The Language Thing

When G and I first started researching NL, we discovered quite quickly that a) the Dutch language is not that different to Afrikaans and b) the Dutch speak very good English. During our first few months of living in Ede I found that I was picking up Dutch quite quickly without much effort thanks in part to the limited Afrikaans that I knew and in part to the fact that I was living in a small town where Dutch is definitely required. My vocabulary was expanding and I was starting to get the hang of the basics. Then we moved to Amsterdam. It didn’t take long to realise that my Dutch was going backwards because nobody in this city speaks the local language (that’s what it feels like anyway). We have a teach-yourself book but I wanted to do an evening course to provide structure and to fight my laziness, but the courses generally all start in the same week and run over the same 6 week blocks. I couldn’t do the courses starting in February because I was visiting SA during that time so would miss a few (expensive) lessons. I completely forgot in March/April and once May rolled round I realised that I would be away for a large chunk of the June/July classes. This means I can only do a course from August/September onwards. I can still understand a fair amount when reading or listening carefully, but speaking is a problem which probably has more to do with self-confidence than actual ability.

Up until today, I have had a mild guilt complex because I’m living in a country and I don’t know the local language. This all changed this morning on my way to work. It looked like it might rain so I took the metro. I was putting my headphones on as I was boarding the carriage which meant my hair and the long headphone cable had an altercation. I was fixing the hair/cable situation whilst getting comfortable in a seat and didn’t immediately notice the person sitting facing me. Out of nowhere these clumsy hands shot across to the cable and my leg and started to try help me untangle the cable. I looked up to see who was doing this and instantly realised the person was mentally and physically disabled. He was innocently trying to help me and explain his actions but I couldn’t respond in a way that he would understand and I was battling to understand him because a) he was speaking Dutch and b) his Dutch was very slurred/mumbled due to his disability. All I wanted to say was thanks but it’s ok if it’s tangled and I could tell that he did not understand my English. He then had this very sad look on his face, probably thinking how I didn’t appreciate his actions which is not at all the case. I felt terrible but there was nothing I could do beyond asking someone else to intervene but the other person sitting with us clearly did not want to get involved. Not a good start to the day.

So from this I have realised that even if 45% of the local residents were not born in the city and therefore everyone speaks a more international language, if you want to be a responsible and caring citizen you need to learn the language.  

P.S. My English vocabulary also seems to have gone backwards - dealing with second-language speakers all day with no time to read in the evenings and severe bride-brain does not make you sound intelligent...

The Bicycle

The Netherlands is known for many things, but probably the one that has the biggest impact on daily life is the way that the Dutch are devoted to The Bicycle. Before we moved here I’d heard and read about how everyone is on bicycles but until you see it for yourself, you think the guide-books and blogs show posed photographs. Those pictures you see of a bicycle leaning against a pretty canal are real. Except it’s not one or two pretty bikes leaning against the canal, it’s thousands. Thousands of bicycles. EVERYWHERE. Arriving at Amsterdam Centraal or any train station will blow your mind because you can’t believe how many bikes can be in such a small area. And they are in all conditions – old, new, single-speed, 3 gears, pedal breaks, normal breaks, Omafietsen, racing bikes, mountain bikes, bent wheels, flat tyres, covered in plant life, wicker baskets, spraypainted neatly, spraypainted badly, beer crates, flower garlands, worn-spring-exposed saddles, tandem with kids seats and my personal favourite: the bakfiets* – it has a trunk on the front for loading groceries/kids/furniture/dogs/grannies. How you turn a corner when you have wriggling children in a huge bucket in the front of your bicycle is beyond me but this shows the capability of the Dutch on bicycles. These people can cycle before they can walk and the cyclist is king. Pedestrians and drivers must give way to a cyclist, even if the traffic light changed 15 seconds ago. The dedicated cycle lane system with cyclist traffic lights is really impressive and 99% of the time it can’t be faulted. It’s fantastic.

 A lone Omafiets alongside the canal 

Our first four months of being in NL were spent living in Ede and once we moved to A’dam I wanted to get a feel for how things worked so I used public transport to get to the office (and it was February so still a bit cold). One mid-March Saturday, Gordon and I decided to test out my route to work. Google said it was 10.2km door-to-door and would take 34 minutes. Considering the metro takes 28 minutes, cycling supposedly was a good alternative. That first attempt showed that I have an easy route but it did not flow well as there was a huge rowing regatta happening on the river so we had to negotiate screaming crowds for the first 5km. But I knew how to get to the office on Monday which was the purpose of the excursion.

