Going Dutch

WE HAVE BEEN LIVING IN THE NETHERLANDS officially for thirty days (even though we aren’t residents yet and I haven’t spent much time at home), so I consider myself qualified to start comparing it with Beijing and Shanghai, where the family was based before.

The move itself did not go smoothly, despite the fact that my wife is a born project manager. Three weeks in, though, and you’d have thought we’d been living here all our lives. The house, at least, is livable. And compared to the other expat families around here that puts us way ahead of the curve.

We have located all the essentials: shops, sport clubs, restaurants, doctors, dentists, schools, council offices and garbage dumps. Now we’re in the process of integrating into our little village and starting to discover its charms and peculiarities.

Hilversum might not be small in South African terms, but it really is a little village. On Mondays the shops don’t open before one. On Saturdays they close at four. On Sundays nothing, but nothing, is open.

So far that has been the biggest adjustment. We came from a city with humongous malls open 24/7/365. Not that this constraint is necessarily a bad thing. It will help us slow our pace a little and live life the way we should here, with weekends being devoted to family time.

Technically we reside on the outskirts of town, but we are close enough to everything to have traded in our mountain bikes for the real Dutch deal, what they call Oupa and Ouma bicycles. They really are more comfortable for the 15-minute commute through a forest to the centre of our village.

The lifestyle is seductive, and very different to that in China. An airfield is a five-minute walk from the house and gliding enthusiasts congregate there every Sunday. You can spend all day just watching gliders being towed into the air and sweeping around hypnotically.

Behind our house is a forest nature reserve to which we have free access. It’s like having a botanical garden for a backyard and it lends itself to walks. And there are a couple of brilliant little restaurants within easy walking or biking distance; we are still working our way through them.

The main entertainment, though, are the festivals, of which there seems to be an example every second week. Coming up is the Zomer festival, even though we are just entering autumn. Perhaps it is a celebration of the passing of summer? That would fit, because these people will use any excuse to block off the centre of town, erect some tents and throw a street party with live music everywhere.

The public transport system is a dream. Fifteen minutes by bicycle puts us at the train station and from there it is a short hop to Amsterdam – where you can find open shops on a Sunday in case of emergency. But it also gives us access to the rest of the country.

Right now my heart is set on visiting Zwolle, near the German border, to see one of two surviving “witch scales”. These instruments were used to weigh women, and those that didn’t meet specifications could be burned alive. Clearly extended broom usage has long-term side effects in terms of your relationship with gravity.

We have found the Dutch to be laid-back and exceptionally friendly people, and it helps that we can communicate. Everyone is keen to speak English, but our native Afrikaans comes in handy nonetheless. Right until German and French words creep into the conversation, which is where we all lose the conversational thread. We’ve decided everybody will learn Dutch, the kids at school and the wife and I through a tutor. We think it’s important if we are to fully integrate.

And we do want to integrate because, hopefully, we will stick around for longer than we did in China. I suppose it’s ironic then that I’m writing this from a freezing Warsaw.