The HONEST TRUTH on living in the Netherlands as an American

hi everyone my name is Ava and I'm an American living in the Netherlands and today I'm going to tell you the honest truth about what it is like living here as an American so buckle up because I'm going to be spilling all the tea actually this is for my wife I'm more of a coffee person all right but before we go into my brutally honest thoughts about living in the Netherlands as an American I wanted to take a moment to thank the sponsor of today's video iie now some of you may know that I've worked with them before I've used it talkie on and off myself so I'm really excited to take some time to tell you about them today because I really think it's a great place to learn a new language and honestly as an American living in the Netherlands I can very confidently say that my professional and personal life has improved greatly since my Dutch has improved so to start here's how italki works on the platform you have access to many language teachers at an affordable rate and you have several filters to choose from so you can really choose what you're looking for so one filter that I like to use is the professional versus Community teacher filter so there's some difference between the two learning with a community teacher is a bit more informal compared to professional teachers professional teachers have a lot of experience teaching students Community teachers are more like a tutor that's how I see them so basically in my experience I find that if you want to be successful at learning a new language you should be practicing it pretty regularly now my Dutch at this point is pretty good but that's because everyone around me is Dutch and I've had plenty of opportunities to practice it so on iie the professional teachers option was the one that I went for but it is really flexible in that way so you can really choose what options work for you and you can really customize it to fit your needs and I'm using Dutch hair as an example but you can learn any language on it talkie basically they have a ton of language options so you can go onto their website and just pick a language that you're looking for the other great thing is that here on their site as you can see you can schedule a class pretty quickly and that is such an important feature because it reduces the barrier to taking a class so now these classes on it are also oneon-one and usually private language lessons are quite expensive but as you can see here the rates on iie are not bad and each teacher sets their own rate now the first three lessons are trial lessons so they actually have a reduced rate so you can try out italki and see if it's a good fit for you for a reduced price so I've included a link in the description box down below for you to check it out as I mentioned the trial lessons are really quite cheap just saying it like it is so you can really try it for pretty low stakes with that said now let's get back to the video okay so in this video I wanted to cover three themes so first will be the stuff I had to get used to when I moved to the Netherlands part two or sort of another theme in the video will be stuff that I love about living here which honestly is the majority of the things as you might have guessed from the rest of my videos but also just I continue to live here and there is a reason for that and the third thing I wanted to talk about is sort of the stuff that I'm still working on getting used to because I would be lying if I said that they aren't a couple of things that I'm still getting used to and I still have to sort of make peace with because no place is perfect even though the Netherlands comes pretty close for me at least okay so starting with stuff I had to get used to I mean when I first moved to to the Netherlands in the beginning I have to say that I kind of expected things to be you know pretty smooth like I didn't expect too many hurdles or problems part of that was because I had been to Europe several times so you know the difference between somewhere else in Europe or and the Netherlands versus the US and the Netherlands is a little bit smaller plus I had also visited the Netherlands several times like I had spent a lot of Summers here with my girlfriend then girlfriend now wife and in those Summers or we would come over for Christmas like I really got to know the country and which is why when I moved here that was an active choice I wasn't entering blind or anything well so spoiler alert I was not fine I ran into so many little hurdles and troubles when I moved here like things didn't go as smoothly as planned my wife was also very confused when things wouldn't work out for me because I'm a clumsy person or because you know bureaucratic reasons now one of the things that I found personally challenging was that I was trying to learn and practice Dutch so I would go and at the time we were living in Amsterdam and this is more prominent in Amsterdam I would go to like cafes or restaurants and try to speak Dutch to the people working there who were Dutch I know sometimes they're not but they were Dutch in many instances and then I would make one mistake and then they would just switch to English like that or sometimes I would hesitate just one second too long and then they would go aha not Dutch and they would immediately start speaking in English and I think constantly feeling like I didn't belong was a challenge so that was in the beginning I do not have this anymore my Dutch at this point is pretty okay so I can do most things in Dutch I say most things because there are still sometimes where I don't understand something perfectly and that kind of changes the meaning of everything but my dut is pretty good but in the beginning it was not because obviously I had just moved to the Netherlands and very many Internationals like me when they first move here they will also experience this challenge which is that a lot of the bureaucratic things are in Dutch and only only in Dutch like taxes those Love Letters From the blasting Deans oh my my God they are just in Dutch and in the beginning I had no idea what they were saying I had to ask my wife like each time like okay and do I owe the money do are they giving me money