Expats Meet Dutchies..... Dutchies Meet Expats: A Family Picnic 12 June

My blog post about the survey that implies the Netherlands is an expat unfriendly country hit a nerve with many of you - especially when it came to the subject of making local friends.

So on this note.. I thought I would share an event with you which is designed to help you meet local Dutch people and vice versa.

On Sunday 12 June, Expat Buddy is organising an "A Family Picnic Affair" in Westerpark in Amsterdam. It starts at 2pm and finishes at 5pm. Bring the kids, a picnic basket and something to sit on and wile the afternoon away in the company of Dutchies and Expats. There's lots of information in the flyer below - and you can find details on www.xllentguidance.com






































ExpatBuddy's concept is "We are your temporary best friend" for the difficult period just after your relocation, focusing on the social and emotional distress of moving and making sure expats and their families have someone to support them finding their way around - a network, jobs, recruitment, lifestyle, neighborhood etc. In short, ExpatBuddy.nl is an aftercare service provider.

The company also organises HRM Expat knowledge sessions to create awareness about the emotional state of mind of expats and spouses after relocating - something international companies could certainly benefit from if expat surveys are anything to go by.

So put it in your diary - and maybe I'll see you there next Sunday!

"Well I Never Knew That": Rafael van der Vaart - From Humble Beginnings

(c) Amanda van Mulligen

In September last year, Dutch footballer Rafael van der Vaart made a move to Premiership football in England from Real Madrid after losing a regular place in the Spanish side. The move to Tottenham Hotspur was met with excitement from the English press.

A few weeks ago I watched an interview with the Dutchman on Football Focus on a Saturday on the BBC. He talked about his youth growing up living in a caravan in Heemskerk. And that is where he learned to play football, using empty beer bottles as goal posts. He says now that he realises that his lifestyle growing up was different but he covets it all the same. He was talent spotted at the age of 10 and subsequently joined the Ajax Academy. The rest, as they say is history.

This interesting fact about this international football star had passed me by. Now a quick look on the internet and the English press was full of it at the time of his transfer.

What is also interesting is the fact that his mother is Spanish. She moved to Holland when she was 6 so by rights he could have also chosen to play for the Spanish national team. Luckily for Holland he chose to play for his birth country.

He is reminded of his humble beginning every time he heads 'home' as he passes the caravan where the van der Vaart family used to live on the way to his parents' house - the one he bought for them when he made a name for himself in the footballing world.

Having cost Spurs £8,000,000 and played in a World Cup Final last year, he certainly has come a long way from the life he started in a caravan north of the Dutch capital city. No wonder his mantra is 'believe'.

Guest Post: Robin Pascoe looks back on her visits to Holland

Author, inspirational speaker, writer, mother of third culture kids, traveller and once an accompanying spouse. Many words to describe my guest blogger today. Two words sum it up better: Expert expat. I am delighted that Robin Pascoe has written a guest blog for A Letter from the Netherlands - here she takes a look back at her visits to Holland. Over to Robin.......


I decided this past year to stop traveling around the world on speaking tours primarily because I had visions of people saying, is she still doing that? But I overlooked one huge downside to my decision:

I wouldn’t be visiting Holland on a regular basis anymore!

When my husband left diplomatic service for the private sector and we repatriated to Vancouver, Canada, I never figured I would lecture ever again. Until one day, in our first year back and out of the clear blue, I had a fax (yes, that’s how long ago it was) from my original publisher in Singapore: a group in The Hague called “Outpost” was interested in inviting me to Holland to keynote their first Global Conference.

Immediately, I called my best friend who was living in Holland at the time and asked her to investigate just who this Outpost group might be. At the same time, I played a heavy guilt card on my husband (who was travelling more, if that was possible, in his new job) that it was time for me to have a go at getting out of town.

Shell Outpost as everyone knows, became the role model for all the corporate spousal organisations that have followed since. It turned out that a survey had revealed my very first book about being an expat wife was very popular with Shell spouses. Who knew? Not me. I always have claimed I have a life I don’t personally participate in!

Shell kicked off for me over ten years of coming over to Holland from my side of the world to speak to so many groups, I had to really think hard to remember them all.

There was the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) in the early days; the American School of the Hague (twice); and the International School of Amsterdam  (also twice). Expatica.com, a great site I contributed articles to on a regular basis, organised a conference or two (I think one was in Rotterdam).

Then there were the women’s clubs: the American Women’s Club of Amsterdam (twice); Global Connection (also twice); Connecting Women in The Hague; the European Professional Women’s Network and of course, Shell Outpost in The Hague (too many times to remember after that initial conference).

The list (and I know I’m forgetting others) doesn’t do justice, though, to how much fun I always had visiting Holland and how much I miss it.

From my very first trip, where I insisted (even knowing I have no sense of direction), “oh, please don’t go to the bother of picking me up at the airport” because I would rather catch a train and go in the opposite direction of The Hague... to my last one, when my non-stop KLM flight back to Vancouver was the only flight on the board at Schipol Airport to be cancelled that day.

