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Well, it’s now been six weeks since I’ve arrived in the land of fig-trees-in-front-yard-pots and shops that close at 6pm. Since I last wrote here, I’ve entered a new chapter of life, because my sweetheart and kids have arrived in the Netherlands (yay), and I no longer feel like a ghost wandering among the living. I’ve come to accept that I’m a pack animal, and I feel cozy and purposeful with my little family, no matter where we go.

Recent step that helped me settle into next-level life here:

• I have a bank account (which is needed to navigate most places)1, gained after crossing a threshold of steps in the immigration process.
• TRANSFORM exhibit by Guido Geelen on the dynamics of constant change (aka #relevantcontent).
• I got a LIBRARY CARD and hauled home many English-language books for the kids so they could self-sooth through the chaos of an international move. I also spent a delicious amount of time wandering the aisles looking at titles I recognize and clocking ones I wanted to read in Dutch when I can read Dutch.

How we decided where to live in the Netherlands.

When we visited in November to check the vibes of a couple different cities — what most call a “scouting trip” — we decided to stay in Den Haag (The Hague), visit Rotterdam, and take a peek at a city outside the Randstad. The Randstad is the most densely populated strip of Europe — Amsterdam, through The Hague, curved on around to Rotterdam — and home to half the population of the Netherlands. And while Nova was raised in Oakland, I spent some of my most exciting years in New York City, and we lived in the SF Bay Area for many years together, there’s a reason we moved next to a forest in Massachusetts when we made what we thought was the last big move for us. We are leaning into a middle-age life that wants more slowness and we crave being encased in the nature on a regular basis. So, we sought out a smaller city that was a city outside the dense strip.

Somewhat embarrassingly (but also whatever, culture is real) we saw an International House Hunters episode about Breda and it made us curious. It was cute! It was an actual city but also, nature! It had murals and good looking restaurants and bicycling next to a river!

The number of times I googled “Is Breda Part of the Dutch Bible Belt” is certainly more than ten. I really, really didn’t want to mess this one up! But it’s not— the Dutch Bible Belt is entwined with Protestantism, and Breda is in the Southern part of the country that has been Catholic for a long time, and as such, the site of centuries of wars between Catholic and Protestant aligned monarchies and cultural conflict, including a fairly recent and elaborate system of religious segregation within the Netherlands they called “pillarization”. As the majority of the Netherlands became secular, combined with other dynamics of politics I don’t yet understand, formal pillarization decreased and I pass multiple churches every day that have been turned into community centers.

So, when we came in November, we hopped a tram to an inter-city train from Den Haag central station to Rotterdam (20 minutes) and then on to Breda (another 20 minutes). As the skyline of Rotterdam faded from view, we took in the yellow-brown of polders and farm fields and rivers, and then the stone tower in the center of Breda came into view. Walking through a tidy meandering park, we came upon a doll house museum, where we ducked in to get out of the cold. My kids delighted in it. We had a coffee at a table overlooking a former hide-away community for nuns. From there, we pass through the winding streets of central Breda and made our way to the nearest library — one of our favorite ways to get to know a new community.

Dear reader, IT DID NOT DISAPPOINT. We planned to stay for an hour or so, but about 4 hours later, we were hungry for dinner and needed to head out to take a peek at Rotterdam before we left the country the next day. We arrived at the community center on a Saturday mid-day, and it was hosting a retrospective on Dutch video game design. They turned Space Invaders beta, wherein kids sat on a giant wheeled contraption and shot tennis balls at a background. Our small child (age 9), the most tech-focused, spent time designing her own video game character on an iPad with the support of helpful young adults, wherein the character was projected into a giant screen along with all the other kids self-designed video game creatures. It was very cute and satisfying group play with technology.

Meanwhile, our bookworm eldest (then 11) scoured the English language section and sat down under the glassy skylights on a comfy couch and lost herself in some dramatic tale of teenage mystery before making her way to the makerspace in the corner and designing a giant puppet out of cardboard.

My extroverted wife made her way around looking at everything and chatting up strangers, including the genderqueer staff person who gave her the low-down on queer life in Breda. I tucked myself in a corner with Dutch design, art, and cookbooks and periodically turned around to marvel at the retirement-age people taking their mid-day lunch together at the cafe in the middle of it all, stemware wine and all.

Not wanting to leave a free public space in a cold city in November is a pretty promising indicator of what life might be like there, and so, when we for sure decided to “go” we knew which city we wanted to orient our search toward4. The 9th biggest city in a country one can drive across in 3 hours.

This is, of course, a sped up re-telling of how this decision was made. Not included were many, many hours of reading about Breda and other cities in the Netherlands on the internet, comparing housing and other cost prices, researching medical care, and asking expats and Netherlanders living in the US that we were in contact with what the city was like. One of our community members even set up a lunch in the US between us and someone our age who was raised in a town nearby so we could ask him a bunch of region- and kid-specific questions— the kindness of people truly persists in this era of public cruelty.

And so, this is how I found myself walking down a block last week watching an airplane skyline a pattern into the sky, compelling me to look up at a house I pass every single day, to notice a statue that I had been overlooking (or maybe it had just been installed?) was peeking there from atop the roof.

I know some must be wondering how we came to make such a giant, big, impactful, life-changing decision. Many people have talked with us behind the scenes about how to research their escape/take a break countries from the US if it comes to that. About how they decide. If they even have that option. What their thresholds are. These are such important questions, and it can feel so overwhelming. I’m planning to share some deeper thoughts and resources soon. Until then, my friends. Stay brave, safe, and curious.

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If you’re considering leaving the US (even if flashes of “what if” or “I couldn’t!” cross your mind occasionally) my wife Nova and I wrote a book just for you.