Things You Need to Know When Moving to the Netherlands

hi everyone i'm ava and i'm an american living in the netherlands and today i want to talk to you about some very very important things you need to know when moving to the netherlands well at least some of these things are important and these other things are just good to know or fun to know so without further ado let's get into them now the first thing that you need to know when moving to the netherlands is that no matter what people who don't live in the netherlands tell you you know those people who have come to visit amsterdam or other parts other big cities in the netherlands and then they go back and they tell you oh my god it's unbelievable everyone in the netherlands just speaks english don't listen to them what you need to know is that when you move to the netherlands you need to at least learn a little bit of dutch now before i go into all the reasons why learning a little bit of dutch will come in handy let us first talk quickly about our sponsor for today's video italki for those of you who don't know italki is the platform you can use to practice a language by talking to advanced or native speakers of the language you're trying to learn so if you're trying to learn dutch italki is a great place where you can connect with advanced or native speakers and here's how it works you can simply go onto the website and type in the language you want to learn in this case dutch and then look through the teachers available and their hourly rates what is nice about italki is that the teachers set their own pricing so if you are working with a limited budget this is great for you now for the record i myself have used italki several years ago when i was learning spanish so italki has over 130 languages available so you can definitely find the language you're looking to practice and i'm a firm believer that one of the best ways in which you can learn a new language is by practicing with someone who speaks that language better than you but you can't always find that person with italki you can so that's where they come in and these are personalized one-on-one lessons we're talking about so you can actually tell the instructor or your conversation partner what i like to call them what you're looking to learn in that lesson so you will progress rapidly and here's the best part if you sign up for italki you get three trial lessons starting from one euro and it gets even better if you type in the code dutch you will get five dollars off when you spend ten so go ahead look at the description box down below and use the link to try out italki today what better time to get started on your goal of getting better at a foreign language than right now with italki you can completely decide what you want to learn and when you want to learn it you are in charge so if you're interested in learning a foreign language or just want to get better at the one you already know then go ahead to the description box down below and click on that itaki link and don't forget to look at the trial lessons on italki and to use the code dutch to get your five dollar discount okay so as promised let us get into why it'll be extremely helpful for you to learn a little bit of dutch when you move to the netherlands now i myself when back in the day i was a tourist and i would come to the netherlands most often to amsterdam i really thought hey learning dutch is just a bonus and then i actually moved here so when you move here you of course realize that learning dutch first of all is great for making dutch friends and learning more about dutch culture because let me tell you the dutch folk are really proud of their language i mean they cannot get enough of those throat exercises apparently no just kidding dutch is a really rich wonderful language and it's really nice to learn something new if you're gonna move somewhere then it helps you get to know the culture and with that comes the language but it's also very practical because in a lot of tourist areas you'll see signs sometimes just in english and then you think well what do i need dutch for um when you go outside the tourist areas you very much need dutch let me give you an example of something that happened to me because yes you can google translate everything and at some point you totally get sick of google translating everything but there was one time i ran out of data and i was waiting at a bus stop i was going to see a friend um of course this was when i wasn't biking so i was at the bus stop and then i saw a word next to the bus i was supposed to take and the word was for vault and for vault isn't like a normal word outside of transportation context at least i hadn't come across it before even though i did know a little bit of dutch so i kind of didn't know what it meant it means cancelled and i figured that out after waiting for like 15 minutes but you know those are 15 minutes of my life i'm never getting back because i didn't know enough dutch you see what i mean learning some dutch will go a long way and now that we've talked about the dutch language let us talk a little bit about dutch people here's thing number two that you need to know or it's nice to know when you move to the netherlands and that is that dutch people are not shy on the street even like in public places so we always talk about how dutch people are very direct it's one of the first things that you will learn about dutch culture but it also means that in public places they are not afraid to let's say make it very obvious what they're thinking by doing the following so let's say like you're walking on the street and you have on a t-shirt that's like too bright dutch people will stare at you you're maybe let's say having a conversation with a friend on the street and you're speaking a little too loudly then dutch people will stare at you also like they're not afraid to stare americans on the other hand are very good at staring straight ahead they'll pretend that nothing is happening even though you know they're listening and they know they're listening and everyone knows they're listening and it's just awkward when they just pretend nothing is going on dutch people will just stare at you so it's like a different type of awkward where you're made aware that like maybe i should keep my volume down and do normal so they will stare at you when you're not doing normal as they like to say also a related point is that dutch people like to comment and make their opinions known just take a look at the comments under this video or under any other video i've made just kidding but also for really anyway point is when you're on the street you will also hear dutch people comment a very real life example that happened to me i mentioned that when i first moved to the netherlands i didn't know how to bike properly now i know how to bike properly what happened in between was i was learning how to bike in the netherlands now imagine learning how to bike in a country where everyone already knows how to bike and