Robin travelling in traditional style in Amsterdam 

There was also the time I met over lunch with my Google doppelganger, the British journalist living in Holland also named Robin Pascoe and then wrote a funny piece about ‘meeting myself’ for a Canadian newspaper.

Finally, they say a picture is worth a thousand stories. This one of me sitting in a Dutch bakfiets which was my means of transport to my AWC meeting by my hostess made it to the cover of my re-issued wife book. I was certainly glad my hostess was very fit as I watched the streetcars whiz by me in the opposite direction.

Too many stories (Queen’s Day celebrations one year in Hilversum would be an entire blog posting on its own) and too many memories (most of them involving getting lost!)

One day, I simply must get back, as my good friend and partner-in-expat-writing crime Jo Parfitt is living in The Hague inspiring new authors.

And where does her husband work? Shell, of course.  What goes around definitely comes around!

Author and ExpatExpert Robin Pascoe doesn’t travel anymore so she created an on line global lecture tour at www.youtube.com/robinpascoe

"Komt Een Vrouw bij de Dokter" - The Book

As I crept in to bed sniffing and snottering my husband asked,

"Finished your book then?"

Yes I had. I had just turned the final page over of 'Komt een Vrouw bij de Dokter' written by Kluun (aka Raymond van de Klundert). This is Kluun's debut novel written in 2003 and is dramatised from events in his own life.

It's a funny thing to enjoy a book which evokes gut wrenching tears but enjoy it I did. Well, when I say enjoy... I mean I found it hard to put down, I emphasised with the characters and I experienced their pain. That's what a good book should do right - put you into someone else's world?

When I woke the next morning I had puffed up red eyes and I was glad the book was finished. Myrna Goossen (Aperitivo) sums it up perfectly, "Man, man, wat een heftig book."

Komt een vrouw bij de doktor is a book about Stijn and Carmen living in Amsterdam in the prime of their life, both running their own companies, enjoying the night life of the Dutch capital city, surrounded by success and friends. Until they are struck by breast cancer.

This book is their journey through cancer, about how it rips at the heart of their family and confronts her close friends. It is written from the perspective of Stijn, a fun loving, philandering, emotionally challenged husband as he faces up to the reality that his wife is terminally ill. It is a book about preparing for the end, an ode to love and the strength of family. The book is a roller coaster of emotion from anger at the medical establishment, to hope brought by treatment options, desperation as the effects of chemo take hold, to the final realisation that Carmen won't see their young daughter, Luna grow up. It is a heart wrenching read, and all the more because it is based on real events.

Be prepared for humour and tears.

For those whose Dutch is in progress..... the book is available in English with the title "Love Life" by Ray Kluun. It has also been made into a very successful film of the same title starring Carice van Houten, Barry Atsma and Pierre Bokma. You can see the trailer on zie.nl.

A book sequel entitled "Widower" is also available (though I am yet to read it but it is on my reading list for sure).

Bonfire Night - Thwarting An Early Terrorist Threat

Wrapped up in woollen scarves, hats and gloves we would stand excitedly in the dark waiting for the lighting of the bonfire; for the moment when the flames would spring in to life and the wood would start to crackle, for the moment that we could feel the heat on our cold, red cheeks. The guy perched at the top of the fire would eventually fall and burn, the effort of making the figure disappearing literally in a puff of smoke.

Once the bonfire was in full flame, we would turn our excitement to the fireworks which would be next to start. In the meantime we warmed ourselves and filled our tummies with soup, a jacket potato or a hot dog or hamburger.

Then the firework display would start and the crowd would "ooh" and "aahhhh" in unison as Catherine Wheels spun, spider fireworks trailed their orange legs across the dark, starry sky and Roman Candles sent shooting stars heaven bound. We would wave our sparklers around, writing our names in light. The bangs, whistles, screeches and crackles echoed across each other as the firework show came to its finale.

Bonfire night every 5th November sticks with me, the date holding a feast of childhood memories like a box of treasures I can open every year on this day. Of course, since I moved to the Netherlands participating in Bonfire night has become harder and I have only been in the UK to celebrate 5th November twice since 2000. As my children grow up this is a track record I aim to change so that they can learn and take part in a little piece of British history and culture. For Bonfire night is a British thing - yes, I have had lots of people back home saying to me over the years "Don't they celebrate bonfire night in Holland then?" No they don't. Of course they don't - Guy Fawkes made no attempt to blow up the Dutch parliament did he?

But he did have a cunning plan to get rid of the protestant monarch of the time by blowing up Parliament and King James I with it in 1605. The aim was to replace the head of state with a catholic one. Luckily for King James I the gunpowder plot was discovered (the anti-terrorist unit being on full alert back then too by all accounts) and the plotters were arrested and swiftly executed. End of Guy Fawkes and his friends.

On 5th November, 1605 the first 'thanksgiving' was celebrated and marked with the ringing of church bells and the lighting of bonfires. Hence, why the British, over 400 years later, still light bonfires on 5th November and put an effigy (the guy, named after Guy Fawkes) on top of the fire. The fireworks represent the foiled gunpowder plot - that and it's pretty.......