Your relocation companion for moving to the Netherlands

I used to work in tourism and hospitality in Amsterdam. I later enrolled at university and became a scientist, but I’ve now left the science labs behind me. I’ve lived in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in the Netherlands. I’ve done fieldwork in Sweden and Spain. I’ve worked at and with universities in the US, the UK and the Netherlands and I’ve had small businesses in the UK and the Netherlands. I worked mostly with science publishers, translation agencies, university departments, engineering companies and individual scientists. Nowadays, besides this, I also enjoy online trading and I dabble in the area of bioethics, which is a very broad field that includes topics like diversity and otherization.

I’m a Dutch citizen, but I’ve always worked in international environments and have been using mostly English for a long time now. There also once was a time when my German was better than my Dutch, as I grew up near two borders, in an area where several languages are spoken and I started learning French and German when I was still in primary school.

My move to the States was relatively easy, even though I had to rent a car just a few days before I left and quickly drive to the airport, collect paperwork from a FedEx plane arriving from the States, then rush over to the American consulate so that I could get my visa just before the consulate closed early. This was in the winter holiday season, you see. My plane left when the consulate was still closed. All went well. My cats got into the US very smoothly, too.

My move back to the Netherlands was trickier. I not only still had the cats, but I also had two small parrots now that I had adopted from the wildlife rescue center where I had volunteered. The American government was on furlough at the time and the Dutch authorities had given me incorrect information, as it turned out. So I flew out of the country with the cats’ papers in order but with only health certificates for the birds, no export or import permits. Thankfully, the incorrect information from the Netherlands was in a letter, which I showed to the customs officials at Schiphol airport. Still, we spent hours at the airport because the customs officials had to call in an expert who could confirm the birds’ species. They took the letter, but made a photocopy for me. They emphasized the seriousness of the matter and initially had wanted to confiscate my birds. My birds’ behavior made very clear that they were my pets, that I was not an animal smuggler. That too may have helped.

My relocation to the UK was also much more challenging than moving to the US. For starters, I was taking my small business with me and was working on a book in the For Dummies series at the time. A climate scientist also needed me to do some work for him. The estate agency had promised to be there when BT Business planned to install broadband for me, but that agency let me down. That really hampered me. So I can for example be that person who lets someone into your new home for you if that is what you need when you are still abroad.

Second, British logic was very different than what I was used to. Finding items in stores or supermarkets and particularly on websites initially sometimes drove me crazy. The culture is very different too and England was not as generally welcoming as Florida had been only about a decade earlier. I found it much harder to get to know people there than in the US.

However, both times when I arrived back in the Netherlands, I not only found it very hard to find a place to live, but I also often found it very hard to find the right information there. Particularly the second time I returned was very hard. I had been away for a long time and no longer knew many people in the Netherlands. In addition, I was now used to the way the English do things. It’s a very different culture.

It can be challenging to find your way around in the Netherlands if you aren’t Dutch. I also know how tough things can be for Dutchies who return from abroad. Among some of us Dutchies abroad, it gets discussed. This issue has been raised at the government level, too.