Also, the first class tickets for the train were totally worth it.
I’m both glad you made it out and jealous I don’t have a similar history with another country to move to. You’re a great parent for everything you do for your daughter. Hope the last bit of the trip went smoothly and you find a job quickly.
Thanks!
I just took a look at your post history to see the origin story to this, seems to me you ARE Lemmy?! Every other post I saw seems to be from you…
The UK just gained several precious people. Good for them!
Welcome to the UK. And if anyone asks, you ain’t seen me, right?
Someone once said that emigrating is trading one set of societal issues for another. If you’re happy with the trade, awesome.
Good luck in your new homeland.
Yes, and I am trading the societal issue of possibly having my daughter tortured for being queer for the one of that not happening.
That is a valid choice.
Hey, congrats for taking that big leap, even if it is to the UK (having lived in a couple of places in Europe including over a decade in the UK, my opinion of the UK is pretty low).
It takes a lot of guts to take yourself out of the environment you know (with all it’s implicit expectations of “this is how people behave”) and move into a different environment were people don’t value the same things, expect the same or behave the same.
Good luck!
Thankfully, due to my British father and grandmother, I know some of the basics. But I still have a lot to learn. Thankfully I’ve got us registered with an NHS clinic (waiting to hear back from them) and just got our new phone numbers.
Wow, you actually did it! I remember you laying out your plan here on Lemmy a few months ago. Kudos to you
Yeah, it’s a bit of a headache to figure out all those details if you have nobody to help you, though generally you can figure out a lot of those things by talking to coworkers - as a saying from my country goes “Those who have a mouth can get to Rome”
However the “expectations” I was talking about are more the nitty gritty details of interacting with others in everyday life one isn’t really aware are social conventions (because everybody follows the same version of it as you do in your country, so one naturally thinks that’s just the way people behave in general) until moving to a different country and finding out those things aren’t actually universal.
Things like saying “it’s interesting” when an English person asks you your opinion about something is actually being very critical (you can literally use it as an insult), you’re supposed to stand on the right side of escalators if you’re not walking (especially in a Tube station) or that, unless indicated otherwise, you’re supposed to queue for things if there are other people waiting for it.
Figuring this kind of stuff out is actually quiet an interesting personal growth experience, IMHO.
Where do people not line up for something to wait for it?
Often it’s more like not respecting the sanctity of the line. Americans got the tradition of the queue from the Brits. It was a source of constant annoyance when I lived in Germany when people would cut the line and others just let them without objecting.
people would cut the line and others just let them without objecting.
I can’t even imagine that being the case in a place like Germany… Some places sure, but there!?
It was 30 years ago, at least. Can’t speak to today.
It’s pretty common in most countries for things like waiting for the bus to not queue and in some countries people won’t even queue when the bus arrives and they’re trying to go in, and instead just try and jostle their way in.
Good luck, I hope you and your child find the UK to be less shitty than America. :)
Having emigrated to France with my kids in 2017, I think you’re making a good decision.
Was this a similar move as with OP? Meaning you had preexisting ties to the country before moving?
Ah awesome, I was only thinking about you both the other evening and wondered how you were doing.
I hope everything is going well so far.
I’ll tell you when I’m less exhausted myself.
I didn’t know if England was the best choice, but right now I think Neptune is probably better than here.
It was my only choice. I have citizenship here. (Technically I am a “British passport holder” until I go to a citizenship ceremony and say God Save the King and I’m not a spy or something, but whatever.)
Better to pledge loyalty to a king who’s a figurehead than one with actual power like we have here.
Grats on finally making the move! I hope everything works out for you and that you found a beautiful place to live.
Welcome to the UK :)
Welcome! Hopefully once you’re settled you’ll be able to find a local pub that does a good sunday roast
The closest pub here is called, I kid you not, The Spread Eagle. I haven’t been yet but how can I not?
Holy shit please go and post your thoughts xD
Welcome to the UK! Not sure on your final destination, but I’m based in South West England. Please feel free to reach out if you need any help or guidance, especially if you’re heading down this way 🙂.
I’m based around south yorkshire if you need anything squid. Hope you like it here
Thanks! In Blackburn in a VRBO at the moment, but I have no idea where we’ll end up. Looking for work everywhere I can.
Ah you’re just up the road from me. Guessing you changed at Preston? Hopefully you find something soon!
We did indeed change at Preston. And then went everywhere in the station because the lady on the train gave us the wrong directions. After missing the Avanti West Coast train two times and going on the wrong train at Euston once.
I wish you the best here across the pond. ;)
Nice now flee to Netherlands. Yes you have to learn Dutch but you can use English in shops or so. Small price to pay to be part of a civilized country
A civilized country that voted the party of “Trump from Wish.com” into office. The Netherlands is also run by far right fuck nuts, the next four years are going to be very interesting down here below sea level to say the least. Better stay in the UK while labour is in charge.
Also unless you getting that nice expat salary it will be really difficult to find housing in the Netherlands as a fresh of the boat immigrant and you can forget about social housing.
If you decide to do so please bring your own house, we don’t have many available at the moment
I have a British passport, not an EU one unfortunately. Also, I barely made it through high school French, so I’m guessing I won’t be able to learn Dutch.
In my personal experience, learning Dutch as foreigner can only happen by a method akin to being pushed into the deep end of a wimming pool and learning to swim - in other words, you have to be in a situation were your only option is to know how to speak Dutch - and I say this as somebody who can speak 7 languages (though 2 of them are at a “just getting away with it” level).
