I did my undergraduate studies in Theoretical Physics at the University of Utrecht. That was fun. My master thesis was about massless particles with spin>2. As far as we know, such particles don't exist. Then I started doing my PhD in a different department. Not for the last time I worked in a group that was mainly experimental. At the time the department was called Atomic and Surface Physics, now it's Atom Optics.
At some point, though, my supervisor Gerard Nienhuis moved to the University of Leiden (that's how we Dutch spell Leyden), and so did I. Apparently, one can still obtain a copy of my Thesis from there, with the title "Light as a Thermodynamic Force". It gives a general theory of so-called light-induced kinetic effects in gases. For example, see the paper about the entropy balance (only if you have a subscription to APS) in processes such as laser cooling, where light induces order in matter. I also started to work on orbital angular momentum of light. One day, I'll have a link to an article about that too.
Then I moved to Germany, to do a postdoc at the Max-Planck-Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching. My old group's home page doesn't seem to exist anymore, unfortunately, but we, the Theory Group, had a great time. In fact, I met my wife, Jian Zhang. Workwise, the emphasis was on calculating the effects of intense laser fields (intensities of roughly 10^8-10^11 W/cm^2 and above) on atoms.
From Garching it's just a two-hours drive to Innsbruck in Austria. Mind you, if you have a car with a German license plate you are more likely to get a parking ticket. But on the positive side, one can not only ski but do theoretical physics as well. In particular, that's where I started to work on Quantum Information. I actually lived in a cabin near a ski lift in Mutters, at some point chosen as the most beautiful village in Tyrol.
The brilliant idea occurred to Jian and me to move to the USA. Now Southern California sounded like a nice place, and indeed, it was. I stayed three years at Caltech, enjoying the sun, the nice campus, and the good food in the many Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese, and Thai restaurants.
Now I'm at Bell Labs, an amazing place. The weather is not as good as in California, nor is the food. Well, New York does actually have some good restaurants. I hesitate to mention this, but there is even a Dutch restaurant, called NL (this link seems defunct now).
Worth mentioning is that I was also employed (for one year) at the laser institute in Heraklion, Crete. I actually only spent a few weeks there but they were awesome weeks (well, most of the time was spent touring Crete).
To conclude, let me say that from 1996 on I've been working in the field of Quantum Information. Since that's still my favorite subject I'll even give a link to my papers on that subject: quant-ph, not that anyone is interested.