Interesting Things About Living in the Netherlands

all right welcome back it is Monday start of the week um I will be going off to um my on-site location this week in mustard which is about an hour and a half from here so I'll be gone Tuesday to Thursday um so we're gonna do a video sitting here and talking to you and the topic of the video is things we found interesting living in the Netherlands so far it's been just short at like of a month three weeks yeah it will be three weeks three weeks and so these are personal to us this might not apply to everywhere in the Netherlands or it could not even apply past our suburbs um but just things that we personally have found interesting or things that we've been adjusting to that are different from uh living life either in the UK or back in the US so I'll start my number one is dog related and there's two things one is dog poop um they don't really clean up dog poop here um that I've seen I think there's obvious places that you might like if you were at a park or we go to a Big Field they cut the grass there some people don't but like I feel like I personally would pick it up there but you just don't really see it as much I would imagine that's different in like Amsterdam or like in the city center but that's weird adjusting to and it feels wrong but anyways and the second thing about the dogs are the dogs or the owners are like less approachable here I will say Monty is kind he comes on very strong and he tries to play with every dog so that could scare them away but I feel like both in the UK and the US like people were much more like friendly or like something something of that sort and so it's harder to make like dog friends I guess um so yeah that is my number one my number one it's kind of two parts but it's bike related um so moving here we knew that bikes were going to be our main form of Transport which we've really liked um but I think two things that I've noticed first one is on all the bike Lanes around us um they will also have like motorized scooters so think like Vespas or um like even like dirt bikes sometimes you'll see on there and they will just fly past everyone so that was definitely shocking for me to see the first time I would have thought that that would have been on they would have kept those on the road but uh they use the bike lens just like bikes do um so there are some spots though you see like it's a bike only a bike sign but they still go on it yeah they basically just use the bike Lanes um to get around which um is annoying yeah it's kind of dangerous because they do go really fast and weave in and out of traffic if they're trying to fast people but so a second part of biking is like the Bike Locker bike parking situation um I think in most places I've been usually you would get like a rope yeah or a chain where you can um chain it around usually there will be like a metal something in the cement where you chain it to some people will do that here but mostly it's just these wheel locks so both of our bikes came with them just put your key in and like it's on the wheel and like there would be no way for anyone to take it like you can't just like snap it like people with regular bike locks would use like lock like in high school when you had your padlock on your locker and you forgot the combination like one of those I don't know what that was called not me but anyways like you literally can't do that with these yeah and it's nice it's nice because you can really park it anywhere and don't really have to worry about them being stolen also I think anyone that can ride a bike pretty much has a bike so like it's not there's not like a market to like steal a bike really yeah so but yeah okay so my number two is the recycling situation here they are all about their recycling like it is so organized and I love that but it's really something I'm not used to I think going from the US to the UK was like a little bit more recycle friendly there but here it's like something I never experienced so we get like our regular three bins here which is your garden and food waste so we have like a food waste bin now that's new for us um and then what's the word rest of all in Dutch it's like rest the wall or something and that's just like your garbage that exists after you've sorted it all and then you have the paper and cardboard um and that all gets picked up at your house however the recycling uh of paper and cardboard happens once a month only which to me is wild especially having just moved here and having all of these boxes um it's been quite the time trying to like fill that and Murphy's been burning some of it and we still have some left over but then Plastics we bring to they have different containers around the city and in the suburbs ours is actually about our grocery store and so there's a whole long list of various Plastics you can put in there and then you do the same there with glass and the glass is sorted by color green brown and white or clear um and so every time we go to the grocery store we pretty much bring that along with us however there are also bottles and cans that have like a little Euro symbol on it and this does exist in the US in different states I know in Michigan specifically because I would do it with my friend um but you basically in the grocery stores they have a little system that you just feed the bottles through and it counts up um how much you get back per bottle and you can either donate it or you can use it towards your groceries and so I really like that um they also have like a small hazardous waste area in different stores for like batteries and light bulbs and