like they never give you any money so was like I never knew what was going on or which different taxes I had to pay because that's another thing like there's so many different cultural differences like I didn't know of all the taxes that existed like trash tax I call it a trash tax it's probably called something more elevated than that but you know or like your income tax anyway all of the stuff is in Dutch and in the beginning that is a hurdle that Internationals will have to go through if you don't speak Dutch and if you are lucky enough to have a duy to rely on then that helps a little bit but it's also not a good feeling because you want to be able to do everything on your own but alas not everything works that way okay but going back to the language part a little bit I want to say that if you are an international moving to the Netherlands like of course Dutch people expect you to speak Dutch even though you might think that everyone in Netherland speaks English and they do their English is very good it's still really useful if you speak Dutch I've repeated this very many times because I feel like it's really a point that I want to get across but that said I feel like even though Dutch is not the most difficult language for a native English speaker to learn or someone who even knows English it's still not super easy and especially people visiting I've noticed this with like friends who visit and then they try to pronounce Dutch names of places so for instance you'll go to Amsterdam and there's a station Amsterdam out or Amsterdam out and then people you know even the machine even the Automated machine that pronounces the name of the station you should pay attention if you're ever in Amsterdam Amsterdam Z to hear this because the machine itself goes Amsterdam Zoid and it is not Zoid and even if an English speaker was trying to say it I think they would say something like zooed but I guess that's Zoid again it's very different from Dutch where you say Amsterdam Z and Z sounds very much like South right except it's written differently and if you don't know any Dutch you can't just like derive the pronunciation from the letters because you don't know what they're supposed to sound like and another example of this like this happened on the train and literally Dutch people around us started cracking up because that's how funny this was so there's a city in the south of the Netherlands and it's called n but a friend he just went nid mgen and I started cracking up because it's like I think I only knew the name of the place based on pronunciation and then I saw it in writing and it made sense like I learned Dutch pretty quickly like at least some Dutch even before I moved to the Netherlands but I heard that and I thought it was so funny because it hadn't even occurred to me that of course that's how you pronounce it in English or one of the many pronunciations so n mgen okay so that was more of the logistical bureaucratic stuff or you know like the more practical things speaking Dutch okay making sure you have your Dutch bank account all that stuff but honestly like there's also this cultural thing that I feel like is very difficult to overcome in the beginning if you especially are not surrounded by Dutch people all the time so I was lucky enough for that to happen so for me it was sort of like a crash course where I experienced a lot of hurdles misunderstandings like maybe you know hurdles and overcoming them sounds really intense but they're just tiny little hurdles more like little bleeps that you know you notice that everyone around you is sort of like in on the joke or they're speaking a secret code and you are left out that's kind of the feeling that I experienced my first year year and a half year and I feel like that went away but in the moment I didn't think it would ever go away I always felt like I would be an outsider and this is again as someone who has a Dutch partner if this is hard for me I can imagine that it's harder if you don't have that so to give some examples of these things like I feel like there are a lot of Unwritten rules so here in the Netherlands people like to be very kelic so they like to like go with the flow make sure everything is cozy no friction because that is so for instance I would go over to my in-law's place and then they would ask me if I wanted like tea or water or whatever and then I would just respond no I'm good thanks and then everyone would be sitting around me having their tea or something to drink maybe a coffee and then I would just sit there with nothing and that was not an not an issue not a problem to me and I think they also thought it was not an issue or a problem but there was something off about the thing they were a bit surprised and I think it's sort of if you say yes in those situations even if you don't want the tea right like if you just say thank you for the tea yes I will have some and sit with the cup you're sort of like joining everyone in it and that's the unwritten rule here in the Netherlands that it's typically polite to just say yes and sit with everyone with this drink even if you don't want it and I had no idea so I sat there you know with nothing and then I noticed that it was off and then my wife just said you know the next time you can say yes and I thought wow now isn't that a great idea so that was a little bit of a faux paw that I made and they were there tons and tons of these like I could go on and on that's why I made this channel right okay now this other cultural thing that I had to get used to and maybe this is specific to Americans and that is the portion sizes and especially when it came to my coffee now I understand that they're no refills here that is totally fine but I mean I really had to get used to getting this tiny little thing when I would ask for a coffee and this was when even during covid you know you would get coffee to go or you sit at a cafe and you just get this like tiny little thing and to be honest I'm mostly used to it now but I still sometimes sit there and I go this is disappointing I was expecting something a little bigger because that's not going to cut it for me and other times I've noticed that it's really interesting cuz when I was back in the US