My blog

Tag: WORKING ABROAD

  • Letter from Amsterdam

    Lana Woolf

     

    After Brexit there was a certain amount of talk of a number of cities taking London’s crown as Europe’s financial centre. Several runners and riders stepped forwards, but the results sometimes seemed underwhelming. JP Morgan sent its backroom staff to Dublin; a Goldman Sachs banking chief waxed lyrical about Luxembourg; and even Paris, that city so addicted to every kind of tax, but perhaps still nursing disappointment over the location of the 2012 Olympics, saw an opportunity.

    But I remember thinking Amsterdam was quite a plausible competitor. Its mercantile past stares back at us in a hundred Rembrandts. Here, after all, is where banking found its rhythm after its initial invention in Florence in the Renaissance. This is a city with form when it comes to doing its sums – except when it comes to the question of the value of tulips where they may have erred from time to time.

    In fact, some of the prophecy came true. Amsterdam has seen a marked post-Brexit uptick in fintech companies: TradeWeb, MarketAxess, Klana, Azimo and CurrencyCloud all entered the market here over the past five years, or else increased their presence. Of the 200,000 people who work in finance now, around a tenth work for a fintech company. AI, tech, and life sciences are also all growing sectors in this city. Of course it helps that Amsterdam has one of the biggest airports in the world, as well as proximity to one of the world’s largest ports in the shape of Rotterdam. Dutch people are also excellent English speakers.

    It turns out that Amsterdam is eager to have our wealth management clients here, but increasingly less delighted to host our stag-dos. A recent campaign by the city, warning off the Brits, was a reminder that Amsterdam doesn’t necessarily want to be a place of infinite licence after all.

    In confirmation of this, the Wallen Watch now patrols the streets at night, and though it’s possible for other nationalities to misbehave here, it has long been suspected that nobody does hooliganism quite like the Brits. On the way from the Eurostar to your hotel, it is indeed a miserable sight to see the windows of – often trafficked – women; the hash bars, wreathed in smoke; and the occasional poor behaviour of tourists in the Red Light District.

    It is a tonic however to observe, rising out of all the evidence of human beings in decline, the gorgeous Oude Kerk, that medieval glory dreaming on another morality than the one which has long since overtaken Amsterdam.

    It’s the anything goes morality of the 1960s, of course, and it’s probably time that went into retreat. But there are signs that Amsterdam has always craved freedom. In this city, unlike in many others in Europe, there are no Roman ruins for the tourists to tick off on their itineraries, though a few artefacts have been found here and there. Like the area around Westminster, Amsterdam was always marshy terrain, and therefore an incredibly unpromising place to build a major city. The Romans understood this and the world wasn’t yet thinking in terms of canal systems.

    I sometimes think that the relative absence of the ghosts of Rome has meant for a city less tethered to the deep past, which may possibly account for its undeniable mercantile and hedonistic streak. Of course, it’s possible to take these sorts of ruminations too far: the presence of a Mithraeum doesn’t quash one’s delight in the present, just as the absence of one doesn’t excuse you from Gibbon.

    While the Romans didn’t take much notice of here, the Nazis did. The Anne Frank Museum has to be visited if only to see what it means to fight for a freedom we might subsequently lament for the excesses it can bring. Here you wind up narrow staircases into the very rooms where the famous diary was written. What cannot be understood is how somebody could kill a girl with a smile like hers. To consider her fate, and to know that if one had the power to do so one would reverse it in an instant, is to doubt the wisdom of a non-interventionist God. But perhaps all the intervening is done elsewhere than earth. It certainly wasn’t done in Amsterdam.

    Moving here has one considerable boon secreted amid all the admin: the Netherlands boasts one of the world’s finest healthcare systems. In 2016, the country topped the Euro Health Consumer Index. The system is based on a mandatory health insurance scheme (called the basisverekering), covering everything from GP consultations, hospital care, medicine prescriptions, maternity care and ambulance services: starting at around $95 a month, it’s affordable too.

    And the city itself, especially if one has experienced the eye-watering prices of Oslo and such places, has an affordable feel too: beers come in at EUR4.50; a monthly transport pass at around EUR 90; monthly gym subscription at around EUR 36. The city doesn’t seem to want to take you money quite like other less exciting places.

    And if you take the plunge and come here, you’ll be connected to some of the finest museums in the world. The Rijksmuseum boasts the famous Night Watch, a picture I sometime find it hard to get too excited about – partly because it’s surrounded by so much I think better: not just the other Rembrandts, but the Vermeers and the Franz Hals. Sometimes when we try to paint our masterpiece we merely produce something gigantic; when we’re off our guard and looking at a goldfinch with unusual attention, that’s when greatness can come our way.

    Of course, for a while, a little known and superficially uncharming fellow called Vincent Van Gogh lived in the general vicinity. He painted supreme pictures to everybody’s equally supreme indifference. Now, he’s booked out months in advance and if you listen hard in the Van Gogh Museum, I sometimes think you can hear his kindly laughter at what posterity has given him. It’s the sort of turnaround only human ignorance, and its eventual corrective, herd praise could have produced. But there’s no begrudging Vincent, who deserves every paragraph of praise he’s ever received, including this one.

    I sometimes worry we think too much in terms of capital cities: Amsterdam is a portal just like every other major urban centre. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed a peaceful walk around Delft, whose essential peace feels unchanged since the time of Vermeer. It was once said that a great artist is news who stays news. But another possible explanation is that there is really no news: human beings continue on their endeavours just as the earth is on its ellipse.

    Elsewhere there’s also the Hague, which is a good option for relocation too, with a strong political scene both domestically and internationally.

