Unexpected Beginning – Moving From England To Holland

I spent a while trying to work out what to write as my first blog. It seemed like a good idea to just start at the beginning of the story which led to me unexpectedly moving to Holland.

EDIT: This post has since be updated and much improved in the post: How I Ended Up Accidentally Moving To The Netherlands.

It was 2001. After three years of studying theatre Design, I spent a few months working here and there at different venues, mainly as stage crew but occasionally as a designer. I was enjoying the work but I could not ignore that it was not very profitable. It was around this time that I got the idea from a friend to try using my design skills in the computer game industry. Surely it was just like doing set designs but in a computer….. Right?

So I applied to a few companies but hear much back. I was starting to think it was not going to happen….. Until I found a rather strange and cryptic job advertisement in a British gaming magazine. It had no address, no phone number. In fact it had very few details. All it really had was a dot com email address. This might sound like it could have lead to me falling victim to a gang of black market human organ dealers using a games company as a front but it some how looked interesting so I took the chance.

Imagine my surprise when I was offered an interview and I found out it was in Holland. At this point I had no plans to move to another country but they were offering to pay for my flights. I would have sometime for sight seeing while I was there so at the very least it was a free day trip to Amsterdam. I was not thinking about the fact that I might actually be offered the job….. Which I was.

Whenever there is an opportunity I know I should not pass up but I am nervous about I have the habit of thinking other people would not have a problem with doing it so neither should I. So I took the job. Most people who knew me back then would never have imagined me moving to another country. Neither would have I at the time to be honest. I used to be kind of shy and quiet compared to how I am now. Not only was I moving to an unfamiliar country but up until that point I was also still living with my parents. That made it an even bigger change in my life.

I had two months to get myself ready before moving to Holland but it was not until I got there that the full gravity of what I was doing hit me. I don’t mind admitting that on that night, alone in a hotel room with a TV that did not work I got very scared. I wanted to go home. It was the scariest thing I have ever done in my life….. It was also the best thing I have ever done in my life.

Five years on I am still living in Holland and still enjoying it. The first few months might have been very hard for me but they gave me the confidence boost I very much needed. It changed my life in a positive way and it also gave me a lot of funny stories to share.

Plus I still have both my kidney’s which is a bonus.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

3 Responses

  1. eric valon says:

    hi there
    im looking for a job in Amsterdam. im a sound assistant looking to work
    for a venue or in a stage crew.
    Any advice where i can look for ?
    im still in the uk right now
    cheers
    eric

  2. Anonymous says:

    Just wanted to say Thanx as I and my extended family are from Holland. I miss it very much. Your stories help.

  3. JB says:

    Sounds a lot like my story! Arrived 4 years agoon a thursday and started working on the following day. Turning on the TV in my hotel room was surreal: what the hell was I doing in a country with such a barbaric language?

    But then again, I looked outside the window and saw all these tall blonde girls and thought I might give it a try.

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