.
Yeah, it was so nice to finally meet you.
Thank you.
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