*[Part 1](/post/remote-work-in-the-netherlands-part-1)*

Affected badly by the planned NS strike, with no place to go, we've mobilized ourselves to find a fast solution for our situation. We tried to find a car rental service, but being located in Nunspeet, there were no car rental services nearby. Public transport was not a solution as it would take too much time. Our option was to find accommodation.



No Airbnb were available nearby, but luckily for us, we found a hotel located 20 minutes away by walking, which is also pet friendly, and so we booked it. NH Veluwe Sparrenhorst is part of the NH Hotel Group and located right on the border of the Veluwe forest, which I told you about in my previous post. We've booked the hotel for one night and went to sleep.

![Our room in the NH Hotel Sparrenhorst](/images/netherlands-mini-relocation/nh_hotel.webp)

Some of you might wonder why we did not stay one more night in our current Airbnb, and so I want to clarify this point for you. We were tired, and a little stressed, but we did WhatsApp our host and asked for a quote for one more night. He let us know that the property was available, however the price he has given us was more expensive than on Airbnb website. Our Israeli monkey mind immediately assumed he is trying to fool us and use our situation to extract more money, so we've ignored this option. Later, after the hotel was already booked, we've realized that the price you see on Airbnb search page and the final price, **are not** the same. What we saw was the price on the search page, but once you try to book it, the price goes up and matches what our host offered us in WhatsApp.

After staying for one night in the hotel and working from there, we've hoped on a train and took the trip to our next destination.

## The city of Alkmaar
Our next city, Alkmaar is almost the complete opposite of Nunspeet. It’s a big city, with around 110k population. It’s located about 30 km north of Amsterdam. We were staying in a classical, 3 story, Dutch apartment / house in a quiet neighborhood, a couple of minutes away from a ferry that takes you to the old and beautiful city center.

In Alkmaar our life was more “normal”. We were shopping at Albert Heijn for groceries, worked and traveled around the city. We even were able to, accidentally, find our selves in Alkmaar’s cheese market. Apparently, Alkmaar is popular for its cheese.

## The road home
3 days before our flight, NS once again announced a nationwide strike. We wanted to go to Delft and The Hague one day before leaving, but now with the announced strike - it became a bit complicated. We were also afraid that we might not be able to get to the airport due to the possibility that the strike might extend to more than one day, or any other logistic problems due to the consequences of the strike, as our flight was leaving in the morning.

This time we've decided to rent a car for one day and return it in the airport. We've rented a car from Sixt and drove to Delft and then to The Hague to visit some friends. The next day, we've returned the car in the Airport and boarded our flight home.

This concludes our first experience as Digital Nomads in a beautiful country of The Netherlands.

## Cost breakdown
The idea of this part is to help you understand how much you can expect to pay for common things like accommodation and groceries, therefor I'm not going to include in this section things like flight tickets (which are personal to you depending on your flight route) or any personal spending we've had.

### Accommodation
The house in Nunspeet costed us approximately 2400 EUR. In Alkmaar, we've paid approximately 850 EUR. We did pay another 145 EUR for the hotel.

The total expense for accommodations were approximately - **3395 EUR**.

### Groceries
We bought our groceries mainly in Albert Heijn, with occasional visits to Lidl or Jumbo. We found AH to be better quality. I’m not going to include restaurants here, as this might differ from person to person and has little to do with the estimation of cost of living. I will note that 90% of the time we cooked at home, and only when we were away from home, such as in a different city or traveling, we were eating out.

Our total expense for groceries was - **774.78 EUR**.

### Transportation
We've paid **352.9 EUR** for trains, **10 EUR** for a taxi from the hotel to the train station, and another **5 EUR** for bus tickets. A rental car for one day costed us **161 EUR** and **26.77 EUR** for extra kilometers range. The fuel costed **27.25 EUR**. Two rental bicycles for two weeks costed us **270 EUR** and another **20 EUR** for one pannier.

The total cost of transportation, was **872.92 EUR**.