The view from the first 5km of my daily commute

Monday morning, I left the apartment 45 minutes before I was supposed to be there so that I had a buffer. My ride was lovely. The first 1.5km is city cycling but along the Amstel river. Then the city suddenly disappears and for 3.5km I’m cycling with the river next to me on the left and beautiful parks and gardens on the right. Across the river is farmland. It’s lovely and a popular route for runners, serious cyclists and commuting cyclists. It looks flat but has a few sneaky rises which you notice when you are on a single-speed bike.

The windmill and a serious cyclist (note the helmet) at the turning point in my commute

At the 5km mark there is a typical Dutch windmill and that’s there I turn onto a lovely country road with canals on both sides with farmland, sports fields and cute little houses for about 1.5km. This is also popular with trainers and commuters. After that I turn onto the final stretch which is a main road (with more-than-sufficient cycling lanes) that basically takes me to my office. This road also looks deceivingly flat and is lined with apartment blocks, canals and patches of tulips and daffodils. Just before my office, I have to go under the metro which means a ramp down then up the other side. Thanks to the gentle undulations and the last (significant) ramp, I was drenched in sweat and about 5 minutes late. This was not a good start to a Monday morning! I’d packed my deodorant as a precaution but that wasn’t sufficient – I needed a shower and a fresh shirt. I hastily dabbed toilet paper wherever possible in the bathroom and took deep breathes to dry mitigate the problem but I knew the damage had been done. This was not mentioned in the guidebooks and blogs, which is why I’m telling you here – NL is not flat and cycling 10km in 45 minutes on a heavy single-speed Omafiets will leave you sweaty.

The middle stretch of my commute - my favourite part

There have been several cycles to work since then and I am slowly mastering the art. Tip 1: Don’t trust Google – I give myself an hour so I don’t have to rush which means a) less sweating and b) I can enjoy the scenery more. Tip 2: Don’t ride with your handbag strapped across you – it will hold the back of your shirt against you which leads to sweating. Air flow is good. Tip 3: Even if it feels really cold, don’t ride with a warm jacket because after 3km you will feel those evil beads running down your back and it’s really hard to recover from there. Remove the jacket asap. Tip 4: Take an umbrella and a scarf just in case. No explanation required. Tip 5: Crossing the road can reduce the number of undulations on a particular stretch – this is worth investigating. Tip 6: Enjoy it. The days when I cycle to the office always seem better than the days using public transport. The endorphins and lack of sneezing passengers make you feel great and it’s a sneaky way to burn a few more calories – very useful in the weeks before your wedding!

Gordon's commute is through the city - the red lane indicates a bicycle lane (see how close to the tram line it is!)

It’s a hard feeling to explain, but riding through the city surrounded by traffic and other bicycles is when I feel the most like a local. I feel like an Amsterdammer even though I’ve only been living in this city for 3.5 months. It’s by far the best way to experience NL and we are planning a countryside adventure on our bikes over the long weekend in June – route still to be determined. When we were living in Ede we would often ride through the forest and farmlands on the well-marked cycling routes. It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. This country appreciates bicycles and I love it.

*A colleague of mine says only people who aren’t from Amsterdam ride a bakfiets and he means that in a not-very-nice way.

Where has the time gone?

I had great plans for this blog, including keeping track of all the steps it took to get me and The Man here. Apparently that never happened. Oh well, I'll start again now that things are starting to settle down a bit. This will be another log entry but going forward they should be shorter and slowly I'll figure out how this blog will work.

