What are the biggest Dutch culture shocks?

typical sandwich with juice Dutch people kind of just get straight to the point in the first years I didn't have an agenda how do you plan your day how do you know what you're gonna do that was a huge joke hey this is David and welcome back to my channel culture shocks happen when we experience a culture that is different from our own and that's the beautiful thing about this world so I was curious what are some of the biggest culture shocks Internationals foreigners face when living in the Netherlands let's find out well thank you so much for joining me today thank you David for inviting yeah well first question is where are you from I'm from Poland from Poland and how long have you been in this country it's been three years now three years what brought you to the Netherlands Love Brought me so I'm a love Emigrant my husband is Dutch your husband's Dutch you've been here three years so the question for you today is what are some of the biggest culture shocks that you've experienced since coming to this country I love Ford shocks because sharks can be positive and sometimes surprising so what was really a nice shock if I can say it's a country of full of bikes cycling and I even brought today this guidebook and you can see the bikers so positive shock was that I can get Everywhere by bike I've come from the city that is quite huge and country that is bigger so commuting by bikes it's not the most convenient one and here you can go everywhere by bike which is healthy efficient no traffic and yeah you can see so much more so that's been a positive shock the bike coach right here the bike everywhere yeah okay what else um people are very friendly that was another positive aspect you are just on your streets with the neighbors and they just say hi to you and they're smiling a lot so I think that was really a nice thing to that you are as a newer a new person in the country you're like people are friendly that's nice I'm curious about that so that's a positive shock because back home in Poland is it different uh I think it's maybe not in common that on the street just the neighbors that you don't know will say hi hmm okay so people say hi here you find that friendly yes definitely okay yeah yeah what else comes to mind uh with the sharks I think it's always the weather in that sense here are like two or three seasons I'm used to to Four Seasons and uh much more sun and less rain so that was a shock that so much rain is here uh and anything else that comes to mind when it comes to culture shocks uh culture shocks I think it's a maybe that's also the communication but in that sense how direct people can be uh uh or actually the funny shock lunches so basically I'm used to to go for lunches longer lunches uh having a warm meal and spent more than 15 minutes whereas I noticed that here in this tiny country lunches are very efficient typical sandwich with juice or maybe even a milk so that that was a huge shock yeah well tell us more about these Dutch lunches because you work for a primarily Dutch company now for adventure organization so how does lunch look like and so you can see the differences between the Dutch colleagues and the Internationals so the Internationals are having more variety with the meals or going outside whereas Dutch will stay most of the time inside the building and having their own sandwich so uh Dutch lunch is a sandwich it's a simple sandwich all about efficiency and a Simplicity Simplicity all Calvin is Calvinism thank you so much for sharing thank you hey thanks so much for joining me today uh first question is where are you from Australia Australia and how long have you been living in this country five years in August five years in August yeah okay and so the question I have for you today is what culture shocks have you experienced living in this country um so I think the one that everyone always talks about Fez is Dutch directness um and so to be fair I I like in person Dutch people yeah okay they can be they can be a little bit direct but yeah I haven't like noticed it that much personally um but I've also lived in like half a dozen countries so it kind of like for me moving to another culture is just very um and adapting is just a very normal thing but I think where it really shows this Dutch directness is uh particularly in like written communication um or emails because the first time I got an email from a Dutch person I actually sat and thought for a second like are they being intentionally rude or is it that you know are they just like being direct like a Dutch person would and the answer is they're just being Direct um I don't know any Dutch person that would be rude on purpose in an email it just it's it's really highlighted in emails because they will um English people like to type out a lot they have long sentences they like to say everything nicely um just like in a roundabout way and they always thank you for everything and blah blah um Dutch people kind of just get straight to the point if they they want you to do something they'll just directly come out and and ask for it and if there's something they need you to fix they'll just directly tell you what's wrong with it and what they want you to do with it or something like that or if there's a deadline it's you know please well not even please it's just like this must be submitted To Us by whatever date or whatever time okay whereas what you might be used to it's like if there is a deadline kind of you know you can throw in something a little bit more friendly but Dutch people they get right to the point right keep this done by x-state so if yeah I suppose you know that's all that's also like I suppose in reverse that would also be an English culture shock for people going to English-speaking countries as well because if you put a deadline in email for example it will be three sentences leading up to and this has to be submitted by this date sorry for the inconvenience blah blah blah kind of thing I actually actually had a friend a Russian friend and she was doing an internship for an NGO and she communicated with her boss