What expats hate about living in Amsterdam, The Netherlands #1

I obviously need the language so nobody really tells you how much you actually need it before you move here it is very busy when it comes to tourism but that's you know some of them don't like the fact that the city center is very much discriminating the the the cars and the for vehicle movement there's actually not a lot I dislike here I ask people what they absolutely don't like about living in Amsterdam let's see what it's all about what I absolutely dislike this about uh I dislike when it is really cold and you forget your gloves like right now um there actually not a lot I dislike because I left to Taiwan because not because I didn't like it here but I just wanted to explore more yeah yeah and what I don't like um out the beach I don't like the what the beach the beach you don't like the beach here here because it's it's pretty small and everybody goes there if the weather is good okay so it's always too crowded and yeah are you talking about the beach more to the West Side exactly yeah okay so because in Amsterdam here there's not really there's no beach in Amsterdam here yeah okay what in your opinion are some negative aspects some things that you absolutely dislike this about living here also perhaps in comparison to where you lived before don't um I think one thing that comes to my mind first is uh the housing um I think it's it's quite difficult to understand how it works from an outsider perspective and also to sort of navigate it as well um my okay um yeah to sort of navigate it as well um sometimes it's difficult understanding all of the different layers of it uh because obviously everything is in Dutch if you're not familiar with the language and you're not familiar with our housing culture beforehand it's a bit difficult to understand how to go about it um and obviously there's too many people for the amount of houses that are here currently so that makes it difficult to find a house um and fulfill all of their requirements and things like that um and I think other than that sometimes for international people it's it's also difficult to navigate the administrative things so um anything that deals with City Hall um yeah things you have to pay things that are compulsory to have if you don't have anyone that kind of tells you those it's a bit difficult to figure them out um until you get the fine and then you figure them out okay is this based is because of the language the administrative issues or is it because it's new or what you say um I think a combination of both so obviously language is one um side of it Dutch is not necessarily the easiest language to learn um but also uh because sometimes they're not as obvious so they're very well done uh sort of efficiency wise and the way that they go about things but if you don't know you have to search for it you don't know you need to have it basically so um it's helpful to have someone to kind of guide you through them um especially if you don't move here for University and you move straight for work sometimes it's difficult to navigate all of the things happening all at the same time yeah okay and you also mentioned the housing problem I mean that's a very common thing that many people report about Amsterdam yeah um how did you go about this how was the process for you how did you in the end find something uh my initial process was quite a difficult one uh because I moved from London to here and I was trying to have a house when I was moving uh which almost didn't happen um I was lucky enough that I had some friends who lived here so I could have somebody to go um and ask questions for me um I think covid helped a lot because they would do a lot of um sort of online tours so I didn't have to physically be here for a while you know pay for a hotel figure things out then move my things um but I think um if I didn't have any friends here I think that would have been quite a difficult thing to navigate uh moving here for work um also sometimes work can be helpful sometimes they're not helpful so it really depends on you know where you work and what do you work in and things like that you get more or less help uh moving um and for when I moved where I live now um friends also helped I think having a good good connection with people and people knowing that you're looking for a new place really helps because you never know who hear something and can point you in the right direction so it wasn't straight by direct connection not by online or something yeah no not really via online it was a lot of help from friends I think and I think a lot of people I know found ways of living here through friends so okay and so we said when transitioning to this place to Amsterdam uh the problem was mainly the housing was there anything else that was problematic after transitioning here um language learning um so obviously I come from a Latin language speaking background um I speak quite a few other languages but none of them other than English are Germanic so learning Dutch is actually quite diff I find it quite difficult um there's obviously I think one good thing that exists here that I haven't seen in other countries is that they have the whole um sort of free courses um at the Oba or um at the city hall um so that kind of helps but the downside of those ones is that they're very long and they're obviously made for people who want to take their um official citizenship exams so they're not made for the sort of regular person that just wants to have someone to chat to in Dutch because even at the store people figure out they're not Dutch so they answer back in English um and I think yeah learning the language is definitely difficult and I think nobody really tells you um especially for me because I work a lot with like media and journalists I obviously need the language so nobody really tells you how much you actually need it before you move here and work in this environment um I was lucky obviously that I work with a lot of international people people and my other languages help me a lot um because yeah my roles are more Global than they are local but yeah it's quite hard to sometimes adapt when you don't know the language and you want to meet people and obviously you want to meet the locals not just Internationals and that makes it sometimes difficult and how would you describe your level at now I think my