Ask Lemmy

Moved from the US to the Netherlands in 2023 and regret nothing. The opportunity came in the form of the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty. It makes it ridiculously easy for Americans to move to the Netherlands, if you are self employed. It worked for me to move, and when my business went sideways due to my main client screwing me over, I got a normal Dutch job as a highly-skilled migrant.

Downsides:

• Pay is decidedly lower compared to American salaries (but pretty good compared to Dutch standards)
• Spicy food is rare
• Korean food is also pretty rare
• Good Mexican food is borderline nonexistent. My coworkers saw nothing wrong with "cheese flavored yogurt" being applied to nacho chips instead of actual cheese. I once tried a local restaurant's nachos and got a plate of chips covered in a really sweet ketchup.
• While everybody speaks English pretty well, you WILL want to learn basic Dutch to better understand important legal or medical meetings. But you should be learning the native language anyway, no matter where you go.

Benefits:

• Everything I need is within walking or a short bicycle distance
• Nobody is going to shoot me here
• I can get medical treatment without going bankrupt
• Health insurance doesn't cost as much as rent
• My asthma inhaler doesn't cost 1/4th of my rent
• High fructose corn syrup is rarely found here (it gives me migraines)
• The cities are more attractive (more appealing architecture)
• The roads are damned near immaculate. I don't drive here because I don't need to, but on the rare occasion I'm in a car it's impossible to not notice how good the roads are. I have crossed the country from Schiphol to Nijmegen and didn't see a single pothole anywhere, in roughly two hours on the road. Seriously, they could spend 10 or 20% less on the roads and still have what would be the best roads anywhere in N.America by comparison.
• The work-life balance is insanely better (I get 35 paid days off a year, starting from the moment I started working). I can tell my boss I'm sick and that's that. If I move to a new home I get a free day off.
• Trains are much more enjoyable for traveling between cities than driving; I've been reading so much lately
• Dutch is a pretty accessible language if you're a native English speaker that already understands some basics of German
• Nearly everybody speaks English better than the people I grew up with in the mid-west
• A huge amount of Europe is only a single day's travel away
• Store workers here aren't obviously beaten and ground into a raw bundle of nerves and depression like in the US. Of course it's not a workers paradise by any means, but people generally seem more genuinely happy.
• So many restaurants have patios or tent covered tables to enjoy a drink or meal while staying outside to enjoy the weather when it is good
• Food from Suriname is really good, as are frikandelbroodje and kaassouffle
• Nijmegen's Vierdaagse can be a blast, the whole old/inner city becomes a giant festival

There's probably more benefits, but those are the highlights for me. All around though, the biggest advantage is that I can easily see a much better future for myself and my wife in the Netherlands than I can in the US.