The Netherlands offers a transient exploration of comfort, worldliness, absolutely zero stress and at times, dull predictability — all antithetical to America I’ve known for years.
Relocating to Amsterdam after a decade in New York City and Los Angeles has proven to be more than a simple geographical shift.
The language barrier is increasingly smaller as everyone speaks English, and trying to learn Dutch requires the adorning of a “Speak Dutch to me! Please!” badge, alongside a persistent insistence.
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This makes both culture and social scenes carry a digestible point of entry; I’ve yet to attend a festival, show, cafe-outing or bar-hopping that didn’t cater to the universal language of English.
Perhaps it’s also the lowest common denominator, and I am that low point.
I’ll take it, as immigrating to America required seven years of ESL classes (English as Second Language); running parallel to books-worth of complaints from my peers about the institutionally-enforced requisite to take foreign language classes for a minimum of two years — of which they could pick from a lavish buffet offering comprehensive Spanish, French, Mandarin, or Japanese. Hardly torture.
School and early development
Academics has always been a point of departure between American and Dutch culture.
In the States, the average high school graduating class (traditionally, ninth through twelfth grade) has been over 700 students since the 1999-2000 academic year — a number so staggering that the average European student or graduate couldn’t, and shouldn’t, hope to relate to.
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Schools are farms, with many of the elite colleges and universities functioning as major corporations, with satellite offices in every American metropolis — and London, of course.
New York University has a campus in many more cities than just New York; the University of Southern California reaches far beyond its Los Angeles campus; and, the Ivy Leagues are so much more than their historically young campuses — but they are young by European standards anyway.
I once saw a commemorative staircase in America that had been deemed a national monument due it its erection around the 1890s.
This is not really a celebration-worthy feat for a country, particularly one that hadn’t seen war on its soil for a century before this magnificent hill-ascending device was erected for a purpose I still haven’t sorted out.
Close-knit schooling
Growing up, I knew every one of my 25 classmates, their siblings, parents, and after-school activities.
I knew the careers their parents had or didn’t have and if someone was sick or if there were changes in family dynamics. I could tell you about them as though they were first cousins, and you’d leave the conversation thinking we had a lifelong relationship.
Somehow, we do. I’d drop what I was doing at the sight of any one of them. A car purchase was shared news, as were vacation plans, and everything that happened over the weekend became Monday’s entertainment. We didn’t have social media (what a time.)
I recall only knowing people who could construct full sentences. We maintained planners and kept our plans, even without four calls and a bible verse of text exchanges.
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What develops later in life is a greater sense of self. Kids ride their bikes to and from school with their friends. They understand how to function on their own two feet before they hit their late teens.
A time where the average age group around them include the riskier early twenties guys trying to fish in a shallower pond, and unattainable women who introduced you to rejection on a level some toughness might help you through.
Where might that toughness come from? Perhaps the exposure to different and unknown ways of life-found realities of your fellow students and friends.
The land of the free
America is all about achievement and working harder than the rest, often mistaking activity for accomplishment. Where the Dutch seek to find a balance between quality of life, and quality of work.
You’ll make more money in America if you succeed, but you’ll work more and have less intangible value.
In the Netherlands, you’ll live smaller, have less material wealth, but a full work week supposedly won’t surpass 40 hours, and the idea of a second job is far from normal.
At this point in my life, the only people I know who have a single job make more than 150K a year and have very little to talk about outside their income, or what happened in the 10 hours they were at the office today — with a few exceptions, as there always are.
As a consequence, their place of employment becomes the halls of their high school, and the friends who don’t work there become memories to glorify between beers.
Connection to place
The United States has a lot to offer, most of which was there before anyone set sail, and some of it remains untouched. The American friends I have and keep, who forgive my massive European bias, all have very specific relationships with the places they love.
One, from Montana, absolutely loves where she’s from, and I must admit I’ve always been smitten by it, as my own mild nationalism sings a similar tune.
Another loves the service he provides to a nation that has ultimately given him a purpose in a capacity he’d never felt.
A third finds tremendous freedom in the idea of freedom and its daily struggles.
Some balance, perhaps
I’ve always regarded Europe as the place where you grow up and raise your family, but America is the football pitch where you go to play the economic game of life.
A place where you are tackled, get back up to show them who’s best and work tirelessly till you are high enough up to look down. Then you can go home, sub out, and hope whoever comes on after you somehow highlights the things you did.
