Amsterdam is a stunning city in the Netherlands that primarily speaks Dutch, but most places also speak English there. With it being the Dutch capital, you can imagine that the housing cost is quite a bit of money, and you are right. Moving to Amsterdam is a great decision, but requires a lot of planning and patience to pull it off with the number of things you need to consider.
We asked a friend of ours, Max Lang-Orsini, to share his experience of living and working in Amsterdam for a short period. He says: ‘It’s fast become one of my favourite places to live and work. I’ve ended up staying much longer than I anticipated, and only partly because I’ve been locked down here for the past few months!’.
As everyone speaks excellent English, you’re highly unlikely to struggle with a language barrier. If you really want to blend in, and if you’re planning on spending a lot of time there, then do sign up for Dutch language lessons – they are so easy to find, and cost hardly anything except your time
If you do make the move, be prepared for a little bit of a culture shock. How about working life that predominately fits in between 10-4 and is then done for the day?! That of course means banks, offices, etc are also only open at these times so do make sure you plan your day accordingly. Of course, after a while, you adapt to the new time schedule and soon fit in with your new home country’s timetable of doing things!
It’s a beautiful city to visit, for sure, and if you’re planning on working there it’s highly likely that you’ll find employment in the tourism sector and its associated industries like food, entertainment, etc. As the world moves out of lockdown and things get back to normal, this is all starting to open back up again for you.
Amsterdam is pretty developed so you won’t see any mega culture shock, but typically finding work there you’ve got to be highly skilled at a job. When finding a job at first, it tends to be fairly difficult. You will notice through many conversations that a lot of the people who moved to Amsterdam outside of the Netherlands mainly came through work permits. This shows that there are a lot of international workers there in Amsterdam, meaning it’s culturally diverse!
Everyone will find something about living in this city wonderful. Whether you enjoy the little things, such as going out to the city center and speaking to fellow neighbors nearby in the morning. A slower pace of life, more home time rather than work time, and the less stressful existence that comes with this way of living are of course, most desirable to nearly all of us.