Nobody mentioned absence of nature. Parks are nice, but if you grew up with forests or mountains or beaches they won't cut it.

oh too much probem over there

When I visited Amsterdam as a tourist, the most challenging thing I experienced was "looks" from men. Not sure if that's because I'm a woman of color or something else 🤔

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation." –Herman Melville

Thanks for the video! I’m Dutch and living in Switzerland, so I’m also an expat. And from experience and from what I hear from other expats is that’s it’s always kind of hard to make friends from scratch, for all adults, no matter where you live. It’s simply more challenging to make friends as an adult than when you’re in your teens ot early adulthood (and still studying for example). For expats you also have to consider the language and cultural barriers on top of it. I’m a bit done with the “stereotypical” framing of Dutch people as being “cold or introverted”, as that is how Southern Europeans in general picture Northern Europeans, whereas in reality I have learned from experience that the Dutch are quite friendly (albeit “direct”) and have an open mind and show interest/curiosity in others (much more than what I see with for example, Germans, French, and Swiss people who are by far more reserved than the Dutch are). Also, it’s not that hard finding YouTube videos of expats in Spain, with similar stories in how it’s difficult to make friends in for example Madrid, due to exactly the same factors: language and cultural barriers, and even due to some xenophobia/racism. Southern Europeans really should stop promoting themselves as the “outgoing, social, extroverted” people towards expats, because even though maybe they are like that to their own people, it’s a different story for expats living in their country…

In the end I think making friends as an expat is just challenging wherever you go due to said obstacles such as language and cultural barriers, and because of being “older” and thus not having a shared history. The one thing that actually helps a lot in Netherlands is that the Dutch at least speak English on quite a high level, which cannot be said about many other places in Europe and the rest of the world.

Hi David, thanks for another great video. It's really inspiring to see and hear about a country through different perspectives. I hope to visit and maybe one day live in The Netherlands.

Hello David, the steep stairs are only in Amsterdam and other big old cities with very very old houses. Other houses have normal stairs. Also outside Amsterdam you have bigger and cheaper houses with gardens and lot of place.
It's not so crowded.
About making new friends, yes that is difficult also for a Dutch. You have to have a click and it will help if you have some shared interests and or hobbies.
For expats , join a club . This will help making friends easier and quicker.

Thanks for another video David! You mentioned you are introverted in another video, so am I. I feel like the Dutch being tough to make friends as a plus? How has your experience been as an introvert in a Dutch society been? Maybe a topic for another video? Seems like an introverted paradise for someone with an engineering brain.

What do you find the most challenging about life in the Netherlands?