you know I would get these like huge coffees you know just drip coffee and it's great but I do notice that it's weaker and that's also an interesting change where I've come to expect a certain flavor and cake from my coffees now and I miss that in the US as well so right now I feel like I'm in a very specific Zone when it comes to my coffees where I would like a lot of it but I also wanted to be strong so you know I'm trying to work that out all right now I want to move on to the stuff I like and the stuff that I have gotten used to and I like and you know the stuff that I mentioned I don't necessarily dislike it obviously but you know it did take some adjustment now this one thing that took adjustment for me is sort of it speaks to the point of how there's a secret code in this country right and you really have to be in on the secret to understand it so when I take the train to work cuz I commute to work via train quite often and I discovered that there is a sequence to how people sit on the trains now here in Dutch trains you'll often have these four seaters where you have two seats facing each other like two seats each row of two seats okay now the way you sit on these seats there is a whole system to them and you cannot disrupt the system okay so first the person who sits there gets a window seat okay it doesn't matter which one they choose like going whatever Direction they choose one of the window seats the next person who comes is not allowed this is Unwritten rule they're not allowed to get the window seat immediately across from the person on one of the window seats they have to sit diagonally across from that person so not at the window seat and then the third person that comes may get the window seat and then the fourth person gets that remaining seat on the outside that is a whole system that I had to learn via observation like Dutch people comes naturally to them they don't even think about it well now I do this very naturally too but sometimes I sit there and I go this is really weird like when I'm that second person who's not getting the window seat I sit there and go I know those people are tall and they have like long legs and that's why this works but I would really like to be sitting near the window right now but no I have to follow this system and sit diagonally from that person and not at the window and then watch a third person come by cuz RH hour it's going to get full sit on that window seat and I'm there like yes those are the rules got to follow them all right so now I shared a little bit about you know stuff you have to get used to and what changes you might experience if you're an American like me or maybe an international moving to the Netherlands but living here there's really a lot of benefits and I realized that pretty quickly like I moved here and I realized that this was the right decision for me and right now I feel like that has been confirmed it is the right decision for me I really like living here and there are a couple of highlights that I wanted to share with you these are my own personal highlights for you maybe they're not that important for me they're important so the one I wanted to start with is safety I think even though no place is completely safe I have felt so much safer here in the Netherlands than I ever did in the US and of course it varies by place but just generally speaking like even if you look at the numbers the statistics you will see that in the Netherlands just generally life here is much safer than in the US and I've only heard ever since moving back here that it's gotten worse but okay let's leave that aside my own personal experiences in those two countries is that I feel safer here in the Netherlands I mean in the US like after dark it was very scary to walk back home on my own so in these universities that I was at they had these programs where you could like dial a number for safety or that someone could walk you to another part of Campus um if the campus was in the city the city itself like would have these walk uh with someone's services and like that should just tell you right like in the Netherlands you don't have this because it's not needed they're children here who are out at night and when I say children I mean children like 13 14 year old teenagers you know out in about town at whatever hour in the evening okay it's maybe not 2: a.m. but they're out by themselves at like 9:00 p.m. or 1000 p.m. and that's absolutely no problem so sometimes when it's dark here I'll be very cautious and then I'll just see a bunch of teenagers or a teenager on their bike just whatever you know hanging out and then I think oh right I live in the Netherlands now I don't have to be constantly Vigilant like of course sometimes and to a certain degree but it's not the same so that is definitely one positive that I experienced since moving here and the other is just how beautiful everything is now I cannot tell you about this enough because I feel like every time I'm in a Dutch City like I'm drawn to cities to me I think of like architectural Beauty like that's just what speaks to me all right so when I'm walking through Dutch cities and the cobblestone streets these tiny Alleyways like I'm absolutely and to me these little everyday Pleasures they really like improve my quality of life also something that's very European is that you'll have instead of one big department store you have those to but they're less common and what you'll have is like these different shops to get different things and that also means that you will see a lot of cute places like uh in utre for instance you have all of these tiny cute little bookshops everywhere scattered throughout the city same in Amsterdam and I just love it like I spent so much time just perusing through these bookshops and there'll be little stores like in ut there's even like a kitchen wear store and it's adorable like it's on the main Canal it's just very cute you know and then you can get any kinds of things at these like specialized stores in Amsterdam there's a neighborhood the bipe that's like famous for these kinds of cute shops and you could really have a shop for anything here now the other difference which is also something that I like about living in