6 Things to Know When Moving to Amsterdam

I love Amsterdam. But I moved here on very short notice – I decided to move here 1 week prior to my arrival – and all I knew about the culture I learned from my lovely experience as a deportee back in 2009. In sum, to me the Dutch were racist bastards whose pretty faces I wanted to punch. So there are many things that I didn’t consider before coming here that I urge you to consider should you decide to take the plunge.

1. It’s windy. It’s VERY windy.

It should be easy to connect the dots between windmills and constant wind but I wasn’t even thinking about windmills when I came. It gets really windy here, so windy that every once in a while my bike gets blown off course and I’ve to get off it and walk it lest I be blown into a canal!

2. The Dutch are not as good at English as it’s said

Dutch and English have many similarities but there are also many false friends and grammatical differences that can lead to misunderstandings. This doesn’t happen often but sometimes you’re just trying to have a conversation and need to stop every so often to explain what you mean. It might happen that a Dutchie will say “I’ll learn you Dutch” instead of “I’ll teach you Dutch.” Or in certain contexts you might have to stop for a second to understand why they’re asking you “What are you doing here?” when you’re having a drink at a bar on a Saturday night. Then it becomes clear that what they mean is, “What do you do for a living?” Jokes, irony and sarcasm generally go over a Dutchie’s head.

3. Gorgeous men who can’t flirt = frustration

Imagine you’re stuck on a desert island with the hottest men on the planet (George Clooney, Mark Fisher or whoever floats your boat). Then imagine finding out that all these men are gay. Perhaps not so extreme but you get an idea of the kind of frustration women might experience with Dutch men on a regular basis. As I mentioned in the past, Dutch women fought for equal rights but they went too far and metaphorically castrated the men. Dutch men cannot flirt for their lives and single expat women complain about the precarious dating life. Many agree that in time foreign women start to feel unattractive.

4. Amsterdam is a small city

This is one of my favorite things about Amsterdam! Its total population is under 800,000. Even if that figure doesn’t include all the illegal Americans and other unregistered residents, it’s still rather small for such a famous capital city, especially to those of us used to New York, Sao Paulo and Paris. The story goes that it starts to feel too small after a while but it’s definitely worth taking the risk.

She said she's German

5. The Dutch are NOT like the Germans!

They might be neighbors but the laid back Dutch are very different from the strict Germans. The Dutch have found loopholes to break their own drug laws, invented the term gezellig (loosely translated as “cozy”) and produced Van Gogh while the Germans have developed the best machinery in the world, birthed Hitler and become associated with sexual fantasies that are based on discipline.

6. Flowers are everywhere

This is probably not a big deal for most people, but if you’ve allergies or if you’re a fellow anthophobic, it’s good to take note that there’s a tulip fest here for a reason. The damp climate also makes it the perfect place to have orchids, the monster of flowers.