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Home > Thoughts from my vacation experience - the Netherlands - quality of life

Thoughts from my vacation experience - the Netherlands - quality of life

November 10th, 2008 at 05:54 pm


This fall we visited few places in Europe. Each one had something different I liked. I'll start with Holland.

It is a country with a high standard of living, and to me it is more about the the life balance.

Normal Dutch workweek is 4 days (8 hours a day)!

Main mode of transportation by far is a bicycle.

It is simply amazing how quiet the streets are and how ugly parking lots are not at all the part of the landscape. The country is extremely bike oriented – bike lanes are everywhere and cars really respect them. Bike parking is everywhere. People look very fit.

Everyone including doctors and many politicians get to work by bike. Babies ride in special baskets or in carts and bigger kids ride next to parents.
There are cars, but much much less, and mostly smaller cars – no trucks or SUVs.

And even people who have cars don’t use them every day – they still get around by bike and use cars when going out of town.

Dutch housing
Houses are much smaller and are mostly attached to each other.

Many people live in apartments.



The streets are just charming.
Many ground floor apartments, while having large windows, for some reason do not have curtains and I was peaking in while walking for hours.


Furniture is mostly modern and small, with air of space and light (there are tiny charming gardens in the back) Look very well kept and cozy. Small kitchens with beautiful appliances look very inviting. I would love to live in such a place.

Education
The semester for masters costs 1,500 euros per year for dutch students (I forgot to ask about bachelors, as our friend is doing his masters there.)
Since Dutch parents pay high taxes (about 45%) a lot of social things are subsidized – one of them is education. You need certain grades to get admitted to the university.
We pay about 40% in taxes, and do not get these benefits such as government medical care, subsidies college education for us and future children, extended maternity leave, etc… In US only the poorest people get these benefits(and they don’t pay any taxes)– yet the Dutch managed to provide it to all. I do not like it that while paying more taxes we are eligible for no benefits these taxes provide.

Good service/friendly people
Tipping is not obligatory, yet service is better. Service industry people depend mainly on salary and that cost is build in to the price and clear.

Multilingual
Not only does everyone speak Dutch and English, most people know a third, fourth, sometimes fifth language. I started to feel inadequate with my 3.

Tolerance
From light drugs, prostitution, porn, euthanasia, same sex unions.... Whether or not you I find this immoral, I believe that morality should not be legally enforced. That in itself is immoral and is a slippery slope. And outside the more seedy Amsterdam city center there was no visible evidence of these things. Smaller towns where all of it is still legal nevertheless are perfectly beautiful places. There was less pot in the university town in Delft than in NJ suburb.

15 Responses to “Thoughts from my vacation experience - the Netherlands - quality of life”

  1. dmontngrey Says:
    1226341093

    Beautiful pictures! Thank you for sharing.

  2. Analise Says:
    1226341205

    Beautiful pictures and thought-provoking commentary. I would love to visit the Netherlands some day.

  3. Ms. Pearl Says:
    1226344092

    I spent a week in Antwerp, Belgium last year. It looks very similar and they are geographically very close to Netherlands. I had a lot of the same thoughts as you. At this point in my life, I would love to live in Europe. Most of my husbands company he works for is based in Israel and Europe so I always hold out hope that maybe someday we could live there. I'm glad you had a good time!

  4. thriftorama Says:
    1226344530

    I love Holland. I would move there tomorrow if the opportunity arose. I feel like Europeans get so much more for their tax dollars than we do.

  5. mom-sense Says:
    1226348803


    Thanks for sharing your photos! I can daydream about whiling away the hour in a beautiful place like that!

  6. whitestripe Says:
    1226350525

    thankfully i live in a country where tipping is not the norm and people who work in retail and hospitality get a full wage and don't rely on tips.

    i agree with you on your topic of tolerance. sometimes it is better to accept something than always fight it. if something isn't 'allowed' then you will get so many people who will fight for it, or do it anyway.

  7. Tijdzhania Says:
    1226352169

    I have lived in the Netherlands for 10 years and I have never come across any company which has a normal work week of 4 days :-S

  8. NJDebbie Says:
    1226367530

    Please keep posting pictures and info. I love learning about other cultures. : )

  9. whitestripe Says:
    1226384057

    Oh, I forgot to ask: did you go to Italy on your holiday? my family is italian - and I love their day structure over there.

  10. Broken Arrow Says:
    1226409323

    Wow, what beautiful pictures. I especially like the idea of being able to bike everywhere.

  11. john maastricht Says:
    1226483294

    You fail to mention the downside of Holland and the Dutch. The rudeness, the selfishness, the streets blighted by dealers of hard drugs.The cyclists who think they have a God-given right to mow you down.The meanness.The widely acknowledged appalling service in supermarkets.The dreadful food - as bad as England.The idea that shocking people with your tasteless jokes and japes is funny.Most people dress like they're in a dole queue - cheap and nasty leisure wear.The obsession with paper work. (the hospitals are good - as you'd expect given the taxes you have to pay).

  12. Nika Says:
    1226511842

    John, Holland may have its own problems but rudeness and bad service was not one of them. I had quite the opposite experience.

    Food is quite bland, but it is possible to find something decent if you are lucky.

    From you experience it sounds like you just stayed in the center of Amsterdam near the red light district. It is seedy there and full of foreigners looking for sex and drugs. Normal Dutch towns don't have that vibe.

    Whitestripe, no we did not go to Italy. Just Netherlands, Paris, Bavaria, Austria, Poland and Ukraine.

  13. whitestripe Says:
    1226520598

    john - it sounds like you are a little closed minded and expect everything to be the way it is when you travel as at home.

  14. Marcel Says:
    1544222661

    I just love the landscapes with tulips

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