Immigration¶
Sometimes people ask me questions about what it’s like living in a different country. The Netherlands is not all that different from the US, as these things go, but it’s still different enough. This is a collection of things I miss from life in Boston and things that make this place feel foreign.
Foreign¶
The sense of being an outsider in someone else’s country doesn’t really go away, and there are a few cultural things that emphasize it. Before moving here, I had never considered taking a bike to a hardware store or riding the bus to Ikea. Now I’ve done both of those things multiple times. And neither the bus nor the bike parking at the hardware store are ever empty. Ikea’s also got a big employee parking area for bikes.
Those are weird, but good and not completely surprising. A surprising thing is that when it’s your birthday here, you’re the one who brings the cake to the office. None of this “we all decided to celebrate your birthday” stuff; if you want people to celebrate your birth, you have to buy the cake.
Another super weird thing is that when I went to the doctor for the first time, she just asked me if I had anything I was worried about. No blood labs, no checking my blood pressure or listening to my heart. I don’t think I even stepped onto a scale. GPs’ jobs here are very different. This does not feel like an unfair characterization of the healthcare system.
There’s also the fact that most of the people I work with are foreign. Not just foreign to me, but foreign to here. Of about 50 people in the company, only 6 are Dutch. Working in a place where around 10% of the people are native English speakers, but everyone is speaking English anyway, is weird. It’s hard to predict how much cultural overlap there is. One person figured out my age when, on my birthday, I said I’d remembered to bring a towel. At pub trivia night, my knowledge of movie music dominated that of my co-workers, but they knew all the pop songs I didn’t.
Stuff I Miss¶
I’ve been asked a few times what I miss the most from the US. It’s 1% milk. In gallon containers. The milk in the grocery stores here comes in 2 liter jugs. I don’t know how they manage to look smaller than the 2 liter soda bottles I’m used to, but they do. Of course, the smaller size isn’t as big a deal because there’s no 1%. You can get whole milk or “halfvolle” which tastes like and probably is 2%. They also have skim, but it’s less common. I’ve been tempted to try mixing the 2% and skim like I did in high school, but they don’t even sell the 2 L jugs of skim at my local grocers.
Sure, milk that tastes a bit too rich and runs out too soon is a very minor inconvenience, but it’s a constant reminder that this is not the place I spent the first nearly 40 years of my life.
The other thing I really miss is being able to effortlessly sort the mail. If I get an envelope that looks important, I have to open it and spend some time reading it before I know if it’s something I need to take care of or just a notification that I’ve already taken care of something. This applies to e-mail too. I have to carefully read the message from the heating company every month to find the part that says my payment will be automatically deducted from my bank, and I have to consider whether or not I trust my translation.
When a letter is in English, it takes me less than 10 seconds to do this sorting operation. I never thought about it before moving.
It’s very particular to me (as though the milk thing weren’t), but I also miss the sense of community I had at CBI. It takes time to develop that sort of thing, and I haven’t found it here yet.
Immigrants Are Vulnerable¶
I’m more educated than average, with higher income than average, and I’m pretty aware of the risks from things like scams. However, I don’t know the norms and laws here and I’m not (yet) fluent in the language. So when I get something in the mail that says I have to pay someone, sometimes I just pay it without fully understanding why.
If someone wanted to scam me out of EUR 50, they could send me a blue envelope with my name on it and a bunch of scary Dutch words talking about how I owe money to the tax authority for the inspection of livestock. I’d probably pay it instead of risking some poorly understood fine. I might show it to a Dutch co-worker and ask if I got scammed, but I might not.
It really emphasizes that refugees and migrant workers aren’t the only vulnerable populations. There are lots of stories about the janitor or taxi driver who was a doctor but came to America and ended up unable to practice, but there are fewer about the doctor who came from another country and overpaid for housing or tax services because they didn’t understand the local norms.
It may be true that anyone can get scammed, but I feel like my average day is more vulnerable to such things now than before I moved here.
Good Parts¶
This post is feeling pretty whiny, so I want to end it on a happier note. Here are some things that have improved about my life since moving. I mentioned earlier that I’ve taken the bus to Ikea and biked to the hardware store. There was a hardware store on Charles street, but the hardware stores I’m talking about here are more analogous to Lowes or Home Depot. They’re huge warehouses full of stuff, and they have bike parking right in front of the door.
I can ride a bike pretty much anywhere I want to go in a 10km radius. I’ve never been dumped from a nice bike lane onto a 4-lane highway here.
This was part of my last commute in Boston.¶
I can also get to work very easily by public transit if there’s a reason I can’t bike. There’s a bus every 15 minutes that stops right in front of my office, and another one every half hour that stops a short walk away. People complain about 6 an hour, and the ridership could probably support 10, but it’s way better than anywhere else I’ve lived.
More importantly, I can hop on a train and get pretty much anywhere I want. Of the several trips we’ve taken since getting here, exactly 2 have involved cars: One from the airport home with the cat, and one home from the hospital.
Speaking of hospitals, I talked a bit about how different the health care system here is, but I’ve spent a lot of time engaging with it this year and it’s cost me basically nothing. My employer has nothing to do with my insurance, which is affordable. In the two and a half years I’ve been here, I’ve been in ambulances twice. One trip cost nothing, and the other met the (hilariously low) annual deductible on my insurance.
Then there’s the food. People complain about Dutch food because it’s bland and greasy. Fair enough. Fries and bitterballen are greasy, and while a good cheese tosti is very good, it’s really just a grilled cheese sandwich. But like England has great Indian food, the Netherlands is a great place to get Indonesian food. There’s also remarkably good Thai food, a solid range of Chinese and Japanese restaurants, Italian, French, Belgian, Greek, Turkish, and others that I can’t vouch for yet. There are also, of course, amazing desserts and great places to sit and sip hot beverages. That’s just in Delft, a city of 100,000. The Hague and Amsterdam are bigger, and have even more variety.
Being an immigrant is definitely stressful, but it’s not all bad. It’s a great experience to have had, and I have no desire to move.