Lene Hypolite decided to move to Amsterdam on a whim.

She fell in love with the European city while vacationing there last year and began applying for jobs in Amsterdam when she returned home.

“I just liked the energy of the people,” said the 27-year-old. “It is a vibrant city and the economy is stable. The people are happy and well. They are very open and liberal which I appreciated.”

She was working in market research in Atlanta, Georgia, when she decided to move to Amsterdam. She quickly found that applying for jobs in Europe while living a world away wasn’t so easy. She had to get up at 3am to do online interviews. It was worth it, though, and she has been working for Ayden, a payment services company, since January. She has also just incorporated her own research company, Improved Intelligence.

“The working world is a bit different,” she said. “In the United States and Bermuda, you are given a job description and employers are very specific about how to do your job. Here, you’re given a job description and an end goal. Employers don’t care very much about how you get it done, as long as it is done.”

Ms Hypolite also had to adjust to pedalling a bike to work.

“Amsterdam is a bike city,” she said. “In the morning there is bike traffic, the same way you have car traffic in Bermuda. It makes grocery shopping a little complicated [but] it is really convenient. I thought it would help me to lose weight but I am gaining it from the increase in muscle.

“Sometimes if you need a ride home after a party you just hop on the handlebars of someone else’s bike and they pedal you home.”

Amsterdam is a lot less conservative than Bermuda, she said.

“In Bermuda, everyone knows each other so no one wants to be shown in a negative light,” she said.

“It is more difficult to be freer without inhibitions. Here, people do their own things. You see some crazy things; marijuana and prostitution is legal.”

She was stunned to see a sign in a train station warning tourists not to buy drugs off the street because known drug dealers were misrepresenting the ingredients in their wares.

Amsterdam is famed for its Red Light District, Rosse Buurt, where drugs are legally sold and prostitutes advertise themselves in shop windows. At first, Miss Hypolite was surprised by this, but has now grown immune to it.

“The Dutch are very much merchants,” she said. “They will sell everything they can unless it affects one person or another. They don’t view sexuality the way they do in the North American region. It is open and they believe it is something all of us go through.”

Despite that, the government is now trying to contain the Red Light District, she said.

“The Red Light District is only on certain streets now,” she said. “Before it was a long stretch.”

However, she stressed, there is more to Amsterdam than prostitutes and drugs. The city can be very educational with lots of historic architecture, art museums, workshops and lectures.

“I just went to a workshop on the African diaspora,” she said. “It talked about how immigrants and people of colour are affected living across the globe.”

She said one of the nice things about Amsterdam was how clean it is.

“It is probably one of the cleanest places I have been in,” she said.

“They love parks out here. There is a park, a library and a grocery store in every neighbourhood. Children are free to play.”

Ms Hypolite also found Amsterdam’s attitude towards law enforcement refreshing.

“The police ride around on pedal bikes,” she said. “Some of them drive cars. I lived in Atlanta for four years. The way that the police treat you there is ridiculous.

“You can get pulled over for a broken rear light. Out here, the attitude is that the police are here to protect you and make sure you are okay. It is a difficult concept to understand.

“They are really there for you. If you are pulled over for riding on the sidewalk they will have a conversation with you. They will say, ‘This is dangerous and here is a warning’. I understand the purpose of the police more from being here than being in Bermuda.”

She believed Amsterdam was a very safe place for tourists. It is also very diverse.

“Outside of work, everyone I know is from different cultures,” said Ms Hypolite. “I only have one Dutch friend. My other friends are Nigerian, American, Canadian, French and Jamaican.”