“I am planning to move to Spain for six months to become fluent in Spanish”. A young lady with inspiring plans posts in a Facebook group I am a member of, asking for recommendations. I can’t help responding that whereas I think immersion in a language is great and super helpful, fluency in just six…
“Your life is so exciting, you travel so much”. I am meeting two of my closest friends over the Christmas break, and they express their envy of some of the things that I am doing. And it is true, you know, I do travel a lot. Last year I went on six trips, and the…
No one likes going to the doctor. Doctor visits are like Russian roulette: sometimes you are lucky and you have a nice and empathetic doctor, sometimes you are less lucky and you are either treated like a child who cannot differentiate left from right, or worse, totally trashed for one reason or another. And it…
Hamburg Airport. I am going through security for the zillionth time this year and the security personnel asks me whether I speak German or English. I reply that I speak both, and I smile secretly. Hamburg Airport must be about the only place in Germany where people routinely ask me in which language I prefer…
This month marks the two year anniversary of my decision to move to Germany. It was not an easy decision at the time, having job offers from both Hamburg and Kuwait. Right after gradution I did not think that I would end up in the luxurious position of having to choose between jobs, but there I…
There are many great things about living and working abroad: the possibility to discover new places, during the weekend, meeting cool people from all over the world, and yes, also learning a new language. In theory, in any case. Speaking a foreign language on a daily basis was one of the things that I found most…
With less than two weeks to go until my Italy trip, it suddenly struck me. The guilt feeling. That little voice inside your head asking you why you are using a few of your precious holidays to go travel a foreign country, all on your own. The answer is very easy of course: with the…
With Erdogan and his referendum campaign creating headlines all over the world, one would almost forget that a political event of note also took place in the Netherlands. This month, the Netherlands voted for a new parliament, an event I had been looking forward with both hope and anxiety. On the one hand it was a chance to get…
“Oh, you’re from the Netherlands? Not so far from home then, right?”. A pretty standard conversation in expat circles, where friends have moved to Germany from the USA, Canada, South Africa or China. They are indeed a long way from home, and some have not visited their home countries for over a year. I was…
April 20, 1945. In a little over two weeks World War II will be over. The Nazis are under no illusions anymore: the war was lost a long time ago. They will use the time remaining to destroy as much evidence as possible. That does not only include the vast administration, but also the still…
The Life And Times Of A Dutchie Abroad 