Truth about living in the Netherlands: the costs, the people, the food (from an expat)

hello everyone and welcome to a new video my name is julia i make videos about data science and my life in tech and for the past five and a half years i've been living here in the netherlands i now live in amsterdam but i first started out in maastricht with my data science and ai study i just made a video about what it's like to move here to study but i also wanted to address what it's like to live in the netherlands after you finished your degree or if you just come here for a job directly what can you expect from being an expat in the netherlands i'm going to explain a bit about the country food and people of the netherlands and then dive into some financial aspects of living here and end up with my thoughts on the country and why i think it's a really really great place to live in let's get into it part one a little bit about the netherlands if you don't know the netherlands is of course a country in western europe that has a very rich and long history some complicated history as well but all in all it's been doing really great for a really long time and yeah i think it's a really nice culture to be a part of first thing you'll notice about the netherlands is that it's a very flat country seriously like people told me this before i moved here but thinking about it and just you know taking the train and seeing endless fields with not a single hill or mountain in sight is something quite different no matter what country you come from i can guarantee you you've never seen anything as flat which is also of course a good thing for the netherlands since it leads to great agriculture they grow a lot of vegetables and a lot of tulips and for how small they are they're actually a pretty big exporter of food and other goods so yeah it's also a very very tiny country it's really nudged in there between belgium and germany and it's a lot smaller than a lot of its neighbors but again it's a huge exporter it has a pretty big population so as small as it is it's a powerhouse the netherlands has a lot of different regions each with their own name and culture and actually only two of them have the name hollande in them they're south and north holland amsterdam for example is part of nordholland so calling the country holland is actually very incorrect and something that a lot of foreigners get wrong and a lot of dutch people are offended by if you think it's weird to get offended about it the nice comparison i've heard is that it would be the same as calling the united kingdom scotland probably not the same that being said life in the netherlands can vary a lot based on where you live a small village in limburg is going to be very different than living in amsterdam so when you think about living in the netherlands or experiencing dutch life know that there's quite a variety on what that means to different people there's a lot of beautiful parts of the netherlands even though i will say that nature isn't necessarily its strong point there's really gorgeous tulip fields and windmills and natural forests that are really nice to hike around in or you know walk on flat landing and some really really cute traditional cities that look untouched by time check out my vlog in volundam which is a cute fisherman village just it's a gorgeous country second part we're going to discuss is food in the netherlands if you're going to live here you're going to eat here now the dutch have very interesting national dishes which are a very acquired taste i will say for example there's tampot which is different types of mash with kale and usually sausage yes the dutch were eating kale way before it was cool and hip and it's pretty good however i will say that the dutch have an affinity for not really using a lot of condiments in their food which historically is a little ironic but yeah expect a lot of boiled potatoes with maybe a bit of salt which is quite different than the food i'm used to other national foods are hotting with onions a lot of different fried mystery meats like bitterballen and croquette and also cass souffles which are fried cheese just a lot of fried snacks that they usually consume in bordeaux's which are just like after dinner or pre-dinner snacks where people come together have some finger food and a lot of beer it's very rose the dutch do however have really nice suites they invented the strobe waffles which are amazing especially warm at the market but also the ones you can buy in pretty much any store they are caramel goodness with a lot of sugar but really really crunchy and good and for new year's they have the traditional olive olin which are literal oil bowls also an acquired taste but i know a lot of people who go crazy for them around new year's and eat them every day and on the other side modern dutch cuisine is also quite different especially in the amsterdam area there's this culture of being kind of a flexitarian and going towards vegetarianism or veganism it's a huge brunch culture anything to do with avocado and poached eggs with hollandaise sauce or just any brunch food you can think of amsterdam is the place to be for that moving on to dutch people dutchies are awesome you will recognize statues by how tall and blonde most of them are seriously it's like looking up all the time back in romania i was considered very tall at about 174 but here almost everyone is bigger than me which is quite a big difference and the blonde thing yes a lot of dutch people are naturally blonde which is quite different from again the example of romania where most people have naturally darker hair or almost black and it's more rare to be a natural blonde the duchies are also very modern for example they're all pretty tech savvy a lot of people will have internet and know how to use a computer no matter what age they are so it's not like oh even my mother could understand it everyone's mother knows how to use the internet here which may or may not be different from where you come from everyone's also very active you will see everyone biking around especially older people which i thought was awesome that they're not only going out and about and having hobbies of their own they're biking around the city with no worries in the world sometimes even with their grandchildren on the back of their bike you'll also see mothers with this little wooden crates in front of the bikes biking with maybe three toddlers at a time just everyone bikes everywhere they all also do a lot of sports primarily field hockey and the dutch are of course very tolerant which i think almost everyone knows about them they were the first country to legalize gay marriage and weed is of course legal here in all of the coffee shops around the country although mainly in amsterdam you can get in and smoke a joint and it's totally fine now let's get into the serious stuff having a job in the netherlands if you're an eu citizen it's really easy to come here register and start living and working here as a non-eu citizen the process may be a bit more complicated but it's still very possible as long as your job is willing to go through the process of hiring a non-eu citizen some initial mentions about having a job here it's very normal here to do a bachelor degree and a master immediately after so you only really complete your education after your graduate degree so just expect that most people will have that and that's kind of what you'll be competing with for jobs i personally don't have a master degree and it's worked out for me