On Life in the Netherlands Three Years On
It’s been a while since I last wrote here so I wanted to take a moment to catch you up.
After Italy we, we decided to move to the Netherlands. We have now been living in the Netherlands for three years. We started out in a small studio in South Limburg, in a tiny town called Sittard, and then eventually moved further north, close to Eindhoven, into a much bigger flat. I pivoted out of teaching and into a new career, which I love mainly because it restores my work-life balance, which as a teacher I was sorely missing. I now have more time to focus on what I love instead of planning lessons and marking homework in my off time.
The move was both easy and difficult. Easy because I have an EU passport that allows me freedom of movement within the EU and makes getting the proper paperwork in order easier for both me and my husband, who is a third-country national. This makes looking for work, applying for insurance, and getting our BSN number (our Dutch social security number) easier. What made things harder was not speaking Dutch. This made looking for meaningful work that I would actually enjoy doing feel like searching for a needle in a haystack. I needed luck, and I got lucky twice. But the time in between spent searching was very stressful.
This was also the case when we abruptly found out that our housing contract was ending. We had assumed that it was indefinite until we got our notice, which left us with only a few weeks to find a new home. Again, we got lucky and managed to find a new home that was bigger and better than our other one, but not without stress and worry, made so much worse by the current housing crisis.
Three years on, it is only now that we are beginning to see our life in the Netherlands take shape into something more stable and concrete. Our next priority is to learn the language, which we have already started doing. Because this is now our home, we want to integrate as much as possible, if only to be better able to engage with our community and gain a deeper understanding of Dutch culture.
On a more personal level, I’ve returned to my writing and to my photography, and I am doing both more consistently. For a while there, I felt a little lost as I adjusted not only to our new life here but also to the final stages of my own healing journey, which I started in 2017. I had no idea then that it would take nine years for me to finally see the end of it. Now I feel like I need some time to catch up with myself—to reflect on where I’ve been and what I’ve learned. More on this later. In the meantime, if you would like to see my latest photographs, please head over to my photo diary.
x Martina
