Every one of us arrived in the Netherlands with a suitcase, a job offer or a dream, and a to-do list nobody had explained to us. We came from different countries, for different reasons, and we all hit the same walls.
We sent rental applications that never got a reply. We waited for a BSN so we could open a bank account, and needed a bank account for almost everything else. We signed contracts in Dutch, hoped for the best and wondered whether the 30% ruling applied to us. We learned what a huurtoeslag, a WOZ-waarde and an aanslag were the hard way.
Somewhere along the way it clicked. We found the right people: the agent who answered in English, the advisor who understood foreign income, the bank that didn't ask for a document we couldn't get yet. Bit by bit the Netherlands stopped feeling like a puzzle and started feeling like home.
ExpatNL is everything we wish someone had handed us on day one.
Every expat story in the Netherlands follows roughly the same path. We've walked every step of it, so we can tell you what's coming before you get there.
When we compared notes, we found the same thing over and over: the information was out there, but it was scattered, out of date or written for people who already understood the system. The good professionals existed too, but you only found them through a friend of a friend.
So we decided to be that friend. We write the guides we needed, build the tools we wished existed, and introduce you only to people we would trust with our own move.
We remember the first rainy evening, the first letter we couldn't read and the first time someone said "gezellig" and we finally understood what they meant. The beginning is the hardest part. Let us make it shorter.
