• Gearing up for our first winter in Amsterdam

    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…

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  • Emigration with kids – how it’s really been

    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…

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  • Boxes, oliebollen and even more new baby plants

    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…

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  • From Johannesburg to The Hague – the expat who moved for love

    This week I chat to Sherika Rooplal, who moved from South Africa to The Netherlands to be with her Dutch boyfriend who she met on Tinder – yes, wonderful success stories do exist (I met my husband on Twitter – another case of love found on the internet). Here Sherika chats about living in The Netherlands. How old are you…

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  • Weird Dutch dust and other observations

    Am I spending almost a whole blog post writing about dust? Why yes, yes I am. During our first weeks here, I thought that there was dust everywhere because my cleaning skills were poor, but then I learnt that this dust is really a “thing”. I turned to my best friends on the South Africans in the Netherlands Facebook group to…

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  • Three months since our touchdown in Amsterdam

    It feels like a lifetime ago that we pushed three airport trolleys piled high with cases to the first coffee bar (not coffee shop – that’s something completely different) we saw. We sat down for some caffeine, a literal and figurative breather (we had been wearing masks for around 16 hours – from the embassy to the airport to the…

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About Me

Hi, I'm Tanya. I'm a South African now living in Amsterdam. I'm a mom, runner and writer, and work in content & advertising. Welcome to my blog. Read More

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