-
We’re in a hard lockdown again – it looked to my hopeful eye two weeks ago that the numbers in The Netherlands were under control, but over the last few days they’ve risen, hence the lockdown. Everything is closed, aside from the “essentials” such as supermarkets, chemists and takeaway restaurants (cannabis lovers can still get their fix). The oliebollen stands…
-
So many people are quite surprised we chose to relocate to Europe, known for its grim winters. Our priority was never about finding somewhere with a similar South African climate, and we knew that we’d all have to try to embrace the cold and grey as best as possible. In Amsterdam, winter doesn’t fall below 1 or 2, and when…
-
There are obviously so many things I could not have predicted I’d feel when we came to live in The Netherlands. Add a pandemic to the mix, and things were even more unexpected and unthought of. You can read the comments on the expat Facebook groups, and try to remember what friends who emigrated years prior had said about their…
-
Our central heating is being turned up every few weeks (my handiwork), I have thermal vests and socks, I’m taking vitamin D, and this morning we bought special lightbulbs for our work desks to give us some sunny benefits, without the sun. I was always nervous about my first winter here, more for the dark mornings and late afternoons than…
-
The months before we emigrated, I had a lot of guilt for putting my kids through the process – the uprooting, and then the planting of ourselves in a new life in Amsterdam. They were to leave everything they had comfort in – from the material (big rooms, regular holidays, fairly big garden) to the people (friends and family). Most…
-
Last week, I had to dig into our stash of Corenza-C and Sinucon as I got my first little cold here. You might remember that I’ve written about hauling over the likes of Corenza, Sinucon and GenPayne because one can’t really get the good stuff here. There’s sometimes criticism about the medical system here, and there’s a joke that you…
No slides found, please add at least one Slide Template to the choosen language.
