Life in Holland
Our perception of what’s been slightly over two months, since we’ve been living here.
Let me start with time a little before that. Sneha and I picked-up a copy of Culture Shock series on Netherlands, soon after I accepted a position in the company I was to join. Since we had no clue, whatsoever, about Holland, it only made sense in buying such a book.
Sure enough, the book introduced us to some of the “weirdness” of this part of the world — if I may say so — without offending my, otherwise, really decent Dutch hosts. Lots of eyebrow raising stuff from the word go made it an extremely interesting read. So much that we are a fan of these Culture Shock series.
Getting to know the place and people, before you actually go there, would surely go a long way in making yourself familiar, in making sense out of and towing the line of local customs or simply understand how different they are.
I would be drawing parallels from a few other parts of the world, mostly the far-east and India, which I am familiar with or have visited, purely for defining the word: difference.
Pre-requisites: Holland has an iron-clad system for entry, especially in terms of immigration. I will not delve on this topic (you can look it up on the web), but it would probably suffice to say that it took me close to 3 months on the grind to get my papers in order before I could come here with my family (and my family and I did everything ourselves; no agencies, no brokers). This was inspite of the fact that my company did the entire processing: applied and obtained visa (for self and my family), work-permits (for spouse too), et al.
The journey: We took the NWA-KLM from Mumbai to Amsterdam. If you’d like to travel to Amsterdam, this would be the one. NWA introduced a new flight in October and it smelled brand new. Airbus’ business class seats stretch out flat like a nice lumber. And they’ve got built-in variable back-massagers. Absolute bliss because we never realized that we were on a 10-hour long journey. This was by far the most painless journey we have ever taken (courtesy, my company).
Arrival: Like I mentioned before, Schipol was a surprise. The best was the immigration counter. No forms to fill, no nothing. This was very unlike in India, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand or Indonesia. The chauffer-driven car was waiting to take us to our hotel and we hopped in. We had a chatty driver, in a 3-piece suit I might add, and within a 30 minute journey, I had learned far more about the Dutch history than I did while I read the entire book, cover to cover.
This is getting far too long, but I think I have to break it up into parts. So, I’ll just close this post and continue in the next, soon.