The Unsteady Beginning

Our first weeks in the Netherlands were marked by jet lag, paperwork, missing comforts, and the slow work of building daily life from scratch.

This is part of a new series I’m writing for anyone thinking about making a big move like the one we made. Yes, we are moving home to Tucson in the summer but I have so much more to share about this journey.

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We had arrived in the Netherlands, but our bodies, routines, home life, and sense of stability had not caught up yet. Two nights earlier, I had been scrubbing out my refrigerator with a toothbrush. Now we were stepping off a plane into a cold May morning in Amsterdam with four people, twelve suitcases, and no real sense yet of what daily life here would require of us.

The plane landed around 8 am local time on May 15th. We had been traveling for nearly 24 hours at this point but we still had to get from Amsterdam to Den Haag with 4 people and 12 suitcases.

We departed the plane and breezed right through to get our passports stamped and on to get our bags from baggage claim. We followed the signs through the airport and into the dreary cold to wait for our taxi we had preordered.

We waited for roughly a half hour in clouds of cigarette smoke until he arrived and we crammed our bags and ourselves into his van.

He zoomed us through the city and onto the highway through countryside and small towns. As we came into Den Haag the taxi driver whisked us through densely tree lined streets, enormous playgrounds for kids and embassy after embassy. Eventually diverging from the outskirts into the urban streets of housing and businesses.

We arrived at the new apartment, paid the taxi driver and waited a few minutes until my friend arrived with our keys. Once inside we dropped our bags and immediately left for food and coffee. Little did we know hardly anything would be open at this early hour of the day.

We managed to find one cafe open and decided to only get hot drinks and stopped into the Albert Heijn on the way back to our apartment grabbing only essentials. I did manage to remember my shopping bags on the way out of the door.

Back in the apartment we were fighting for our lives from jet lag. Having just leaped 9 hours ahead we should have all been fast asleep at this early hour. We made lunch at home and once again started dozing off.

None of us made it until 6 pm which was our goal. We all ended up sleeping midday and then not falling back asleep until the wee hours of the morning.

The First Week

That first week was the roughest week of my life, of our lives. We only had one bed and it’s about the equivalent to an American full sized mattress. It’s not suitable for 2 grown adults to sleep together unless you plan to spoon the entire night.

We quickly ordered mattresses and bedding so we could start to sleep better. The jet lag had me forgetting the delivery of our order and we had to wait another 2 days for it to arrive.

Our circadian rhythms were so messed up from the daylight until 10 pm. My cycle was thrown off for months because of it and that was one thing I never expected to happen.

Working to Become Functional

Upon arrival, we had to officially apply for our visas. Our attorney needed inked signatures, so we had to go out and buy a printer and paper in order to sign the documents and send them back to him.

We had barely left the hurry-up-and-wait phase of leaving the U.S. before entering a new hurry-up-and-wait phase in Den Haag. Now we were waiting for our home goods to arrive so that some of our comforts from home could catch up with us. In the meantime, we explored the city and planned our summer cross-country European vacation.

This might be the only pretty sunset I saw the entire time we were in the country.

What Month One Taught Us

What we learned right away might help someone else, especially when it comes to shopping.

The stores in the Netherlands were confusing at first. You are going to need things like spices, trash bags, printer paper, and random household basics, and if you are American, you are not always going to know what you are buying or where to find it.

One of the biggest differences was the lack of big box stores like we were used to in the U.S. Instead, there were smaller pharmacies and retail shops on nearly every shopping street, along with neighborhood produce stands, fish stands, cafes, and restaurants.

There was no single place that seemed to have everything, which meant learning through repetition. We had to go into each shop, start making mental notes, and slowly figure out what to buy where. The good news is that people were friendly, and asking for assistance usually helped.

Month one was defined by arrival lag. We had arrived in the Netherlands, but nothing else had caught up with us yet. Not our sleep, our routines, our paperwork, and definitely not our sense of home. It felt like we were living in an AirBnB. We were learning neighborhood shops and online ordering while still feeling like we were living somewhere in between. Everything about that first month felt slightly off, as if life had moved faster than our ability to settle into it.

A few things month one taught us: go with the flow, keep Google Translate close, resist the jet-lag nap, and expect to spend more than you think you will. More than anything, though, that first month required patience, endurance, and flexibility. We had to keep making decisions while our bodies and minds were still trying to catch up with the fact that we lived here now.

Until next time,

Heather