So I’ve asked around about moving to the Netherlands, and a lot of people have recommended expatica.com. It’s a huge site, with hundreds of pages, and I have to admit, I’m a little exasperated. I have yet to find any information that I can actually use. From the “All about schools in the Netherlands” article I learned that there are schools! In the Netherlands! Several different kinds! No information about how to choose one, how to get your kid into it, or even whom to ask for further information (although there is a very strong bias toward international (private, expensive) schools. I don’t wanna send my kid to private school.). Ditto the thing about orientation courses for incoming teenagers – an article states that there is such a thing, and it would be good for my teenager, but doesn’t name a single one.
On the housing page, I do a search for houses for sale in Utrecht, costing between €150,000 and €650,000 and find that there is nothing, not one single house. Wow. Funda.nl lists 1,677.
Argh. Toytown it ain’t. It’s more like what you’d find in a magazine in the dentist’s waiting room.
Song du jour of the day: Doctor My Eyes, by Jackson Browne.
September 7th, 2008 at 2:45 am
You are moving??! I am so behind, it is ridiculous. I have so much catching up to do!
September 7th, 2008 at 8:08 am
Yah, expatica is highly overrated. It’s an ok site if you just want to go and read some news and stuff like that. I think a lot of people use it more for the forums.
When are you moving?
September 7th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
@ Awa: yep, I’m moving! Pretty excited about it, too, except that…
@ Breigh: WAAAH! I don’t KNOW when! I try not to complain to my husband, but I hate this in-between status, this waiting for something big to happen, and every decision we make seems to push the moving date back further. We thought briefly of November, then moved it to January, and now we’re talking about April. *whimper*
September 7th, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I am seriously all moved out. But my next move, I hope is to some place exotic or overseas. I would love to be somewhere in Europe.
September 9th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
It took me a while to get around expatica too.. I tried the forums for a short time to get helpful tips about driver’s license info, but I discovered a few of those responding seemed
disgruntledsemi-jaded in their responses. I never posted another question again.. The news can be helpful, but I think it’s best to not rely 100% on expatica as a total resource. And sites like Funda.nl are far better for the housing searches 😉