*Note*: after the trip ended, I've learned that you can get an anonymous OV-chipkaart that costs 7.5 EUR.
The benefit of an anonymous travel card is that every time you buy a paper ticket, in addition to the ticket price, you also pay 1 EUR for the single-use chipkaart inside the ticket. This could save you some money if you travel a lot using trains.

### Misc
We've paid **77 EUR** for dog food as well as **55 EUR** for tick removal. The co-working I've mentioned in previous part costed us **62 EUR**.


Remote Work in The Netherlands - Part 2


In the middle of August, my wife and I packed our suitcase and MacBooks, took our dog, and flew for a month to The Netherlands. Luckily - we are working in companies with remote work policies. Here's my experience.



We landed at Schiphol airport and took a train via Amersfoort Central towards Nunspeet which became our hometown for the next two and a half weeks.

# Why The Netherlands?
Europe, and especially The Netherlands, is not the first choice for Digital Nomads. The country is very expensive. I'll do a detailed cost breakdown in the next part, so stay tuned.

However, there are two main reasons why. The first one is that we live in Israel. Israel is super expensive with probably the worst value-for-money ratio among developed countries. And the second reason is that we see The Netherlands as a potential relocation, so we've wanted to see how it is to live a "normal" life there. Sometimes, the whole life is not enough to understand if you like your country or not, let alone one month, but we've decided to do it anyway.

# The town of Nunspeet
When we arrived at the border control at Schiphol airport, the officer asked us about the purpose and length of our trip. When we said that we are going to stay there for a month, he was curious about where we are going to stay, so we replied: "*Nunspeet*". He laughed and asked surprisingly: "*Nunspeet?! Why Nunspeet?!*". This interaction summarized Nunspeet pretty well.

Nunspeet is a town in the central Netherlands with a population of 27481 people (as of Jan 2019). However, Nunspeet wasn't our first choice. We wanted to experience this mini relocation in two ways: outside the city and inside the city. Our initial location was Zwolle - a much bigger city in the Northern Netherlands. In Zwolle, we've booked a house almost on the city outskirt, away from the city life. But due to unfortunate circumstances, our host had to cancel the booking. And hence with less than a month before the trip, somewhat limited by our dog (not a lot of hosts will agree for a pet) - we've had to search for an alternative.

And so we've found a lovely house in Nunspeet. Coincidently, the distance between Nunspeet and Zwolle is 30km. It's a detached unit, in a community of around 20 similar units. Some owners use them as permanent living, others rent them out. It's located around 10 minutes by foot from Nunspeet Train Station or about 2 minutes by bicycle. Nunspeet Outdoor Center is conveniently located just by the train station, and we've used it to rent our bicycles for 2 weeks.

But the coolest feature of it all - is that it's located in Veluwe - an 1100 km<sup>2</sup> forest-rich ridge of hills. And our house is located across the road from a forest in which we've spent many mornings and afternoons (at night it's scary).

![Squerrel outside of our home in Nunspeet](/images/netherlands-mini-relocation/squerrel.jpg)

# Semi-Cashless, work-life balanced society
We arrived on Saturday evening, and after unpacking and taking a shower - went to sleep. We did buy some groceries at the airport for breakfast but planned to buy food the next day - on Sunday.

In Israel, Sunday is a working day. It's odd that the Startup Nation, which collaborates a lot with Europe and especially the US, works a different work week - from Sunday through Thursday. Friday is usually a half day, and the hi-tech sector does not work it anyway, and together with Saturday, which is a full no-work day (you pay a fine if you open your business on Saturday, which many businesses still do, especially in Tel-Aviv), they are known as Shabbat. In Europe, Sunday is however considered to be the holy rest day, which we of course knew - because we were born in Post Soviet Countries. And being located in a small town, rather than a big city, we've realized that Sunday in Nunspeet means no shopping. Some businesses are open, like the Outdoor Center in which we've rented bicycles and some restaurants, but grocery stores and other shops are closed.

The closest open Albert Heijn (a local grocery store chain) was in the city of Harderwijk. Just 35 minutes by bicycle! Without a second thought, we jumped on our bicycles and cycled through the beautiful countryside of the Netherlands.