level now is maybe an A2 um I find it very easy to like right and understand a lot of yeah what people tell me and in in reading but speaking it is incredibly difficult to me like I can do the accent but yeah nothing else okay what is something that you say I don't like this I really don't like this about living here well so far I cannot really pinpoint for myself those those things but um I hear from maybe some friends or M family members uh things that they complain so I can call them for you uh for example um some of them don't like the fact that the city center is very much discriminating the the the cars and the for vehicle movement and restricting this this uh commuting very much for me on the contrary I I love it because I love cycling so it doesn't disturb me at all we always have this family a bit you know funny conversations about that because I have a different point of view to the rest but I know that this can be something that uh that people can complain so if you are really big car lover if you want to have a you know big SUV in the City Center Amsterdam is not going to be your favorite place for that and you would have to compromise definitely uh also if you like more quaint quiet places to live Amsterdam might be just simply too loud too vibrant um even though it's actually very cold Coy and you know look around I mean those are small houses Etc but the nature is very very vibrant so if you don't like big uh crowds big uh accidental things happening at Hulk you like very much order and everything has to be systematic then again that might be a bit um offputting but the rest of the country is full of quaint very well organized uh family friendly places and uh for sure you can find areas outside Amsterdam for example to live and work inside the city for more vibrant uh experience uh we actually live uh in the northern part of Amsterdam which is extremely well connected to the city center but it actually has an atmosphere of a small village it's a new area very freshly built and developed but it's on the other side of the river so when I come home from the city center I feel like on Permanent Vacation and yet if I want to be in the city center it takes me 3 minutes to be in the city center in the middle of everything crazy vibrant and busy and and happening so I would say the good balance like this where we were what we were fortunate to find I would recommend actually to to have both you know if you if you like to combine the shops were uh and still are open until 600 p.m. I'm not talking about Supermarket with food even though back in the day when I moved even Albert Hine or bigger supermarkets they were closing at 6:00 yeah which was very exotic for me because in my country it was all the shops bookstores shops with clothes they were open every day until 9:10 p.m. so after work I could always go and browse and do my shopping and here when I moved here then I realized that I have to juggle it and either go shopping in weekends or use my lunch break to go shopping luckily my work uh for many many years was next to very big shopping center so I could use the lunch break indeed for these kind of things but that was another thing that was that was shocking for me but is something I just say I absolutely dislike this about living here um dislike uh well but this is probably going to be something specific to where I live but I do live in the city center like not even a little bit more outside of it you know and probably for that reason I would have to say that it is very busy when it comes to tourism but that's you know that's a city center so I assume that's going to be in every major city and um yeah that's sometimes um challenging also during the night you know I'm used to having sleep without any noises out outside but now that's kind of different but yes you say this is maybe specific to the city center maybe if you live more in the outskirts I think so yes the more outside you go the more calmer it will be yeah and while moving here where there any problems that happened while transitioning or did everything run smoothly um everything went pretty smoothly and that's because I had to time back in Belgium to prepare myself to move here and also talk to people that I knew back from when I was studying here but also people that I know from Belgium who eventually moved to the Netherlands the kind of paperwork that comes with it and it's it's pretty easy I say when it comes to PE paperwork to to eventually move here but then yeah when you move here and that's in every other place there's just normal things that um you know that you just adapt to whenever you're eventually here you know yeah so yeah okay but you also had the opportunity because yourong Isam is almost Dutch there's not so much of a barrier there obviously because I do speak the same language but I eventually find myself speaking almost exclusively English just because the people I work with the people I connect with they're from around the world and yeah for that reason it's also in English most of the time and how was that for you to be speak to English to be I was very used to it to be honest because also again when I studied here not so much before that time when I was still living in Belgium but because of studying here and going to an international uh Institute basically I always had to speak English also the lecturers there were sometimes from outside of Europe even so I was always speaking English and yeah after that as well I did a couple of trips back and forth to the US so then same same there you know I was was always speaking English and you learn the most by just speaking it So eventually moving here and having to speak both both languages wasn't really an issue for me particularly if you feel like this video was informative then please hit the like button and let me know what you think about it in the comment section and if you want to see more videos on how it is to live in Amsterdam then subscribe to this channel the next city that I'll be having interviews in is going to be Berlin so stay tuned for more videos and I hope to see you in the next one

Channel: The Movement Hub

Views: 33,445

Keywords: expats in the netherlands, living in the netherlands, moving to amsterdam, moving to the netherlands, expats in amsterdam, TmH&x%

Id: neuMJJzqUpM

Length: 13min 32sec (812 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2023