then they have different larger centers for things like white goods textiles styrofoam which we have a lot of too and we have to physically bring that to an environmental center but it's it's crazy it's just so different but I fully support it so we're adjusting to that okay my number two somewhat related to the going to the grocery store like yours was um is buying any sort of alcohol so at our grocery store we have you can get beer beer and wine um they have like some seltzers or cocktail in a can yeah they're just like five percent yeah um but if you do if you want any sort of alcohol um you have to go to the off license to get that um and ours has somewhat inconvenient hours um so they're always they're all closed on Sundays um that's in our area and I can tell they're closed on Sundays they close pretty early on Saturdays ours closed as I think at 5 30 uh one time we tried to go there and he had already closed before that half hour early yeah so you kind of have to plan ahead if you want ours was specifically vodka for uh pasta dish but if you want to enjoy your favorite uh liquor you like a Sunday barbecue you're not gonna get it I will say there's probably places in this in the center like there's got to be at least one or two yeah that does and or maybe the larger grocery stores here sell liquor I'm not sure but our experience so far is that there are specialty shops but I will say they have a really good selection but you just have to think about it plan ahead and do it yeah but that's normal in other states too maybe not the hours but like not being able to get liquor all at the same store um okay so my last one then um isn't that crazy but it's just and it's pretty normal I think in the Netherlands but the staircases are a bit treacherous um they're just the actual stair isn't that wide for your foot and they curve really quickly and so like I almost fell down the stair up the stairs which is kind of more embarrassing um like the first day we were here and so you definitely just have to be mindful and I'm worried about you Deb if you're watching you might not be able to sleep upstairs if you've had too many glasses of wine but we still love you so yeah they're just I think they're probably worse in Amsterdam with like the taller skinnier houses they're probably a little more treacherous but that's just something I mean we've lived in apartments so we're not used to that and so coming to this is like different yeah I feel like it would be hard for an older person to live at this house yeah um it's also like getting things upstairs so we had a washer dryer delivered I assume I wasn't here but I assume they brought it up and they did it Swift too it was pretty tight getting that up even just like that chair and our bed that was in a box uh good thing it was in a box though yeah if it was just the bed I'd I mean you can bend it around these stairs which is nice but something big and not flexible um would be tough to bring up the stairs and then my last one is also home related and um it's something that I think maybe is just in our area or in the suburbs but all of the windows in our house have these like retractable automatic sun shades it's kind of like a garage door yeah so we have a remote that controls all of them um and it works pretty much from anywhere in the house so even from bed I can close or open any of the sun shades so we have it on our big sliding door we have it in the kitchen and then um our two bedrooms upstairs and the bathroom so those get all get closed at night and it's a game changer yeah it's pretty much black out in here um the only ones that don't have it are the front door which we have a curtain for but let's in some light and then we have some skylights in the third floor yeah on the top floor that um let a little bit of light in but once it's dark out it doesn't really yeah it's definitely um a game changer it feels bougie don't you think because yeah but it's not like at all it's not that fancy they're just garage but everyone yeah everyone has them yeah it seems like most people have them um it's nice because on like a really hot Bay if you keep this one um on our big doors uh the sun will be shining in um we're facing south of the sun shines and most of the day um so if it is super sunny and you want to keep it a little bit cooler you can close those you can do them like halfway if you want to still get a little bit of light in um or the air in and yeah it's uh it's really nice it'd be nice if the front door had it um but it also creates a really nice movie theater vibe in the living room yes we could do we could basically have like a dark blackout film in the middle of the day yeah um so yeah I had never seen those really in France anywhere before we stayed at yeah the Airbnb we stayed out in France had them um and he was so excited about it and then we didn't know they were here so it was really exciting to find out we had that we had found a couple cool things in the home that we weren't we didn't know over here but yeah it's uh the sun shades are definitely a game changer yeah so that is categories in bike and dog but uh interesting things about living in the Netherlands so far I'm sure we'll have plenty more as we live here about the culture and stuff but that's what we've got so far so we hope that you like this video and let us know if you want us to do more like this

Channel: Chelsea and Murphy

Views: 10,847

Keywords: Life in the Netherlands, new video, YouTubers, couples, expat, life abroad, Netherlands, lifestyle, taylor swift

Id: NyDupiaLn7Q

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 04 2023