by email every day and she got increasingly irritated because she felt that her boss was being extremely rude to her all the time in every email and she wrote like a really angry email back one time and her boss kind of called her up completely taken aback um being like I'm so sorry like I didn't realize you felt this way what was it about my emails that you didn't like kind of thing yeah yeah it sounds like that's also the challenge with email communication right versus in-person communication a lot can get lost in between the lines yeah that's true too okay so thanks for sharing that what else comes to mind when you think about culture shocks planning yeah that's another thing actually a whole other thing it's funny because um you know when I arrange things with my friends I guess in Australia or whatever we are mostly most of the time do things just spontaneously um but with Dutch people it's often um oh you know let's go out for dinner next month and then they'll pull out their agenda and be like oh you know I'm free on the 15th and the 16th um but if you want to go the week after that it has to be on a Thursday or a Monday because I have all of these things going on and I'm like yeah yeah everything needs to be planned in this country it has more use through their agendas or calendar scheduling yeah yeah what you're used to it's more being more spontaneous yeah so if I say let's go out for dinner in a month uh you I the the way I'm used to doing it is I'll call you like you know two or three weeks later and um and then we arranged something then and it will be like oh yeah I'm free on Monday let's meet up kind of thing yeah is that more the culture in Australia yeah you can do things more spontaneously yeah yeah okay cool well thank you so much for sharing yeah thank you so much for joining me today thank you first question is where are you from I'm originally from Brazil Brazil and how long have you been in the country I mean the country for a bit more than four years now four years what brought you to the Netherlands um I'm an interperson of my career abroad so I applied some Masters uh in Europe I got a scholarship in the Netherlands so uh I was very excited to do my masters here okay so for the Masters your career and the question I have for you is what are some of the biggest culture shocks that you've experienced since arriving to this country I think some of them were regretting communication and uh as I'm Brazilian also time management so going for time management first uh yeah as I studied here right I had a many Dutch colleagues write friends and then when I was studying with them uh for me was impressive that they would have everything planned out right they would have like uh agendas and then sometimes have the dance they their days fully planned uh and for me coming from Brazil right like it was like very impressive right because uh these things would be planned like to the units right so you could like uh for example in Sao Paulo you cannot have like such precise planning because like of public transport right that sometimes it might take longer or less or also culturally for cultural reasons why would that here um seems where it's like super well right so it took me a while for me to to join this crowd you know like in the first years I didn't have an agenda that friends will find it like super funny they would be like how do you plan your day how do you know what you're gonna do uh the agenda piece right and it makes sense because in Brazil things aren't as well you could say efficient right when it comes to time they hear things yeah and so the agenda so now do you have an agenda now I have an agenda online one can share with uh with uh my boyfriend everything uh so yeah it's uh it works for the life in the Netherlands okay so you've adapted and adjusted to life here yes when it comes to time more or less what about communication yeah yeah so for uh communication uh the communication style here is more direct right so in Brazil communication is more contextual right so you can communicate let's say a bit more if you like by your official expressions or like your gestures right or like by the context itself why either hear like people tend to communicate more clearly right like what they want what they expect uh and they there's no around the bush so what you're saying you actually mean it is what actually it is so you know where you stand right right by your data can Brazil the communications where in the right right there's more context to it so uh yeah that was also fun uh to explore the Dutch directness yeah and after four years what do you think now about this Dutch directness so I was already a bit used to it because I lived in uh a different country in Europe that was also more direct with the communication so it wasn't like a big surprise but um I it's something I either like I appreciate or I don't mind it's not like a challenge per se uh uh I think I learned from it right because it's not something I was used to like so much before uh uh but yeah we can always learn from from each other I think that's a good perspective to have that's culturally we're all very different and you've been here four years so it sounds like you you've gotten used to it now yes I uh it's fun thank you so much for sharing thank you for having me touch directness sandwiches agendas I can definitely relate now culture shocks are normal they happen when we experience a culture that is different from our own and that's the beautiful thing about this world now I'm curious to hear what have been some of your biggest culture shocks in the Netherlands leave them in the comments below and take care

Channel: David Wen

Views: 189,097

Keywords: dutch culture, dutch culture shock, expatlife, dutch directness, culture shocks, dutch people, moving to europe, moving to the netherlands, moving to holland, moving to amsterdam, living in the netherlands, american in the netherlands, the netherlands, expats in the netherlands, culture shock, life in holland

Id: gXy0PkMeP0M

Length: 13min 44sec (824 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022