cannot imagine a world in which they just didn't know how to do that it's like you know how to breathe you know how to walk you know how to bike right not the case for me but anyway so i was you know like all wobbly on my bike quite often you know trying to like hop out and hop off especially since i decided to get in on my feet with only back brakes i i know i'm crazy i love a challenge but basically when i was practicing dutch people were not afraid to comment first of all they would stare and then i'm like okay they're staring whatever no pressure but then they would also just say things like yup get on the bike go get on that bike and they were being really nice but i think being american you know i was a little taken aback so when you moved to the netherlands you have been warned that this could happen so you will not be taken aback and like fall off a bike if you're trying to learn so that said that was the part that took me aback a little but this also translates to something really nice which is that oftentimes when you walk on the street maybe not so much in big cities like amsterdam probably not in amsterdam and not so much in uthrax but in other places i've noticed that you walk on the street and if you come across a stranger and you're crossing paths they will say hello if they're dutch most often i'm sure non-dutch people also say hello but i've really noticed that here so that's kind of nice i think it really brightens up my morning when people just say good morning and i'm like i'm a new yorker what is going on i don't understand but once i got used to it i started looking forward to it it's like oh nice i'm gonna have interactions with people on the street so they're definitely you know pros and cons to that and it all depends on what you're used to okay speaking of biking in the netherlands here's what you need to know about that first of all doesn't matter how good you think public transport is in the city or village or town that you live you need to get a bike because biking is the most efficient way to get around where you live um i was one of those people who decided that it wasn't as necessary because initially i moved to amsterdam and i was like they're tramps they're metros why would i need a bike i mean it's of course cheaper and better but i couldn't bike properly so that was my excuse but metro's aside i know there was this one time that was a turning point for me when in amsterdam my girlfriend and i were heading to central station now i couldn't bike but she loves biking and she was not going to hop on a tram with me and we were going to central station so we just decided we were going to meet each other there we left at the same time like i physically got on the tram the same moment she left that spot on her bike and when we get to central station you know i hop off the tram and she's standing there she's parked her bike and everything and she looks completely unfazed whereas i was like how did you get here before me how did you have time to park your bike and it looks like you've been waiting a few minutes and she was like everybody knows that the bike is faster i didn't know i fully expected this machine driven tram to beat her there but apparently not her bike with no gears got there faster so there's your first lesson about biking in the netherlands and lesson number two this is important listen up you do not want to get a fancy shiny new bike doesn't matter where you are in netherlands yes the chances of your bike getting stolen in a nice village is maybe less than in amsterdam but your bike will get stolen and it's not just your bike getting stolen sometimes parts of your bike could get stolen so just make sure you have like the most basic bike used you know secondhand no gear nothing fancy just just get like a very old looking bike if the stand of the bike is broken like the seat's a bit ripped great perfect like it's gonna be less lucrative to the person who wants to steal it and can i just quickly tell you a story about parts of your bike getting stolen because this took me by surprise like once i finally figured out how to bike properly and i was getting the hang of it i biked somewhere you know two friends and then i parked my bike and when i came back this was like 1am imagine my dismay when i found that the inner tube of my tire was stolen just just one tube of one tire not the whole tire not both tubes just just that just that one thing which meant that my tire was flat and i could not bike back home so i had to carry my bike for 30 minutes at 1am in the morning i would have preferred not to do that because honestly that is more difficult than it sounds but anyway the point is get a simple bike it might get stolen parts of your bikes might get stolen i mean generally i'm not worried about things getting stolen in the netherlands like i'm not worried about getting pickpocketed for instance but something about those bikes they will just keep getting passed on from person to person who steals them and then eventually your bike will probably end up at the bottom of a canal now the next thing i want to talk about is when you move to the netherlands you have to get insurance now i come from a little place called the united states of america where having insurance is like a big deal if you have health insurance that is a privilege you do not take that for granted because america is the land of the free and the land of the people who went bankrupt because they couldn't pay their hospital bills that is not something to make fun of like it's an actual problem that said um like i mean in america if you have health insurance and car insurance you're like rolling in insurance but in the netherlands you find people with all kinds of insurances and their insurances for things i didn't know you could get an insurance for like yes i expected the health insurance sure car insurance if you rent an apartment okay people have renters insurance and i'm already thinking that's a lot of insurance but there's also insurance for like when you spill red wine on someone's white carpet that's called unspruckle kites for zakirin if i'm not mistaken that's also a mouthful first of all but i didn't know that was a thing and people kept telling me wait you don't have ans brachlekites for zachary i mean what are you gonna do when you spill red wine on someone's white carpet i love how in the netherlands people just like to wear shoes indoors so getting muddy shoes on your white carpet no problem but apparently if you spill red wine on it then you can get insurance for that i mean okay generally speaking just for factual purposes this is insurance for when you cause damage to someone else's property but again not something i knew you could get insurance for there are also other kinds of insurances that many people just have here like life insurance funeral insurance if you buy a house together with your partner then you get insurance for when one of you is no longer on this earth so there's all kinds of insurances and you will definitely