After buying some groceries and getting ready to head back, we've been surprised we can't pay with a credit card. Luckily an ATM was right inside the store, so we were able to withdraw some cash. This phenomenon later haunted us through most of our stay in Nunspeet. Most small stores refused to accept credit cards and operated mainly on cash or debit cards. One business owner told us that credit card companies charge a big fee and so they refuse to support big financial institutions. Understandable I guess. However, it's still a mystery to me why Albert Heijn, a big chain store, does not accept credit cards, even in big cities such as Utrecht.

Debit cards are accepted everywhere though, but being Israeli with a financial system inherited from the US, debit cards are a rare thing for us. Not only banks do not advertise or promote them in any way, but they might end up being more expensive than credit cards (which you can get without monthly fees), because of so-called "transaction line fees". Some grocery stores such as Jumbo and Lidl, as well as almost all the restaurants - did accept credit cards though.

# Utrecht, Amsterdam, and lots of cycling
After a week of working from sub-optimal working conditions (couch for my wife and a dining table for myself), I've decided to explore local co-working options. Mindspace was the biggest and the only one that allowed us to pay per day as well as make an online reservation (I hate phone calls), so we booked ourselves a table and headed to Utrecht. An hour ride by train, not the closest city, and I wouldn't like to take this ride every day.

A co-working was however a fresh restart and a change. We were able to be more work-focused due to the office-like environment, as well as combine it with city exploring when we went for lunch as well as dinner afterward.

On Friday we've decided to bike. I think the Netherlands is the most unique and bicycle-friendly country in the world. We were able to bike for 60km, **all on bicycle lanes**, through more than 4 cities to arrive at a beautiful wildlife park. We didn't see many wild animals there, but the bicycle ride and the park itself were amazing.

On Saturday we went to Amsterdam. I've been to Amsterdam 3 times: one when interviewing for Booking.com; another one when we did bicycle touring with my friends, we stayed at a campsite near Amsterdam for 3 days; and the last time I flew to my wife when she had a connection there, so we've stayed there for 3 days. I always loved Amsterdam. It's such an amazing city. It's uniquely antique but very modern and liberal.

![Amsterdam - always beautiful](/images/netherlands-mini-relocation/amsterdam.jpg)

This time, I felt anxious in Amsterdam. There were many tourists and a clear sign of people who come here only for weed and sex. The city center was packed with people, and relatively dirty. On the other side, once you take a few steps to the adjacent street, you fall in love with Amsterdam again. I did some shopping there and spent the rest of the day in the beautiful Vondelpark.

This concludes our first week there.

# Got sick and then traveled more
The second week started with me getting sick. I thought it might be COVID, but the antigen test showed negative, so I assume it was the common cold and probably exhaustion. I've spent most of the week in bed, sleeping, while my wife focused mainly on work.

By the end of the week, I was getting better and was able to get back to work, and during the weekend, we decided to travel some more!

## Zwolle, Giethoorn, and the not-so bicycle-friendly country
Remember I told you that Nunspeet was not our first option and that we initially wanted to stay on the outskirts of Zwolle? Well, since Zwolle was 20 min ride by train, we decided to visit it. Zwolle is a beautiful, big city. It has a very cute city center. We spent there half a day just exploring and doing some shopping.

On Saturday we went to visit Giethoorn. Giethoorn is a mostly car-free village and was very long on my list of places to visit. I first heard about Giethoorn in 2015 when my friends and I did a two-week bicycle tour around The Netherlands. We were throwing points of interest on a map and that's how I've heard about Giethoorn.

![Giethoorn](/images/netherlands-mini-relocation/giethoorn.jpg)

After visiting Giethoorn I must say I have mixed feelings. While it's advertised as a mostly car-free village, I must say that only a small part of it fits this description. Mostly, it looks the same as a regular town/village. However the car-free part is very beautiful, and we rented a boat for 2 hours and sailed around the village and the farmlands nearby.