Brief update on what has happened since my last post in August 2013:
1) We got engaged! Yay! (Some might say it's about time after 5.5 years). Brief synopsis: the first place we ever went on holiday to was Glengarry, in the Kamberg. We've been back a few times since then so it means a lot to us. Glengarry hosted a mountain biking weekend in September so we went with my parents. Sneaky Gordon had asked for their permission the previous weekend when I was visiting friends in Johannesburg (which included me moaning at one stage to one friend that it would be nice to go overseas as an engaged couple. Little did I know...). Friends who got engaged in July (also at Glengarry) had set their date for July 2014 so we decided that was a good time as well, as all our mutual friends who live overseas would be flying out to SA for their nuptuals. So in the space of 10 days we set a date - 19 July 2014 - and found a venue in amongst the panic of moving countries. All the other stuff is organised by remote control - the internet and email make it surprisingly easy to plan a wedding from the other side of the world. I spent a week in SA in February to do wedding planning that couldn't be done from NL.

My ring!

2) We lived in Ede for 4 months with N&C. They have a lovely home in a lovely little town in the Bible Belt. So not a lot happens there although the town square has a decent collection of bars and the town is on the edge of a huge forest/conservation area so there's a fair amount to do considering it's a small town whose shops all shut on Sundays. After 2 months of interviews and "whoring out" my CV to basically every large company in NL I started working in finance at an international FMCG - the tobacco industry which I've had to adjust to as I have never smoked and have never been a fan of smokers. It's amazing how perceptions change when smokers pay your salary...
At first the 1.5 hour commute was a struggle, especially as I started during the build-up to year-end followed by the audit in January so there were numerous late nights. I did quickly get used to it though and would read or watch series on my phone. In the end I enjoyed having a guaranteed 3 hours to myself everyday to think or zone out.

This is the forest near Ede

3) We moved to a 1-bedroom apartment in Amsterdam in February which has changed our lives dramatically. We both realised for the first time that we are alone in this adventure - N&C are 1.5 hours away so we can't just pop over for coffee or wine if we've had a bad day. The London thing makes sense now - this is a struggle to survive in foreign country, away from everything you are used to and if you have access to people you know or who know people you know then you have a support structure. After a few moping days in February, I resorted to the internet and discovered www.meetup.com. It's awesome. Apparently it started before Facebook in the USA and is a brilliant concept. You sign up to groups in your area which arrange events for like-minded people in your area. A'dam has a HUGE expat community - I read somewhere that 45% of A'dam residents were not born in NL - which means there are a lot of lonely people who are also looking for friends. So we've been to a comedy show where everybody (+-50 people) meets for drinks beforehand; we've been to a dinner (+-12 people); we've been to some drinks evenings at various bars around the city (30-100 people) and tomorrow I'm going to a ladies-only brunch (+-15 people). And slowly we are making friends. There are paintball events, running clubs (I'm currently investigating), travel groups and basically anything you can think of to keep you entertained and sociable. It's cliched but it needs to be said - you don't know what you have until it's gone; and in our instance we were the things that have gone away and left behind friends who have known us for over 2 decades in some instances, travelled through darkest Africa with, been chased out of Afrikaaner-extremist towns with, laughed until we've cried with or just cried with. Oh how the mighty have fallen! But we're getting back on the horse and have started to meet some really interesting people who also just want companionship and something to do on a Friday night.

Picture-perfect Amsterdam

4) Gordon managed to get his residency permit quite easily and quite quickly so he's been able to work since January. Not that there are many Architecture jobs available. There are (literally) thousands of firms in A'dam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and surrounds but they aren't growing even though the economy is no longer in a recession. He's consulting on a risk-work project for a firm but he will only get paid if the project comes to fruition. He's interviewed at some firms and basically we're just waiting. We can survive on my salary but only because we're paying very little for rent (it's a long story but basically we don't officially live in A'dam but still in Ede. This creates other hassles but saves about EUR400 a month). And to add to the stress, my company is restructuring this year so there is no guarantee that I'll have a job in December. I'm considering marketing positions (I can hear all my university accounting friends gasping in horror) because finance is almost completely being outsourced to Romania.

5) I successfully applied for the 30% ruling, which means that 30% of my salary is not taxed. This is a benefit for expats in NL who have scarce skills to compensate for the additional costs of living here. I wouldn't call accounting/finance a scarce skill but I won't question it! Besides the additional money I get each month, I can also convert my SA drivers licence to a Dutch one without doing tests. There are some other tax benefits as well.

