My First Year as an Expat in the Netherlands

It’s been a while…but I’m back!

Hi there! Remember me? I’m that friend/family member/vague acquaintance who moved to the Netherlands a year ago for love?

Uh, duh! What’s up?

Life is busy as usual and I’m sorry I haven’t been publicly documenting it. My camera has been a visual graveyard of memories that literally no one else but Oran has seen yet and I want to remedy that.

So…I think I’m going to adopt a new approach. Rather than writing monthly sagas of everything that has happened, I’m updating in shorter more periodic bursts any time something of interest occurs.

Besides, if Buzzfeed taught me anything, the people prefer their bite-sized stories 😉

I’m also going to keep working on updating my backlog of reviews for concerts and other cultural events. I still can’t get over how many of my favorite artists bop by this tiny country and I want to share that with all of you.

Okay…Speaking of that Tiny Country, what Dutchie Things Have You Been Up To?

Well, they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, so I’ve put together a bit of a colleague of 2018 so far.

January 

We moved!

As a small town girl, I can’t tell you how much moving closer to the center of the city has increased my happiness here. Now, I’m just a stone throw’s away from all my favorite cafes, shops and the train I take to work. The best part about our new place too is that there is lots of room for guests! And boy have we had quite a line-up so far!

We’re the top two floors of the pretty periwinkle one in the middle!

Fun Work Field Trip

A couple of times a year my colleagues and I have the opportunity to visit important creative business centers in the Netherlands. In January, I had the opportunity to have a backstage tour of my favorite music venue in the whole country, the Tivoli Rendenburg in Utrecht!

Admittedly, my favorite part was finding this hidden tribute to Ohio in their loading dock 😉

Film Minor Awards Night

One of my favorite teaching duties this year at InHolland was helping to facilitate our Film Minor. For five months we had six hard-working groups of students write, direct, and star in their own short films.

Part of my job was coaching students in the creation of their film posters:

And their movie trailers:

This all culminated in a Film Awards night at the nicest theater (in my opinion) in the Hague! I can’t tell you how proud I was to see all of their hard work up on the big screen.

Above you can see that one of our student photographers caught me trying to look as astute as I can manage as one of the teachers…in reality, I was mostly being a cheeseball the whole night!

February

A Visit from Josh!

Our first visitor came for what was the coldest week of the year, thanks to some redirected winds from Siberia.

Nevertheless, we persevered! Josh has frankly the most impressive travel ethic I’ve ever encountered. He arrived with a detailed plan for literally every day he was with us. As a host, it really doesn’t get much better than that! He’s also a fantastic photographer, so I’ve taken the liberty of borrowing some of his shots as well from our week of travel around The Netherlands and Belgium.

Utrecht

Despite the cold, one of the fun parts of our week together was a nighttime adventure in Utrecht! Every night, buildings, bridges and even alleys are transformed into a spectacle of light. It’s a part of the Trajectum Lumen, a light art route through the historical city center of Utrecht. Each installation is created by renowned national and international light artists from around the world!

The cold was also much more bearable because we tried Jenever for the first time thanks to some new friends at a local Utrecht pub. It’s a juniper-flavored liquor and the result is basically a nice sipping gin, no tonic necessary!

Rotterdam

Surprisingly, I had not yet made it to the second biggest city in the Netherlands, Rotterdam! As one of the main port cities in all of Europe (more on that later) it was also a main target for bombings during World War II. As a result, the city was largely flattened. Today that means Rotterdam looks quite different from other Dutch cities with a much more modern architectural flair.

Of course, my favorite stop was the massive indoor market (or Markthal) filled with food from all over the world!

Belgium

I want to put together a more thorough post on our trip to Belgium. Oran and I had already been to Brussels, but this was our first time visiting Antwerp, Bruges, and (love of my life) Ghent. I could write a whole ode to Ghent, its beauty, and its delightfully hipster social scene.  So, for now, I’ll end Belgium on a few of my favorite shots from while we were there:

Antwerp

Bruges

Ghent

March

More visits! 

We were graced with not one, not two, but three fantastic visitors in March. My sister, Grace, had her spring break in March and decided (in a mildly impromptu way) to pay a visit for a week with my mom. Again, the weather wasn’t stellar, but we had a fun time nonetheless. Highlights included checking out the Windmill museum in Leiden.

And climbing to the top of the Dom tower in Utrecht (465 steps, woof!)

We also made sure to try plenty of Dutch treats like pancakes and kroketjes!

Just a few days later, one of my best friends from grad school also came for a short vacation from NYC.

God bless, New York. As someone from Ohio, I always think of transatlantic flights as unfathomably expensive and kind of assumed most of my friends would never be able to afford to visit. However, from JFK and Newark, you can get some really fantastically cheap tickets to Amsterdam (think $300-$400 round trip). If you’re ever thinking about planning a trip to Europe, I always recommend a free subscription to Scott’s Cheap Flights!

Most of our time was spent bar crawling and taking some pilgrimages to the various museums (as former Arts Admin students, how can you not?) A favorite highlight of mine was seeing a favorite college band, Walk the Moon.

Even at 25, I felt much older than the median age of the crowd. Nevertheless, we had a great time!

We also decide to indulge in one of the most touristy experiences in the Netherlands, the Keukenhof. From March to May each year, this park of over 7 million flowers opens itself up to the public.

Selfie sticks are abound, because the chances for great pictures, silly or otherwise, are endless!

April

King’s Day

King’s Day is the time of year the Dutch celebrate their king’s birthday (yes, they have one of those here!)