To most who drank the elixir of the rat race, the field feels like a never-ending track that has fixed outcomes, and horses on steroids are only sold to some.
But it makes you feel alive and active in a way no other can, but you must be at your best, and on your A-game at all times.
Testing yourself against these stratospheric standards truly leaves one wanting when faced with a more relaxed Dutch narrative. One with an hour of work before the first coffee break, a question about price before quality, and less risk-taking.
Both arenas offer aspects that truly seem attractive in contrast, but neither reigns supreme without the other to highlight its blessings. We need one another, and a vacation is only a vacation if you have a job to return to, otherwise you’re simply floating — which can be a great life.
What is your experience with these two countries? Let us know in the comments!
I went to the Us in 1993, at age 36. I worked and lived in both Ohio and California. Had to struggle with lots of cultural differences, compounded when I married my American husband, at age 38.
I heard myself saying: this would never happen in the Netherlands. Or: we do this different in the Netherlands. Then, in 2012, I went back to the Netherlands to live and work there till last year. In those years there were many eye openers for me: so much had changed in the Netherlands of now.
But it helped me to put things in perspective and now I live in Texas and don’t feel the need to compare anymore.
But for the sake of this article, I have to offer: the Dutch might be at the working place less hours, but “we”are still more productive. The Dutch like to organize their work and explore different ideas. However, “ we” often take new ideas, especially coming from the US , as gospel and work on implementation a long while, till it works. In the US there is a new flavor of the week so often, that implementation hardly happens.
I was surprised about the strong Dutch national feelings( admitting you like Dutch songs and going to concerts, not in my time) so that makes it balanced with the US. However “ we” still have more knowledge about geography etc, while, till today, I have to answer where my slight accents is from and get confronted with German greetings, Gaelic “hello’s or the Netherlands is placed in Scandinavia.
In that same vain I encountered the school systems differences. I studied year round for my Master’s and had only 6 weeks off in summer. Here they count semesters with short hours( not even 60 minutes) and in comparison, according to the US school system, I had not had enough time studied for my MBA.
But all in all, the differences are becoming smaller and the Netherlands is becoming Anglofied and has copied much of the US behavior/ processes. Not always for the better. Time will learn. I live happily as a Dutchie in Texas, with my American- Jewish raised husband and we have found a nice balance. So I don’t talk about us and we and them anymore( too confusing?)
Karen I do share your sentiments.
But I cannot be negative about living in the Netherlands nor in the US. I have lived in Arizona since 1982 and the writer should understand that there are differences between living in California, New York and other States in the US. The same also applies to living in the Netherlands. North and South Holland are very different from living in the other Provinces of the Netherlands. I moved to Arizona in the early 80s. and I have been back to the Netherlands many times to visit Relatives and Friends. At times I do miss the Dutch style of living, but so do I miss the American conveniences when I am in the Netherlands.
I lived in the Phoenix Area and in Prescott Valley.There even is a difference between those locations in Arizona. I get it that people detest that both partners in a relationship need to work. But do they really have to. No not really. The situation in the US has provided females to be very independent and proud of what they could contribute to society. Of course that does not apply to everyone, but people have the freedom to make choices. We are in charge of our choices and that applies to people in the Netherlands as well.
I always wonder what it would have been like if I would have stayed in the Netherlands. Oh I realize that I have missed out on quite a few things by moving to Arizona, but I may not have forgone on some of the opportunities that were presented to me in the US. To me it is not a matter of black and white but rather of optimizing the opportunities we are given, regardless of where we live. And YES, it is also a matter of accepting missing out on the GOOD the other place may have given you.
I still live with the question: “What If”. It simply is a question I will never know the answer of.
And that is OK, and I still love the Netherlands and Arizona. It is something no one or nothing can take away from me, even an article that highlights negatives about living in the US.
I hear you Roy! I agree and having come home this last week from a 4 week immersion in the Netherlands, I say:” I am blessed to have a home in both countries- and that is good”!
After moving to the US 43 years ago at age 23, home is still The Netherlands for me. In my opinion the US is a beautiful place for a vacation (not for a US resident, since paid time-off is limited when employed).
I could write a book!! All i can say, after 50 odd years back and forth, is that QUALITY OF LIFE is so so much better in the Netherlands!