It's time again for some educational input in here. In a previous post I already mentioned the excessive use of bicycles here. Now I would like to tell some other stuff in order to bring the country a bit closer.
Food&Drinks
Nederlands is not very famous for it's cuisine I guess. When we went out we rather picked a "foreign" restaurant. We went to maroccon or indian place, some even to sushi. But what is typically dutch in my eyes? First of all, lunch is not important to them. They eat sandwhiches or simply broodje met kaas (bread with cheese). A hot meal for lunch is very rare. But what I perceived is, that they eat a lot of smaller things here and there during the whole day. I read about that in a guide about NL and experienced it especially during integration trip where we had small things during the whole day but only a cold lunch. The only thing sofar which I discovered and like a lot are stroopwafels. These are small waffels filled with syrup out of caramel, very delicious but you have to watch that you don't eat too much of them :)
Drinks are not so different than back home. A lot of beers like Heineken, Amstel, Brand or Dommelsch, then wine or water. According to Dutchs, Sodas like Cola or Fanta are not so common but you can buy them everywhere. Apart from that Dutchs like to drink Coffee and Tea. Just make sure you don't go to a Coffeeshop for a coffee :)
Just to note here, coffeeshops are the places where they sell marijuana products. To straighten a prejudice: Although everyone thinks so, consumption of weed, marijuana etc. is NOT legal here. The dutch policy is, that they tolerate it in coffeeshops and at home in order to keep it out of the street and fight against hard drugs. If you're on the street a possesion of max. 5g is tolerated and not more. According to our dutch friends, this policy has led to a low drug abuse rate in Nederlands.
Paying in NL - A complete mess
Nederland is usually perceived as multicultural, open-minded and thus a good place for internationals to live. But if you see the payment system you could come to another conclusion. First of all, they have tons of different cards - everyone must have like a huge wallet to carry all of them. In the end though, everything leads to a dutch bank account, which, of course you can only open if you will be customer for more than a year. The two major ways of payment here are pin (regular bank card - but only dutch cards work) and chipknip (the chip on your banking card). Chipknip is supposed to be for small payments so you can upload cash on the chip and then pay with that. And of course you can only upload your chipknip directly from your dutch bank account. Or, you buy a pre-paid card. You pay 22.50 and get 20 cash on it - thats how they make money here :) To make the living for internationals even more complicated, they probably agreed to refuse credit card, cause you almost can't pay anywhere with creditcard - only pin and chipknip. And at university we were told that there exist even more cards for the same purpose but in different buildings. To show you how ridiculous this whole thing is, I give you the example of printing at university:
To be able to print you need a card (obviously) with a magnetic strip. Bank card and credit card don't work. To put money on your printing card you have to pay - but you can't pay in cash! Either pin or chipknip. Which leaves you more or less only the possibility to buy a pre-paid chipknip to the price already mentioned. The chipknip, obviously, you can't buy with credit card - only with chipknip, bank card or cash. Sooo, in the end, you usually go to an ATM, get money with your card, pay charges there. Then you buy a chipknip, where you pay charges again. The chipknip you can then use to get money on the printing card and now you're able to print your documents!
Ok, that's it sofar. Stay tuned for the next post, which will be probably about studying at RSM...
Food&Drinks
Nederlands is not very famous for it's cuisine I guess. When we went out we rather picked a "foreign" restaurant. We went to maroccon or indian place, some even to sushi. But what is typically dutch in my eyes? First of all, lunch is not important to them. They eat sandwhiches or simply broodje met kaas (bread with cheese). A hot meal for lunch is very rare. But what I perceived is, that they eat a lot of smaller things here and there during the whole day. I read about that in a guide about NL and experienced it especially during integration trip where we had small things during the whole day but only a cold lunch. The only thing sofar which I discovered and like a lot are stroopwafels. These are small waffels filled with syrup out of caramel, very delicious but you have to watch that you don't eat too much of them :)
Drinks are not so different than back home. A lot of beers like Heineken, Amstel, Brand or Dommelsch, then wine or water. According to Dutchs, Sodas like Cola or Fanta are not so common but you can buy them everywhere. Apart from that Dutchs like to drink Coffee and Tea. Just make sure you don't go to a Coffeeshop for a coffee :)
Just to note here, coffeeshops are the places where they sell marijuana products. To straighten a prejudice: Although everyone thinks so, consumption of weed, marijuana etc. is NOT legal here. The dutch policy is, that they tolerate it in coffeeshops and at home in order to keep it out of the street and fight against hard drugs. If you're on the street a possesion of max. 5g is tolerated and not more. According to our dutch friends, this policy has led to a low drug abuse rate in Nederlands.
Paying in NL - A complete mess
Nederland is usually perceived as multicultural, open-minded and thus a good place for internationals to live. But if you see the payment system you could come to another conclusion. First of all, they have tons of different cards - everyone must have like a huge wallet to carry all of them. In the end though, everything leads to a dutch bank account, which, of course you can only open if you will be customer for more than a year. The two major ways of payment here are pin (regular bank card - but only dutch cards work) and chipknip (the chip on your banking card). Chipknip is supposed to be for small payments so you can upload cash on the chip and then pay with that. And of course you can only upload your chipknip directly from your dutch bank account. Or, you buy a pre-paid card. You pay 22.50 and get 20 cash on it - thats how they make money here :) To make the living for internationals even more complicated, they probably agreed to refuse credit card, cause you almost can't pay anywhere with creditcard - only pin and chipknip. And at university we were told that there exist even more cards for the same purpose but in different buildings. To show you how ridiculous this whole thing is, I give you the example of printing at university:
To be able to print you need a card (obviously) with a magnetic strip. Bank card and credit card don't work. To put money on your printing card you have to pay - but you can't pay in cash! Either pin or chipknip. Which leaves you more or less only the possibility to buy a pre-paid chipknip to the price already mentioned. The chipknip, obviously, you can't buy with credit card - only with chipknip, bank card or cash. Sooo, in the end, you usually go to an ATM, get money with your card, pay charges there. Then you buy a chipknip, where you pay charges again. The chipknip you can then use to get money on the printing card and now you're able to print your documents!
Ok, that's it sofar. Stay tuned for the next post, which will be probably about studying at RSM...
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