It’s actually a bit of an adjustment for everyone since the Netherlands has had a female monarch since the 1930s. So, until five years ago when they celebrated King Willem Alexanders crowning, it was called Queen’s Day.

The true partying tends to happen the night before on the aptly-named King’s Night.

I didn’t stray far from home. Leiden was filled with impromptu music venues throughout the city and more Heineken stands than you can shake a stick at.

The actual King’s Day is much more of a family event. People spend their day visiting pop-up flea markets, small carnivals for children, and indulging in some more beer. And of course, you have to wear the national color, orange! Leiden’s King’s Day was pretty peaceful, but bigger cities like Amsterdam can be swarmed if it’s a sunny day (as seen below).

A Visit from the Grandparents

Just a month after my mom and sister, my grandparents arrived for a nearly two week tri-country adventure. Thankfully, I was able to take the whole week off of work to chaperone. The Dutch consider 8 weeks of vacation pretty standard, and it’s really made having all of these visitors so much easier. It’s also made it pretty hard to ever consider going back to the USA where vacation time is typically a fraction of that at best, but that’s a different story…

We spent a few days touring the Netherlands, seeing Delft, the Hague, and plenty ofLeiden.

Funnily enough, I think their favorite part of the Netherlands though was Rotterdam! We really spent the day learning how important maritime culture is to Dutch culture. In the morning we visited the Dutch Maritime Museum. It’s filled with a wide array of exhibits, from an interactive offshore drilling experience to an exhibition about life on houseboats. Later we took a fantastic tour of the harbor with the Spido tour company. With miles and miles of storage boxes full of goods from around the world, it really drove home how important this port still is.

Then, we took a few days to show them Oran’s home, Northern Ireland. It was so exciting to have them meet Oran’s parent and to tour Belfast, the city where he grew up.

Our favorite parts of the visit were visiting the Titanic museum and taking a day trip up to the Giant’s Causeway.

You really can’t beat views like these!

May

Wooster reunion

It’s crazy, May onward truly just flew by. In part, it is because May has quite a few public holidays. A big highlight of the month though was a quick visit from my first friend from Wooster, Will! To celebrate finishing law school at the University of Wisconsin, Will was on a trip to Scotland with his family to celebrate, but managed to stop by our Will stopped by our neck of the woods for a few days. As a law student, it seemed basically mandatory to visit the Peace Palace. 

We also took a day trip to Utrecht (can you tell yet how obsessed I am with this Dutch city?) and took a pedal boat tour of their canals. I really can’t complain about being toured around by these two 😉 

June

End of Classes

June was a milestone month at work. Classes came to an end on June 8th and with the exception of some paperwork and meetings in July, this was the month work came to an end. A big project for me over the last few months was running the University’s Event Minor in the Hague. Although it was a bit of a bumpy road, I think that’s a natural part of learning how to successfully manage an event (or in the case of my students, multiple events!). One of the greatest challenges too was that over half of the students enrolled in the minor were actually exchange students from all over the world.

Their big capstone project for the minor was successfully planning and executing an end-of-year event that would build community between the Communications, Media and Entertainment Management, and International Media and Entertainment Managment students. They ultimately put together an all-day self-care day with a Throwback Thursday theme and based on the peer feedback, I couldn’t be more pleased as their mentor.

Middelburg

Another highlight of the month was tagging along with Oran a conference in Middelburg. Although it is the capital of the province of Zeeland, at 48,000 people Middelburg feels more like a medieval relic than a metropolitan zone.

The province itself is fascinating. As I learned at the region’s museum (pictured above), the shape of the region has changed drastically over time, with places like Middelburg transitioning from a part of the mainland to an island and eventually back to the mainland.

The changing water levels in part contribute to the fact that Zeeland is the most rural and least populated province in the country.

Fun fact: the reason Oran was there is that Middelburg is the home of the Roosevelt Study Center. Yes, that Roosevelt!

The Roosevelt Study Center is named after the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose ancestors emigrated to the New World from Zeeland in the 17th century.

The center, located in a part of the Middelburg Abbey, is mainly concentrated on modern American political history, quite unique for Europe!

July 

Nijmegen

While not quite over yet, a highlight of July was visiting the Summer Capital of Holland, Nijmegen! It’s one of the largest student cities in the Netherlands and you can really feel it with all of the fun bars and shops tucked throughout the city.

Another claim to fame that this city has is that it’s the oldest city in the Netherlands. At over 2,000 years old, the city is at an excellent vantage point on the river Waal and still has remnants of its ancient Roman and Medieval past.

However, like Rotterdam, the city was devastated by World War Two, and so much of the city looks quite new. If you’re really interested in WWII, something interesting you can do in the city is actually visit a preserved German bunker.

While quite small, it really shows how strategic the river was to German’s success and then ultimate demise during the war.

Finally, I think a true highlight of Nijmegen is the parks. Just outside the city, the Ooijpolder has hours of walking trails along the river and even the chance to see wild horses and cows.

And that’s it! Today we’re off to a holiday in Italy, so I’ll try to cobble together a report of wine and gelato-driven adventures around Tuscany. Ciao!

Dutch Word of the Week: mooi – Pretty, beautiful, sweet, good.

The actual English translation is something like ‘pretty’ and can apply to basically anything. A building, park, and certainly a person, for example: “Zij is heel mooi” means “She is really beautiful.” Don’t worry though, in Dutch ‘mooi’ doesn’t just apply to girls, a lovely guy can be referred to as ‘mooi’ as well 😉