    Amsterdam is beautiful and thriving. Its excesses are really a wager it has made with the desire to be exciting. The good news is that it reliably is: the occasional whiff of hash is more than offset by the wholesome scent of a thousand bakeries and the ministrations of the stroopwafel. And that you really must try, whether you decide to live and work here or not.

  • Letter from Venice: ‘a relocation might be for you’

    Christopher Jackson

     

    Many a city which we call beautiful is by any objective measure not beautiful at all. Very often, as with London or New York, they’re simply gigantic and dynamic enough to admit opposites. Others are dystopias which we’ve trained ourselves to manage in by assigning them labels – enchanting, lovely, beautiful – which don’t apply.

    You realise this when you come to Venice: the City of Water is a separate case altogether. Any survey or poll taken regarding the question of The World’s Most Beautiful City, which didn’t show Venice the winner by a comfortable margin would be immediately suspect and void. No other city does terracotta reflected in the water and Gothic windows like this. But it’s also the place of the chance discovery: the Madonna above the doorway; the disappearing spire; the gondola yard; the washing on the balcony.

    It hits you rightaway. As you cross from Marco Polo airport towards the lagoon, a new standard presents itself. We can call it beauty, but it’s also to do with an unusual degree of respect for the past. The past, you continually reflect, as you tour Venice’s bridged intricacies and tucked-away glories, may simply have been better aesthetically. The difference between Venice and elsewhere is that Venice has kept its commitment to the past as close to absolute as a city can, while everywhere else has made significant accommodations.

    I recall coming here in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008. It occurred to me then that the very last city on earth to know that there was a recession on would be Venice – and the last person on earth, a Venetian hotelier. It comes as no surprise to learn that tourism is by far the biggest sector in Venice, though the region still has a lively shipbuilding sector, in addition to being the largest exporter of Italian luxury goods.

    Unemployment here remains high, meaning securing jobs is competitive. I recall another visit here in 2006, and on nights in the piazzas found the common thread among the young was their tendency to be living with their parents with no serious prospect of employment any time soon. Occasionally one wonders what happened to that generation: perhaps they had to go abroad; maybe they become part of the radicalisation of Italian politics either nationally or as part of the Venetian nationalist movement; or perhaps they inherited their parents homes, and still hear their footsteps echoing as they leave the bars of the Piazzale Michelangelo, now thirtysomethings their static lives having been spent taking all this for granted.

    For non-Italians who happen to be mobile, and perhaps looking to run their businesses from abroad, the property market is rather inflated in Venice itself compared to properties nearby in Padova and Vicenza. Everything’s Giotto in the first city, and Palladio in the second – and both are in easy reach of Venice.

    But relocating to Venice is not impossible, and there’s more life than you might imagine. Readers of Donna Leon’s excellent Commodore Brunetti series will know that the idea of Venice as mere museum and cultural fossil has tended to be exaggerated. In those books, we find a vivid, almost Dickensian cast of characters: the detached aristocrat, somehow managing to afford the upkeep of the palazzo; the shadowy criminals moving their money around; the owners of the gondola companies; the close-knit community which keeps La Fenice running.

    But Brunetti’s mysteries often take him beyond Venice itself onto the mainland, as if only there might the real network of relationships which lead to an intriguing crime be found. You sense that if Leon didn’t do this, too many of her stories would be centred on hotels, restaurants, or gelaterias.

    For those looking to relocate, I can recommend the Lido. Every night, the vaporetto from the mainland disgorges true Venetians from their day jobs in hospitality onto a sleepy promenade whose veneer is touristy, but which the longer your stay feels lived-in and viable as a home. Accordingly, the place has a sense of community which you only occasionally glimpse on the lagoon. Housing here is affordable – for the Londoner, almost laughably so – and so the international entrepreneur is in theory only a Visa application away from an affordable lifestyle with Venice on their doorstep.

    And what does it mean to have Venice on your doorstep? It’s to be among the very wonders of the world. Almost every church has at least something by Titian, Carpaccio, or Veronese and most have at least two of them. Then there are the big-hitters such as the Scuola Grande which is known as the Sistine of Venice, with its grand dramatic ceilings painted by that scrappy hustler Tintoretto. We don’t always like to hear it, but it was the product of a worldly ruse. When the possibility of the commission came up, there were four other artists in contention, including Tintoretto. When Tintoretto displayed his submission, he took the opportunity to announce that it was a donation, knowing full well that the regulations stipulated that all gifts had to be accepted: he went on to do 60 paintings, a large proportion of them deathless masterpieces.

    You could spend your life only looking at those – and scores of lifetimes inspecting all the glories elsewhere in the city. If you stand very still on the Ca d’Oro and pay proper attention, you can feel it moving slightly. Look down at the floor at the Basilica di San Marco, and you’ll notice that the stones are uneven and therefore hand-cut – nothing is ever completely even in the Venetian aesthetic, it always admits room for growth. In this beautiful untidiness, it mimics the laws of the universe itself.

    Of course, there is another side to Venice, which you can glimpse in the Doge Palace itself. Here you meet the truth that there’s such a thing as a painting which is too large – Tintoretto’s gigantic Last Judgement seems as though it must forever draw attention to its size, and therefore to the ambition of the painter. To paint on that scale you need a better reason than that you’d like to be considered great (and be paid in the process).

    Here too are some of the more forbidding prisons imaginable, reminding you that to fall foul of the Doge was never a particularly good idea. The famous Bridge of Sighs is named not, as many think, after the delighted exhalations of lovers seeing the possibilities of La Serenissima. Instead it refers to the regret of prisoners who saw this view on their way to their executions, to when all those possibilities had been closed.

    But perhaps there’s a lesson there. If Venice is infinite and we are not, then it’s always to some extent a mystery to anyone mortal. A relocation might be for you if you’ve come to the conclusion that the occasional scratching of the surface isn’t enough.