5 Things you DIDN'T KNOW you needed when moving to the Netherlands

i mean this basically determines if you're gonna live in the netherlands or die in the netherlands good morning to those who are new here hi it's nice to meet you my name is melena and to those who are returning welcome back beautiful i hope you're having a good day anyways so today i was going through my dms on instagram and one of my subscribers asked me if there was something about moving to the netherlands that she should know about so today i'm gonna tell you five things that people never tell you about moving to the netherlands that you most definitely need when moving to the netherlands and the things i'm gonna tell you today are so daily so mundane that the people who have lived in the netherlands for a long time just kind of forget to let you know that you should probably look into it before you come here and that is why i'm going to outline them to you so that you have a little bit of a better preparation when coming to the netherlands so the first thing is you need to get an ov chip card an ov chip card stands for open battle for four which literally is just public transport and so with your ov chip card you can take the buses the trains the trams basically all public transport within the netherlands which is extremely handy and you might be thinking melano why is this the first thing you tell me well that's a great question that you could potentially have asked me i'll take it i'll take the question it's because let's say you're in rotterdam and you're going from centrum and you need to go to the university if you were to buy a daily ticket which is what you'll need if you don't have an ov chip card it's much more expensive than if you had the card so in the case that you don't have your own personal ov chip card you have to buy an ove day card which according to the website costs around 3 euros 20. so basically it cost you 3 euros 20 to go from the city to the university if you were to have an ov chip card that would have been much less since the cost of each fare also differs depending on what time you go you can be paying much less by having an ov chip card from what i remember the last time i went from the center of rotterdam to the university it cost me like around 80 to 70 cents and that was during a time where there was really no one there and it was quite empty which is why it was as cheap as it was but as you go into peak hours then it starts getting more expensive but either way having an ov chip card where you can just fill in more money allows you to have cheaper fares and therefore save you money in the long run like honestly it's insane that a few people when they come to the netherlands they spend like a whole month buying like day cards day cards are 3 euros 20. and so i just want to save you money and so when you arrive at scripple amsterdam the airport if you go to one of the machines or you go to one of the information desks they can help you get one of these bad boys so the blue ov chip card is i guess just kind of like an incognito ov chip card it's not associated to your name or your address or anything about you basically anyone can use this one when arriving this one is a good one to have just because you can fill it with as much money as you want and then also benefit from the cheaper prices from not having to buy daily tickets but if you've been in the netherlands for quite a while then you want to move to your personal ov chip card and so your personal ob chip card has your little picture and then your name and all your details also including your card number and this one you can link to your email and your name and your address and everything and what this one lets you do is see your balance at all times so on my phone i have an app and basically i can see how much i spent on each fare this one's different from this one because you never really know how much is on this card until it runs out which is that's not a learning experience you want to have at 2 am when you're in the middle of nowhere so this one's good if you've been here for quite a while and you plan on staying here for a while so like if you're a student or an expat or if you moved here and with this one you can also go onto their website and check out the different deals that they have and so what you can do is if you know that you travel a lot during the weekend you can ask to pay a fixed price for traveling in the weekend for free so that maybe your costs are lessened this helps a lot if you live in one city and you need to go to another one or if you are in between two universities i know a few of my friends who study at lyde and delft and since they need to go to both in different times at different days having a yellow one is very handy but of course both of them are not free and so for the blue one you pay 7 euros 50 and then for the yellow one you pay a little bit more specifically because you get it all personalized and stuff so i always keep both of them in my wallet because you can't share the yellow one so if someone were caught borrowing your personalized yellow ov chip card they'd receive a fine and so i guess that would be like the negative side of having the yellow one if you know that you need to share it in between people for example family members then the blue one the incognito one might be handier because this one as i've mentioned has no relation to a specific person and therefore can be used by literally anyone and at basically every train station you can find a place where you can check the balance of both of your cards and also fill it up a little bit and so then on the same trail of thought you should also get the app 9292 what this app is is basically like the ways for all the dutch public transports if you want to say hey i want to go from this place to this place what's the fastest route and what different types of public transport do i need to take to get there then 9292 gives you all the options from all the different kinds of transportation there are to show you the quickest route to your destination there you can also choose if you prefer to take the bus or if you prefer to take the train and so having the ov chip card and the 9292 app you basically have the ultimate combo to move around the netherlands this will not only help you with time management and also saving money but it's also just good to know that you're aware of how things move in the city especially if you know okay so every hour a bus comes and every hour a train comes and then you kind of understand how the routes within the city work and so now that we've covered those two another thing that people really really should have told you is that you should open a bank account as soon as possible this may be more applicable to students from my experience a lot of students who come from different countries they sort of delay the whole getting a bank account process and so in one of the most extreme situations i've met people who said you know i didn't expect opening a bank account to take so long and i've spent the last month without money because my family can't transfer anything to me and so that's obviously not a good situation and so opening a bank account as soon as possible allows you to avoid that issue there are a lot of banks in the netherlands that are tailored to international students and therefore give you certain discounts or certain packets and so i recommend you to look into those and if you are interested in knowing a little bit about what i know about them let me know in the comments and i might make a video about it and then moving on to the fourth one you need to register at the city hall as quickly as possible some people also delay registration right they move into their new apartment and they think okay i'm here and so they moved to this new city this new country they're in their nice apartment and i think this is it i've done it i've moved but no you do need to register why because if they're ever going to send you any relevant documents or taxes you need to pay they need to know where you're living and again a few of my friends have had bad experiences with this because they delayed registration for so long let's say like half a year and at that point they just forgot they forgot to register and that's an issue because if you're not registered to the place where you're living the government might find that a little bit questionable and so by getting the process done as soon as possible you're sure that you don't have any issues in the future which trust me will save you a lot of stress which you don't want to have so the last thing that you need to know if you're coming to the netherlands that people usually don't let you know is that you need a bike i know that a lot of people say that you don't need a bike in the netherlands because you have great public transportation and that's true but those people have also probably not partied in a different part of the city until 3am because after 1am more or less all the public transports stop which basically means you're stuck wherever you are until around five or six in the morning and i've had my fair share of 6am walkings to the train and trust me that's that's not fun you're just tired you want to go to bed if you have a bike you can go anywhere at any time and no one can stop you maybe the police if you don't have your bike lights on but that's a different story and also once you do get a bike get a good lock first you should get a bike that has a lock on the bike itself and then additionally you should buy a really good lock so that you can chain it to i don't know a bike stand or a pole and because no matter in what city you are you need to be careful with your bike a lot of bikes get stolen throughout the years and honestly it's a shame when you go into the mall or something and you go outside and your bike is gone and you're sad but now you have a really cute outfit that you bought but still your bike is gone but on top of that don't get anything too fancy because what i see people do is they like spend a lot of money on a really nice bike but if you think the bike is really nice the people stealing it will also think it's a really nice bike so you gotta you gotta you gotta think logically you gotta get a bike that's a good quality but doesn't look like it would sell well in the black market so those were the five things i wanted to talk to you about today comment down below if this video helped you and also what country you're coming from and for what reasons you're coming to the netherlands i'd love to hear your stories don't forget to subscribe if you'd like to see more content like this and until then take care wash your hands social [Music] can't you distance [Music]

Channel: Milena Mitiko

Views: 90,746

Keywords:

Id: YHGNijGLpcg

Length: 10min 23sec (623 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021