That said, most Dutch speak excellent English and even the State (not the local but the central one) and the Banks will communicate with you in English if you want, so people can live in The Netherlands for decades without speaking Dutch (some of my Brit colleagues when I lived over there were like that).
The Netherlands is certainly a far safer place for a lesbian teenager than Britain and will remain so simply because seeing an sexual orientations as absolutely normal happens at the level of Dutch Society itself, to the point that their first large Far Right party was led by a guy who from the start openly admitted to being a homosexual.
Having also lived in Britain I would say they’re “complicated” when it comes to tolerance because unlike the Dutch, Brits are big on appearances and judging people, so tolerance its not a natural part of the social posture over there IMHO, whilst gedogen is something the Dutch are actually proud of.
That said, most Dutch speak excellent English
That’s not true, not excellent English. Many speak enough to get by, except the elderly and the young, and some of them speak it well, fewer still excellently. Over four years, I’ve met probably a handful at most who could express their deepest thoughts and desires while pronouncing “th” correctly and their As not as Es.
Many banks won’t take you in if you don’t speak Dutch and it’s harder to find a job (this was in the news just recently, as it happens: nearly all international students are struggling in the job market because they generally don’t learn Dutch, despite there being so many vacancies). You can definitely get by with English, and I’ve heard of many people living here decades without learning Dutch too, but if you want to live well, that’s another thing altogether.
The good news is Dutch is easy if your mother tongue’s English or German but there is indeed a problem in the Randstad of it being hard to convince anyone to let you speak it with them, in part because they often overestimate how well they speak it. There’s a relatively famous quote from colonial Indonesia about how the Dutch colonisers would rather speak bad Indonesian than Dutch, which the Indonesians spoke fluently. I think it’s like a feedback effect with the reputation they have for knowing second languages.
Anyway, details details.
I lived in The Netherlands for 8 and a half years between the late 90s and the late 00s.
My experience whilst living in The Netherlands was that most people spoke pretty good English in terms of vocabulary, accent aside (which, as I myself am not a native English speaker, was not high on my list of priorities). Certain it qualified as “excellent” compared to people in my homeland (Portugal) back at the time. Then again I mostly knew people who had a higher education qualification so probably more likely to use English at work and follow English-language media. (Note that in my metric, “excellent” is bellow having “fully mastered the language” - basically I meant it as can easilly hold a conversation on common topics. I’m probably falling into the habits I caught when living in Britain and using the word “excellent” to mean what people in other countries think of as “good”)
As for the banks dealing with you in English, I still have a bank account with a Dutch bank and they always send me documents in English and still do, even though I don’t actually need it anymore. Maybe other banks won’t do it by the big ones do.
As for the impact of not knowing Dutch, for job seekers in The Netherlands, in my area - Software Development, which when I moved to The Netherlands I only had 2 years professional experience of doing - that was only a problem for me in the 2 years immediatelly after the Tech bubble crashed in the year 2000, whilst not for the rest of the time I lived there (and as I worked as a freelancer - specifically a contractor - for half of my time in The Netherlands I did change jobs much more often than normal so had quite a lot of experience with it). Can’t really speak for how things are now, for areas with less demand for professionals or for people in that hard period of one’s career which is trying to get into the work market as a recent graduate with no professional experience.
Also, speaking very good English (as in, better than what I meant by “excellent” in my previous post), I never felt that it helped me in learning Dutch. Agree with the rest that the Dutch tend to reply back in English if they think the other person can understand it, which for me as a Portuguese was seldom a problem whilst for my friends and colleagues from English speaking countries that was commonly a problem (I suspect the difference is because Dutch people couldn’t just tell from my accent that I could speak English). My advice for any foreigner stuck in this situation there, is to persist in speaking Dutch even if the other person switches to English.
PS: By the way, my point that being a native English-speaker does not help with learning Dutch is consistent with what I saw with my immigrant work colleagues and friends, were the native English speakers would take longer and not get as far when learning Dutch than those who were not native English speakers. Maybe the Dutch-English works fine but I did not see that happenning the other way around, plus even in my mind my language knowledge has somehow ended up with Dutch and German in the same bucket, English in a totally different bucket, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian in yet another bucket and French also in its own bucket (kinda, as some things are the same as in other Romance languages) - might just be the product of my language learning experience though.
I’m not worried about appearance. She dresses punky like a lot of kids here do. And she’s not trans, just a lesbian, so she will be much safer here than the U.S.
You’re not all too far from Hebden Bridge if you settle up them ways anyway. She’ll be sound. Best of luck to yous.
The concept of “appearences” I’m talking about is much broader than just how people look, and definitelly covers how people talk and behave.
We’re talking about a country were rich people have their very own accent, which is not regional - something which I so far have yet to see anywhere else.
If over there you mix with people who are English middle class or above, you’ll see what I mean soon enough.
If over there you mix with people who are English middle class or above
Only if not by choice.
Well, if you end up working in an office environment most people you will come across consider themselves middle class because they’re white collar workers rather than blue collar workers even if (like most other places, it seems) most of the British middle class tend to live paycheck to paycheck same as the working class.
Also who you’ll meet in social situations will depend a lot on where you live, since last I checked most city centers in England had become way too expensive for even young white collar workers to live in, much less blue collar ones.
Anyways, in my own experience going to live in other countries, whatever happens will be a good learning experience.
They do speak English in the Netherlands. Not very good but enough
Isn’t dutch harder as german to learn?
Duno
