Holland Handbook 2011

XPAT MEDIA: €29.90

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No matter how organised you are, moving to a new country is daunting. Admittedly there are more intimidating destinations than the Netherlands, but you still have to start living the moment you arrive and that’s where the Holland Handbook is worth it’s considerable weight.

You might already know some Dutch people and be familiar with their customs or maybe you have a basic grasp of the language, but where do you start with everything else?

If you’re moving here to work for a large company then you will probably have insider help to set things up, but if like some of us, you relocate independently then the most basic tasks can prove stressful, time-consuming, and expensive…

The Holland Handbook acts like a reference manual for the uninitiated. It assumes you know absolutely nothing and starts at the very beginning with an enlightening, readable and informative introduction that provides a splendid overview of the Netherlands, its culture and your new, incredibly tall neighbours.

Contributors like Han van der Horst (The Low Sky) ease you in gently with an interesting and descriptive narrative about the country’s history, the Dutch mentality and the political and economic system in a way that makes you eager to learn more rather than feel bombarded with tedious facts.

It swiftly moves on to the business of working and living in the Netherlands and everything you will definitely need to know in your immediate future. Information about the burgerservicenummer (without which you can’t do anything), obligatory health insurance and local taxes are covered.

Later on the transport, childcare and education system are all explained in great detail and that’s not including all the peripheral but equally essential stuff like recycling and shopping.

It’s nice to look at, well-presented and illustrated with lots of pictures. The book is divided into ten chapters with separate sub-headings that make it easy to find whatever information you’re looking for.

Even the full-page ads don’t irritate, instead fitting in rather nicely in a way that actually makes you want to read through them and they appear to have been carefully selected and relevant to readers.

If there is anything missing it’s possibly a warning about the exorbitant cost of posting anything from Holland (although the privatised postal service is twice as reliable), and it was disappointing not to see a big ad for that money-saving discount retailer, Action… But all in all, there is little to criticise and many virtues to extol.

The Holland Handbook is a hefty old thing, but then it needs to be. You cannot compile this much information in anything less than a telephone book, so the publishers have done well to produce something that’s bigger than a bible but ten times as useful and much more fun to read.

Shelley Antscherl
books@dutchnews.nl