First Impressions
Well I’ve been in The Hague for about 48 hours now and thought I’d share my first impressions. Overall I’m having a great time getting used to the new city and plotting my eventual move over in January. Definitely staying busy at work and looking forward to Lindsey’s arrival and my first weekend here. Thought I’d share my first impressions on the 5 following categories:
Transport: Public transportation has worked out very well. Since I’ve been here have taken trains, trams, buses, and cars. Still haven’t ridden a bike yet as the bike shop in Amsterdam was all sold out of bikes when I stopped by. I’m taking my time and will probably buy a bike this weekend.
Weather: The weather’s been as everyone expected it. Today I saw cloudy, sunny, rainy, windy, and snowy all separated by a few hours timespan.
Language: Many people I’ve run into have spoken English. There have been a few, however, that don’t speak it. I had first thought I’d forgo learning the language, but now I’m thinking I’ll put in a bit of time to learn some key phrases at a minimum. I’m anticipating the hardest part about Dutch will be the pronunciation. I still can’t properly pronounce Kneuterdijk - the name of the bus stop I’ve used a number of times.
American impressions: Lots of American influences over here. From fast food restaurants (KFC, Burger King, McD’s) to cigarettes (Marlboro) to technology (Apple), they’ve got plenty of American influences. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like it seems like America around every corner, just nice to know that some of the little things I’m used to can be had here. Definitely see a KFC trip coming up soon…
Thanks for reading! I’ll probably only post 1 or 2 more times while I’m over here just because I’ve stayed fairly busy with work. I’ll also need a little warm up time to get used to being consistent…
Can you and Lindsey buy a 2 person bike and ride it everywhere?
I’ve asked Lindsey, but not sure if she’ll go for it. They do have 2 person bikes here but they’re not too common. At the very least, we’ll each get a 1 person bike and ride it everwhere…
I loved reading about your first impressions! Good luck to you and Lindsey with apartment-hunting!
You could just make Lindsey ride on your pegs.
Matt,
The language thing is one of the great things about the Netherlands, i.e., English is not really a problem for most of them. With a nation of around 16 million people, they couldn’t really survive in the world just speaking Dutch. I had a friend at UVA from Holland and he spoke English better than I did.
Here in Spain, getting by on English is much tougher. Sure, there are a lot of people who do it, but your life is really difficult unless you learn the language. Basically none of the Spanish speak English at all.
Anyway, you should definitely learn some Dutch. I want to be impressed with your skills when I arrive.
Try Rossetta Stone for learning Dutch. The program starts off slow, but it forces you to learn and use the language instead of just memorizing.