Getting to Giethoorn is a bit complicated. From Nunspeet you usually take a train to Zwolle and then from Zwolle a train to either Meppel or Steenwijk. From the latter two, you can take a bus. But hey! The Netherlands is a bicycle paradise so why not cycle? It's about 40 min cycle from Meppel; about 20 min from Steenwijk. We planned to get to Steenwijk and then cycle. And while the train ride to Zwolle was pleasant, Zwolle was super packed with people as it was Saturday, and the platform with the train to Steenwijk was very crowded, so we've been afraid that there will be no place for bicycles, so we took an alternative train that stops in Meppel. From Meppel it took us around 1-hour cycle towards Giethoorn, which was a beautiful cycle.

Since it's Saturday, trains are less frequent than during the work week, so on our way back, we had a train once an hour. We've arrived at Steenwijk and planned to take an Intercity (IC) train to Zwolle and then a sprinter train to Nunspeet. When the IC train arrived, it already had 3 bicycles inside and the train personnel told us that we can't board the train with bicycles - even though we bought the required bicycle tickets. They've said leaving the bicycle in an improper place is dangerous and we should wait for the next train. The problem is that the next IC train is in one hour, but they've suggested instead to board a sprinter to Meppel which will arrive in about 20 minutes then have a 30-minute transfer to a sprinter for Zwolle and finally a sprinter to Nunspeet.

It was very odd to me. A country where cycling is so engraved in people's lifestyles - is not able to provide a good way to transport bicycles on a train. I no longer cycle or use trains in Israel, but when I did a few years ago, I remember the train had a special coach for bicycles. Yes, they are limited to off-peak hours only (as in the Netherlands), but still, you can fit 20 bicycles in there easily, while Dutch trains are limited to 3-5. Sprinter trains are more forgiving since they are a bit more spacious than IC trains, so luckily the 3 sprinters we took had enough space for our bicycles, and after a long long ride, we were home.

We also visited Amersfoort later on, to celebrate our anniversary in a nice restaurant there.

# The happiest country is not that happy after all
The Netherlands consistently ranks in the top 5 happiest countries. The other 4 are usually Nordic countries, so it was always a mystery to me as to why the Netherlands. There are many different explanations like good social services, being closer to nature or even the fact you are physically active by cycling everywhere.

But it turned out that even the happiest countries in the world - have problems. Throughout 2 weeks there, we've learned that there is an ongoing farmers' protest that started 3 years ago, in 2019! We saw many haystacks with angry faces and slogans - which we couldn't understand because they were written in Dutch, but the word "*kaput*" probably meant something bad. We've observed cars with red bandanas - a sign of people's support for the farmers.

![Unhappy farmers](/images/netherlands-mini-relocation/farmers.jpg)

And as we were sitting, on the evening of 29th of August, ready to pack our things and the next day move to Alkmaar, a city in the province of North Holland, which was supposed to become our next home for the rest of this mini-relocation, we've observed that on the 30th of August there will be the biggest NS strike in the Netherlands.

## NS Strike
NS, or Nederlandse Spoorwegen which is Dutch for "*Dutch Railways*", the biggest state-owned railway operator in the Netherlands, as well as the busiest railway in European Union, and the third largest in the world after Switzerland and Japan - said they were going on a strike.

The strike aimed to increase NS workers' salaries as well as pension contributions, and was ongoing for a few days already, but was limited mainly to one of the Netherlands regions. However the planned strike on the 30th was in Utrecht which is a major hub and operation center for NS, hence NS was not able to run **any**... **trains**... **AT ALL**. On previous strike days, NS was able to provide limited service outside of the strike area, but this time they've said they were not able to find a way to provide service due to the importance of Utrecht in the railway system.

And so, without any option to leave Nunspeet, except for 6 buses that will take us anywhere between 4 and a half to 6 hours of travel time, or a taxi ride that will cost like a flight ticket from the Netherlands to Israel and back - we were forced to find a solution just a few hours before going to sleep.

*This concludes the first part of the article. [Read the second part](/post/remote-work-in-the-netherlands-part-2)*


Remote Work

Remote Work in The Netherlands - Part 2

Remote Work in The Netherlands - Part 1