Six Months In

It’s nearly six months now since we moved to the Netherlands and it’s a good time to take stock. All in all, I feel our move here has been easy compared to our previous re-location to the US, despite the language barrier which isn’t particularly a barrier at all. Most Dutch people speak excellent English which of course has made it very easy for us NOT to learn Dutch. Culturally I feel the English and the Dutch have much in common; the Dutch are reserved, probably erring on the side of caution when it comes to social skills, but I respect that. I can be reserved and grumpy myself and I really don’t mind if a sales assistant doesn’t accost me the minute I walk into a shop offering to be my new best buddy. 

Likewise I am happy to spend all evening in a restaurant. If I book a table for 8 pm I am quite content to still be sat there at nine.  OK I might have liked to have my starters within the first hour, but what the heck, we’ve got all night, and if I don’t like the service, I can reflect that in my tip - it’s not compulsory.  We have visited restaurants in Haarlem we wouldn’t particularly rush back to, (it doesn’t matter how much you dress it up, a turnip is a turnip and I don’t want it on my dinner plate) but in all honesty we have yet to have a bad meal in our new home town. Just because raw herring and bitterballen are national delicacies, it doesn’t mean I have to eat them.

The internet and the availability of the BBC on mainstream TV makes it easy to stay in touch with what is happening back in the UK.  Not that I ever watched the One Show every night but it’s actually quite comforting to know it’s there if I want to. We do sit down to watch Pointless at 6.15 pm most evenings and it's like putting on a pair of old slippers. I am ashamed to say Dutch TV doesn’t get a look in – apart from the when it comes to sport, and even then sometimes Mr T resorts to watching a German channel.

I check the internet for the Dutch news every Monday evening before our weekly quiz, just in case there is a question on current affairs, but the Zwarte Piet riots  just before Christmas are about as controversial as Dutch news gets. It’s a very easy country to live in.

There are obviously a few Dutch customs that take a bit of getting used to. Even a sleepy old place like Haarlem has its red light district and the Dutch are well known for their window-displays.  Looking  into other people’s windows is a national past-time. If I was living in my own house I probably would invest in a pair of net curtains or at least some frosted glass, but most people don’t.  I've got used to people gawping in my windows, and I am not without guilt myself. There are a couple of places we walk past in Haarlem where I’m still not sure if it is a genuine shop or just someone trying to offload their old junk onto passers-by by sticking price-tags on their ornaments.

We have resigned ourselves to the weather.  I’ve given up on umbrellas and invested in coats with hoods.  I haven’t worn a vest this much since I was six years’ old and I wouldn’t dream of stepping out of the front door without my full quota of gloves, hat and scarf. On a flying visit to the UK last week I found myself stripping off layer after layer, revelling in the soft warmth of British winter sunshine, I even picked up a couple of T-shirts in the sales. Silly me! As soon as we stepped back onto the tarmac of Schipol Airport we were hit with a familiar icy blast of North Sea wind to welcome us home. 

And that's how I know I have acclimatised. It took a good eighteen months to two years before I referred to the US as my 'home'. I was always 'heading back to LA' or 'returning to the US'. Our transition here has been far less traumatic, partly I suppose because I am much more aware this time around of the pitfalls of being an ex-pat, but I'd like to think those endless canals, crazy cyclists and crispy frites with lashings of mayonnaise might just have something to do with it too.

Oh, and of course, this time round I have the cat for company, or perhaps too much company?!