Vondel Park, Amsterdam

6) Nikki was an absolute star with helping us settle in. Although there are so many foreigners here, it is still difficult to get settled in NL. Registering with the gemeente (municipality), immigration, bank accounts and pin cards, public transport systems, bicycle transport systems - it's a lot of complicated information in a foreign language so having a local who knows makes an enormous difference. People I've met through meetup have also said they couldn't have done it by themselves - agencies or local friends helped. She set up our appointment at the gemeente to register us; she came with to the IND (immigration) where we applied for G's permit and spoke in Dutch to the woman at the counter (who could speak English but some things are hard to understand in a second or third language); she phoned the bank when my card wasn't activated and 1000 other small things that we couldn't have done or even knew had to be done.

The famous I amsterdam sign

So, for now, we are content in A'dam.

T-minus 29 days until lift-off

With less than a month until I embark on an exciting new adventure, I have decided to start a blog of the run-up and the actual event.

What is this all about you may ask? My boyfriend of 5 years (Gordon) and I have been mumbling about travelling for the last 2 years or so and the discussion was always brief and ended with the words "in 2013". Then suddenly we found ourselves in 2013. We had set ourselves a challenge and now we had to act. 

First question: Where? Neither of us had any desire to go to London which is where many young South Africans go for a few years with dreams of earning numerous Pounds and travelling Europe. To me, London (specifically Wimbledon) was like my local suburb of Westville except colder and wetter. I think if you are going to take the step of trying something new, you may as well go the whole hog and try a new culture. Besides the fact that the London "Saffas" all tend to hang out together (from what I've heard from friends living there - don't quote me on that!), the British culture is quite similar to some of the South African English-speaking white culture so London was definitely not on my list. I'm more than happy to visit there but I'd rather live somewhere else. Gordon has his own reasons for not wanting to go to London. 

So we looked at the Far East - specifically Singapore. At first it sounded like an excellent option. They speak English due to the English colonial history and they have a negative population growth rate so they encourage foreigners. But then we realised that (Warning! Huge generalization coming! Warning!) Asians work too hard and if we want to travel in the region it might be a problem. 

We looked at a few other countries and decided that we may as well use my EU passport and go to Europe. Europe's economy definitely has highs and lows. Beautiful Spain (my country of choice if South Africa sank) has serious economic issues as do some of the other warmer EU nations. So, by process of elimination, we have decided on the Netherlands.

Very good friends of ours (Nikki and Conway) have been living there for a few years and are very happy. The economy seems to be alright and the language is not too much of an issue. Whilst most people who live in my area do not speak much Afrikaans, all South Africans have to learn a second language at school and most white English-speakers choose Afrikaans over the African languages. The written language has many similarities to Dutch but the pronunciation is quite different. But overall it wouldn't be a huge change from what I already know. The Dutch, however, are renowned linguists and many of the job applications that I have looked at state that English is fine - Dutch is a bonus. So overall, Netherlands seems like an excellent place to live for 2 or 3 years.

 

Second question: Where exactly? Nikki and Conway live in a town called Ede which is an hour by train from Amsterdam and close to the city of Arnhem. They very kindly have offered us a room until we settle in and find our own place. Which city we will be in all depends on where I find work. Note the "I" and not "we". Gordon is on an SA passport so he will apply for residency through me once we get there. But that takes 3 months once I have a signed employment contract and his Schengen visa (to get him into the country to start with) is only valid for 3 months. This is going to be a fun game to play...

Third question: What about all our stuff? I own a townhouse in a complex which means I have a bond and a whole lot of junk inside those 4 walls. Gordon and I both have cars and between us we have 3 bicycles. The to-do list can get a bit daunting! I eventually resorted to using a letting agent as my personal networks weren't working and I have now signed a lease with a lovely older couple who will rent it fully furnished. Relief! I sold my car within 16 hours of listing it on Gumtree. Relief! I sold my mountain bike fairly quickly. Relief! Now I need to try get rid of my road bike. Gordon, on the other hand, is battling to get rid of his things. His car seems to be too new to sell as he’s had no inquiries but many views of the advert and the sale of his bicycle fell through. You can’t win them all...

So for now I can relax about our big move and concentrate on studying for an exam on Friday. And the Skype job interview I have tomorrow. And the handing over of work to colleagues. And the Rand/Euro exchange rate. And the expensive month of Social September (birthdays, goodbyes and general social activity). It never ends...