Dutch DISCOMFORT: The relationship with comfort in the USA vs. The Netherlands

hi everyone i'm ava and i'm an american living in the netherlands and i am getting comfy on my couch because today we're going to talk about exactly that comfort between the us and the netherlands and how surprisingly even something like comfort can be different between those two countries let us start with the fact that americans love comfort it's just everything in america is built around that the fact that an american is making a video about comfort basically sums up the point of this video but no i'm talking about american comfort versus dutch discomfort we'll get to that latter point in a bit but first i wanted to talk about how americans are obsessed with comfort so if you think about america right you think about the big portions of food you think about the big houses and the big cars to me all of that is related to comfort big is definitely a buzzword in america another buzzword amenities people love amenities and frills all because it caters to your comfort on the other hand in the netherlands people are not all about those amenities of course people appreciate them but they can take it or leave it same goes for big things you won't see gigantic cars here on the street because well for people you can take it or leave it you won't see huge american sized houses i was talking to a friend and she said that she was watching tiny home tiny nation i don't know you know one of those shows that people are obsessed with people are obsessed with a lot of house shows right now and one of them is how people live in tiny houses apparently in america so they're going to go live in this tiny home and she said that tiny is even 100 square meters in america see this is what i'm talking about and of course the food portions we all know about that but the fact that the netherlands is a bit uncomfortable and dutch people are okay with discomfort didn't quite come to me until a couple of months ago when it was raining no surprise in the netherlands it rains a lot we are having a beautiful summer right now so fingers crossed and i'm not complaining but it was interesting that a couple of months ago it was raining right and i walked outside in my rain jacket and i decided to leave my umbrella behind because well you know in the netherlands you just deal with it you don't really do umbrellas some people might have umbrellas but you know the wind will blow it away and whatever and it's just rain you're not made out of sugar if you come to the netherlands you will hear that phrase ad nauseam i've heard it so many times i'm already sick but that's what they'll say they're not made out of sugar so you just go and deal with the rain in america it is a perfectly acceptable reason to say to a friend if you're gonna meet up it's raining i don't feel like meeting up right now in the netherlands life would not happen if people just didn't go out in the rain so that is the quintessential example of how americans prioritize comfort and in the netherlands people are extremely okay with discomfort and the whole point i want to make is that i found that i really benefited a lot from experiencing discomfort in my time here in the netherlands but sometimes dutch people can take discomfort a little too far and their enjoyment of it like one time a few months ago i think it was maybe over a year ago now because i'm talking about when we were all in lockdown and then you can meet up with people again so i met up with someone a different location like not at their house we went outside and i made a joke about how that day the weather was crappy like the it was blowing the wind was blowing like extreme amounts and it was raining pouring and just all of it all at once and it was cold so you know i get there soaking wet freezing and completely wind swept not in a great way terrible way and i just look at you know this person and i just go wow we picked a crappy day to meet up didn't we after such a long time and then she just looks at me and goes no you know i think it's great that we met up in a day with crappy weather because i'm too comfortable these days so i'm really glad that i was able to toughen up a little bit with the wind and the rain i stared at her like what are you talking about i didn't know what to say i was lit i was literally dumbfounded and imagine me ava who loves talking being dumbfounded so i just stared at her and was like uh-huh that's i feel the same way that's right no i did not feel the same way but the more i think about it and you know like a few months ago when i was walking out in the rain i thought back to this incident and i thought about the fact that i just do things now in the rain in the cold weather i mean i shared a video with you recently about how i went camping and the weather was awful for camping and it was windy and i still had a great time even though as many of you noticed i tried to keep my frustrations down just down to a minimum but i still was able to enjoy my camping trip even though i was frustrated i still did it i didn't tell my girlfriend we shouldn't go because we could have just cancelled because we didn't reserve anything it was uh we were just able to go and show up at the campsite because nobody wants to go camping in may except for us because look at us as part of my inburgering i need to brace tough weather so i find this extremely interesting and related to this point is if you come to the netherlands when it is raining outside or it's cold you know a typical american might be drawn to sitting inside if you're at a cafe or restaurant dutch folks you know if the weather is even a little bit nice even if it's pouring rain and sometimes even if the weather is crappy they will sit outside and they will enjoy their food or drinks outside even when the weather is bad and i think there's something nice about that that you are reminded that comfort is a luxury and a privilege and not just that you are comfortable all the time so i'm starting to really adapt to it and there are many more instances of this so if you think about how i said the dutch people sit outside crappy weather or not well just because