Kia ora! My wife and I were born in The Netherlands. Ten years ago we decided to try living in New Zealand for two years. At that time we had a 1 yo, we now have two kids.
It felt really good so we decided to stay longer. Fast forward, here we are, ten years later. The pink clouds are definitely gone, but we’ve learned to appreciate NZ. Obviously it’s a beautiful country and it’s not densely populated. The Netherlands is 6 times smaller with 4 times more people.
People in NZ are generally friendly and keen to help. Also, people have respect for service people like police, firemen, train conductors, etc. In the NL it happens daily that they are spat on, verbally abused, or even injured. Kids in NL more and more bring knives to school. People randomly throw rocks, bombs, eg at fireman, police, and ambulance people.
NY eve in NL counted more than 200 arrests and counting. People were injured or killed because of fireworks. In every major city police was bombarded with illegal fireworks, multiple officers hurt with hearing damage. Buildings were set on fire, firemen came, were bombarded with fireworks as well.
Talking to other friends in Europe it’s not getting better in other countries.
Writing this makes me emotional. Why can’t we treat other people like we want to be treated?
NZ isn’t perfect, there is crime here of course, but it definitely seems better than the rest of the world at the moment.
I love New Zealand. I’ve become a proud citizen 2 years ago and definitely now call this home. The Netherlands is now just a place where my family lives and where I can celebrate holidays.
Thanks for reading and I want to wish you all an awesome 2024. Stay strong.
Your comments on the Netherlands makes it sound like a war zone. That stuff happens occasionally in the 3 biggest cities (and usually during riots or in the bad neighborhoods), outside of those nothing happens. It is crowded though.
Being crowded must magnify all those little annoyances, it seems?
The bomb throwing etc indeed only happens occasionally, Eg at NY eve. It happened in more than just the 3 biggest cities though, it also happened in small towns across the country.
I’ve got friends there who are firemen, they can’t go to certain neighborhoods without asking the police for support. Every day. Otherwise they will be harassed or people will throw rocks etc.
I only wanted to point out that this very rarely happens here in NZ.
Sorry if I made it sound like a war zone, that’s obviously not the case.
Why can’t we treat other people like we want to be treated?
Sorry I’m going off on a tangent but this made me think of something that happened yesterday. I head chaos happening, yelling and screaming, and went to investigate. The explanation I got: “[sibling] hit me, so I hit them back because that’s the golden rule!”
I’m not sure who taught them the golden rule but I think they misunderstood the details.
NZ isn’t perfect, there is crime here of course, but it definitely seems better than the rest of the world at the moment.
I think people tend to see the bad in the world and assume it’s better elsewhere (so much so, there’s a saying: “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”). I think the more people travel, the more they come to appreciate what they have. And it’s important to stay somewhere for a while, so you see more than just the tourist view.
We live in Hobbiton, for better or worse.
We’re glad to have you. :)
Happy new year from another Dutch couple in NZ… Six years and counting.
Besides what you pointed out, work culture is incredibly peasant here. If I talk to my Dutch friends back home, they have to work so hard and compete with so many people… Meticulously needing to tick each box on the job listing.
Thanks for your reply! Yes, work culture is another thing. I was so stressed back in NL, literally counting down hours before the next holiday. Sure there is stress here but not at the same level.