the Netherlands is that I feel like Dutch people have more hours in the day or at least that was my feeling when I first moved here and I still sometimes feel that way because I think in America like Americans they spend their day working or not working that's just how I imagine it right like if when I lived there I was either working or not working that's just sort of the two categories that I had and of course that's not completely true you do other things when you're not working and so on but I felt like those were the two major chunks of the day they're sleeping if you're lucky but you know that's how it goes and then I moved to the Netherlands and then I would hear the number of things dut people do within a day so they would go to work they had a coffee with someone they went for a walk in the evenings they uh went to tennis I don't know and just like after that they went for beers with their friends and then they went home so for me like I just in the beginning had trouble understanding when they worked and when they didn't work because the not work part seemed to Encompass like at least a good chunk of the day so I was always very confused about how they managed to do everything and when you talk to Dutch people here they'll talk about how they were traveling here doing this doing that and I'm like are you not tired but they are not my friends they're just not they just live their lives this way so that was something I had to get used to but I really like that about living here because that has motivated me to do more things during my day and in my life so I no longer have work and no work which I definitely did before here and I would see my friends all the time and so on but I would say for me in part because my friends were all in the same PhD with me or university so we just saw each other all the time kind of by default but in the Netherlands you have to make an effort and it's kind of no problem people just see each other all the time they're on the go and it's all so easy you know they just effortlessly move from one thing to another and I started trying to do that as well because I really see the value that brings okay and now this final thing stuff that I'm still getting used to it just has to be said the weather oh my God I mean before I moved to the Netherlands I was a winter person I liked the rain I thought that was so romantic and then I moved to the Netherlands and then I enter a fall like this one and it is the wetest fall since they started measuring the rain in the Netherlands like oh my God also I think it's the wetest year not even the wetest fall it's just been rain nonstop so that is pretty depressing but that's said because of all the positive things that I mentioned you know overall I'm still pretty happy like happier here and usually when it rains it does stop at some point in the day but it is quite dark and they're a limited number of hours during the daytime so that is something that I will say that I'm getting used to and there ways to go about it you can like go to Cozy cafes have some lights you can make sure you take time off for yourself if you need that to you know recharge so I'm definitely trying to do different things to get used to it but I'm amazed because now I feel like I cannot wait until the summer even though I tell myself there's a lot of good things that come with the winter like the lights and everything like I mean I'm loving it but this is definitely bit more of a challenge now the other thing about living here as an international is that you know this is very hard for me to say and accept but it's that my Dutch will never be as good as a Dutch persons now maybe this is more relevant or important for me and my career path I would say so I think in like my everyday situations my Dutch is not a problem like of course there are a couple of words here and there that I don't get anymore but other than that it's fine but oh my god when it comes to my career path because communication English was always a big deal and very important I think now I've just come to accept that my Dutch is just not going to be as good as people who are good at doing those things in Dutch and I don't know if that's going to be a problem for me or not right now it's been okay like I've not experienced too many issues with it my career path has continued as I had hoped but you know that's something I thought I would share because it is a a concern something that I think about from time to time like hey is this going to be holding me back and at the same time I think you know there are a lot of other things that I'm getting in return so maybe it's okay and finally the final final thing I wanted to say that I just don't get when living here is that all of these things that I've mentioned that I've noticed things that are you know bring me joy that are interesting to me that I think are so valuable about life here in the Netherlands like most Dutch people don't seem to get that that life here is so good for them this is just normal and I think that continues just surprise me I just don't understand I mean of course when people see the news about wars and extreme things people are definitely grateful about their lives but I'm talking about just everyday things that even compared to countries that have it pretty good here in the Netherlands like things are actually quite exceptional so no place is perfect but the social safety net here and the value and emphasis placed on that that is really very exceptional and I think people here in the Netherlands like Dutch people need to see that and appreciate it because sometimes I think they just forget so that was what I wanted to share with you today on my honest experiences of living in the Netherlands as usual if you feel like you have something to share feel free to leave a comment down below I love reading them and thank you for watching until next time

Channel: Dutch Americano

Views: 73,532

Keywords: american in the netherlands, netherlands, culture shock, living in the netherlands, Dutch culture, living abroad vlog, life in the netherlands, dutch language, italki, language learning

Id: pWQ8xxPhMXs

Length: 21min 39sec (1299 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 03 2024