see that dutch people just have like four or five insurances each the next item on the list is dutch weather now i cannot make a list about preparing yourself to move to the netherlands without telling you about dutch weather so yes you may have heard that it is rainy and windy like it rains here all the time but actually it's a little more complicated than that because it could rain every day let's say for a week but the total amount of time it could have rained that week is let's say maybe two hours so basically what i mean by that is that it could rain any moment and you could have a really beautiful sunny day like you see out here today but in an hour it could be the apocalypse and it could be just pouring buckets so you never know what to expect so you have to prepare yourself for the possibility of when it could rain because it rains often it doesn't rain very long i've found most often but it rains frequently so how do you prepare yourself for that well there's an app for it like there is an app for everything these days but the dutch apps are pretty good i like bauer that's the one i recommend and thing number two also very important is get a rain jacket or even better get a rain suit i don't have a rain suit myself but i have a rain jacket and the first video i made actually about dutch weather which was now about a year ago in that video i showed a rain jacket and i said this isn't mine it's my girlfriend's but since then i have wised up and gotten my own rain jacket because i realize you cannot live here without a rain jacket i mean maybe you could but it's just way more comfortable to have one why is that because first of all at that time i had an umbrella and i had decided to get like a cute little portable umbrella that i could bring with me everywhere so that if it rained suddenly i would just pull it out and use it i thought about the rain but forgot about the wind so i lost two umbrellas to the wind and at that point i just decided you know what i'm just gonna have a rain jacket that if i know it's gonna rain because i've checked my app and the app says it's gonna rain i bring my rain jacket especially when it's a bit cold it's perfect so don't wait too long to get a rain jacket moving on to the final thing on the list and that is how sometimes in the netherlands you will hear unexpectedly loud noises now generally speaking the netherlands is a quiet calm country like on a regular basis you will hear people chatting and stuff but you won't hear things like really loud market vendors even when you go to the marketplace like it'll be loud because people are talking but it's not jarring in any way so i personally given what i'm used to have found that the netherlands is a calm calm quiet country except and these exceptions are very loud exceptions their exceptions on the first monday of the month and their exceptions on the days leading up to new year's eve and our new year's eve and let me explain these exceptions because the first monday of the month you may not walk around thinking hey today is the first monday of the month you may also not be aware of the speciality of the first monday of the month when you first moved to the netherlands i certainly wasn't even though i had a dutch partner who could have told me things but there i was on a seemingly innocuous first monday of the month blah blah blah typing away at work and then i hear alarm sounds like really really loud alarm sounds through the city and then i get a text from my girlfriend saying oh by the way that's a thing that happens here you need to know that alarms go off throughout the country on the first monday of the month at 12 p.m wow i mean there's a very good reason why so i shouldn't say why but at the moment i definitely was like why what is happening um are we all going to die because it really sounds like that type of alarm and that's exactly what it's meant for so they test out the alarms throughout the country on the first monday of the month and you will hear that and when you move here you will not be used to it and it will scare you it it struck my very core and let us now talk about the very special category of new year's eve in the netherlands because it is a war zone on new year's eve there are fireworks everywhere because the dutch aren't really allowed to use fireworks throughout the year and so they let loose on new year's eve i have never seen anything like it it's crazy usually i like to enjoy organized fireworks on new year's eve but here on new year's eve you will see people like bursting things and lighting things up blowing things up all over the place and okay maybe you can learn to expect it on new year's eve but what you don't know is that the days leading up to it you will also just hear random things exploding or going off uh in the middle of the night or during the day you have no idea what's happening and i'm from america so my first thought was is somebody getting shot no nobody's getting shot it's just people letting fireworks loose and finally i mentioned that dutch people tend to be pretty calm on a regular basis but they are sometimes dutch people are not that calm other than the loud instances i just mentioned and that is when the dutch are playing in a football game of any kind in that case if you are not a dutch football fan or if you're not a football fan just just run away and hide because dutch people get very very excited when the netherlands or a dutch team is playing football they just get so excited so if you're on a train and you see a storm of people coming in with like dutch flags on or they're just screaming and shouting there there was a dutch game on that's what was happening i was very surprised to see that because normally when i ride the train people are mostly quiet just having conversations and everything is nice and then on the evenings where you just see people storming in screaming yelling like sledding on windows you you wonder what got into everybody it's the games they cannot control themselves when they watch a football game and that's okay but it is very surprising because in america people just like to get all decked out in gear and then they go whoo and that's about it so when you move to the netherlands you need to be aware of the football madness and love that runs through this country anyway so those were a few things i wanted to share with you about what you should know when you move to the netherlands as usual if you have any comments i would love to read them down below until next time

Channel: Dutch Americano

Views: 27,056

Keywords: moving to the Netherlands, the Netherlands, expat in the Netherlands, American in the Netherlands, moving to Amsterdam, American expat in the Netherlands, Dutch, learning Dutch, italki, italki review, italki teacher, italki video, language learning, learning language, education, moving to holland, Dutch language, learn Dutch online, Dutch conversation

Id: NX_FT2-78VM

Length: 20min 28sec (1228 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021