but i am aware that it's kind of the exception if you want to find a job here most resources are linkedin or glassdoor which is another dutch website where you can also compare salaries for different types of jobs and get an idea of what you could earn you can also just look up individual companies and see if they have vacancies on their websites of course now something that maybe a lot of you may have heard about abroad the dutch tax system the netherlands has quite big taxes i guess compared to other countries but it has a box system where you don't have the same tax applied to your entire income which may be a bit confusing it used to be three brackets but now it's only two to make it a bit simpler so if you say earn a hundred thousand euros a year your first 68 500 will be taxed at 37 and then the remaining trade will be taxed at 49.5 so yes that is an almost 50 tax but it's not applied over the entirety of your salary but you will see where your taxes are going in the education system and health system and infrastructure and how clean everything is there's you know you're really getting the benefits out of it at least i think so you may be of course free to disagree but um i'm fine with the tax system as is when i was studying i benefited from different two slacks or subsidies for students or people who didn't earn so much so i really see how it all goes around you can check out my studying in the netherlands video for more details on that work-life balance in the netherlands is very nice and relaxed i would say you get about 20 to 25 holiday days a year and then on top of that all the national holidays would seem to which seem to be all the time like the king's day is celebrated and has a day off and some religious holidays as well you would have another day off with those as well so it ends up being maybe closer to 30 days off in the year you also have an 8 holiday bonus that everyone gets so around may i think you get eight percent of your salary just paid out to you to go have a nice holiday and this is for every job in the netherlands uh some other perks which depend on the employee are bonuses for performance and maybe a 13th month those are quite common but they're not mandatory to get it's also pretty relaxed here other than having so many holiday days i think everyone who does work a nine to five will leave work at five with exceptions of course but it's quite common to just go home at five sharp and not look at your work emails or get any calls from work anymore unless of course you have flexible work hours in which case you can just work whenever you feel like it's the most productive as long as you get your work done i was quite surprised by this in the beginning if i was just you know focused on my work and not looking up from my laptop and then it became like 5 30 and it would look up and the office would just be empty so i also just hurried off home and got used to leaving pretty early as well if you work later you will just find the cleaning lady coming in and starting to vacuum around you so it's really discouraged to put in crazy hours or to go above what is expected from you another nice thing is that hierarchy here is quite flat so you won't find super confusing corporate charts of having seven managers above you it's usually quite easy to know who your boss is and even so i think calling them boss is quite weird they will be like your manager but um i think everyone's quite direct to to each other and it's very easy to talk about your stations so to say it feels even weird mentioning something like that basically pretty much everyone is encouraged to share their opinion and their initiatives and because dutch people are super direct they may just shut you down and say no that's a bad idea but not in the way that you shouldn't you know bring up another idea again uh you'll just know what everyone's thinking and i think that's really nice that an intern and a ceo can have a conversation and they may ask you what your opinion is or something so yeah it's a very flat hierarchy not so much stress and corporate structure around um just everyone in the office working together towards their goals which i think is a very nice environment so if you manage to get a job in the netherlands what are some costs that you may expect to pay with the money you have left over after taxes number one will be rent or mortgage if you buy a house you can check out funda for all the properties in the netherlands and seeing how much rent is in different regions be warned amsterdam is insane uh there's nothing quite comparable to it of course rotterdam or utrecht or the hague can also be quite expensive but i think amsterdam takes the crown jewel for unreasonable amounts of rent even for dutch people it's quite a problem these days there's not enough housing so people who maybe were born and raised in amsterdam might have to move out just because they can't afford to live there anymore which is indeed quite a problem you do need a pretty good salary to comfortably live in amsterdam but it is doable to give an example uh an apartment can be a thousand to fifteen hundred euros for a single person or a couple uh depends where in amsterdam it is if you go outside of the ring it will be cheaper but not by that much again check out funda for a pretty good overview of what it would cost for you other than that you of course have to pay for food there's this really nice website that kind of explains examples of how much a loaf of bread or milk or beer in a pub will cost you so you can use that to make an estimate for your lifestyle above that you will also have some municipal taxes for trash collection and sewage and clean water that you should also account for and of course your actual utilities like water electricity and gas you can check everything out on that website and see an estimate for your situation for traveling a lot of people use public transport it's really easy to get to work either by bike or by train or by tram so i don't think so many people drive um i don't have a car and most of the people i know don't have a car but of course that's also an option i just don't know so much about it when it comes to public transport you get an ob chip card which is your travel card that works with all forms of transportation in the country you can charge it up and do a pay as you go for every ride it will count when you check in and check out of a public transportation how long your journey was and then see how much it costs or you can get unlimited subscriptions for every month which are usually better if you commute every day and you can get different discounts as well so your budget can really vary based on how you live and how much you earn and where you live again if you live in a village in the south or in the north and you live in amsterdam those are completely different calculations so you can figure that out for yourself but just to give a ballpark number since i'm sure people will comment about it i think you can live in amsterdam with 1500 to 2000 euros some people will deal with a lot less or a lot more of course but that seems like a good assumption or a good estimate so yeah i hope you found this useful if you're thinking about living here check out some of my other videos if you're interested in those topics and yeah best of luck with whatever path you have in life see you in the next video bye

Channel: Iulia Feroli

Views: 197,355

Keywords:

Id: OPe5rhTO4fM

Length: 15min 31sec (931 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 21 2021