they want to and they want to enjoy it when it's possible and well they make it possible you know they see opportunities in america forget about it like not only people not be sitting outside if the weather is a little bit bad people love sitting inside because you can control the temperature when it's hot outside it's cold inside when it's cold outside it's hot inside it's just how things are done whereas here i actually know people who work in buildings where they don't have ac so in the summer it's just hot also i cannot tell you the number of people that i've spoken to who just say well you know in the netherlands it's only hot for like two or three weeks in a year in total just a few days here and there i can deal with it so they don't have ac and i'm okay with that that's fine uh but some of them don't even have a fan and i literally just earlier today i went on a walk with someone and i was like you need to get a fan girl she was saying today's a warm day as you can tell i'm in summer clothes but she was like you know i don't really have a fan yet oh you have a fan that's right and it's like this is a weird conversation it's hot you get a fan see that's the american in me but i am slowly trying to be a little more uncomfortable because i think then indeed when you are comfortable you notice that contrast whereas i think you can get really used to a state of comfort and maybe that's not necessarily good for you i think you could be more physically healthier and also more mentally agile if you are in situations that are a little less comfortable for instance moving abroad was not a comfortable decision to make it was not a comfortable process but i think i'm better for it i wouldn't have changed a thing so in my time here in the netherlands it's about two and a half years now time really flies and i've been making videos for most of my time here that's pretty nice to look back on but in my two and a half years here in the netherlands i noticed that when i first arrived i was more inclined to taking public transportation and then as time went on i started biking everywhere now in the us i would take ubers everywhere because sometimes public transport is just inconvenient i want it to be comfortable but here it's really interesting that i found public transport sometimes especially when i was living in amsterdam and they were the trams and i liked them but they were were nothing compared to biking like biking is king and here in israel we don't even really have too many trams we do but they're not as useful as you would hope trams to be so you know the alternative is biking bike is really easy to help you get around and so on but it's not a comfortable process in the beginning for someone like me first of all many of the bikes here don't have front brakes they have pedal brakes so it's a little extra work but sure maybe you're used to that but the bikes here also don't have gears having gears just makes no sense to dodge people yes because it's flat but also because i secretly think they're like no i want to work out while biking i want to strengthen my lungs but it's not like years wouldn't come in handy because there are times you have to go up these bridges because you know netherlands is a beautiful country with lots of water lots of little bridges and also some kind of up and down landscapes around here yeah not in very very many places but there are places where that happens and then there are also the bridges that i've talked about multiple times in videos and if you want to go up these bridges you know it would help if you had a little help from mechanics but you do not often hear and instead you will see people standing up and pedaling even harder to get up that bridge and i used to think they did it to distinguish themselves from tourists these dutch folks but no i realize now that it's just a necessity even though i still think it looks cool as does trying to get a suitcase while you're biking or trying to hold an umbrella while texting while you're biking although that's supposedly illegal now but i see people do it anyway so this has been something i've been thinking about lately because i when i came here i definitely had a very different perspective a very different lifestyle and in my time here that has changed i've shared some of the ways in which things are different between the us and the netherlands and also some ways in which i have changed so now i embrace the harsh weather i don't feel like i need to live in big spaces for instance that's another thing i don't need to have all these extra amenities that i had in the u.s i fun fact had a microwave always in the u.s and then i moved to the netherlands and in the last two and a half years i have not owned a microwave and i don't miss it it that extra step of just heating things up in a pan i don't mind so it's really these little things where i think well i can have all the amenities but some of them i don't really need and i'm okay without or yes i could if i have an umbrella that's broken and i don't have an umbrella it's okay i can still go outside or if it's raining i can still bike through the rain i don't need to take public transport if i don't have to so i think it's honestly opened up my world a little bit and has just shown me that you can live in a different way and that you don't always need the things you think you need so those were my thoughts on the matter that i wanted to share with you i'm as always curious to hear what you have to say as well so feel free to leave a comment down below and if you haven't subscribed yet don't forget to hit that button i know i've been posting videos irregularly lately but if you subscribe and hit the notification bell then you will know when i post a new video as usual until next time

Channel: Dutch Americano

Views: 34,637

Keywords: moving to the Netherlands, life in the Netherlands, Dutch, Dutch life, expat life, life abroad, living abroad, cultural differences, USA, American vlogger, American in the Netherlands, expat in the Netherlands, American expat, The Netherlands

Id: V5rAYDbQzcI

Length: 12min 13sec (733 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022