10 Things About the Netherlands That Will Make You Want to Move There

Most people arrive in the Netherlands knowing two things: it rains a lot and there are many bicycles. Both are true. But neither comes close to explaining why expats who move here for a two-year assignment find themselves renewing their residency permit a decade later.

Something happens when you live here. The directness stops feeling rude and starts feeling honest. The grey November sky stops being depressing and starts being cosy. You start to understand why there is no English translation for gezelligheid, and why that matters.

Below are ten things about Dutch life that no travel guide quite captures. Some are traditions. Some are moments. All of them are real, and most expats only discover them after they arrive.

---

1. At 8pm on May 4th, an entire country falls silent

Dam Square in Amsterdam fills with people for the 8pm silence on May 4th. Photo: Unsplash

Nothing prepares you for it the first time.

It is the evening of May 4th, Dodenherdenking, Remembrance of the Dead. You might be walking home through Amsterdam, or sitting on a tram, or waiting for a friend outside a cafe in Rotterdam. And then, at exactly 8pm, everything stops.

The tram halts mid-route. The cyclist in front of you puts their foot down and bows their head. Conversations on cafe terraces end mid-sentence. A street that was full of movement thirty seconds ago becomes completely still.

For two minutes, the entire Netherlands pauses to remember every civilian and soldier who died in war since the start of World War II. Not just Dutch soldiers. Everyone. The commemoration at Dam Square in Amsterdam includes the royal family and national politicians. Churches toll their bells. The silence is total.

Expats who witness this for the first time without knowing what is happening describe the experience in remarkably similar ways. Confusing for the first five seconds, then deeply moving for the rest of your life.

The following morning, May 5th, the whole country celebrates liberation with free music festivals in cities across the country. Grief one evening, dancing the next morning. The Dutch live with history in a way that is genuinely unlike anywhere else.

---

2. The next morning, every city has a free festival

Liberation Day festivals are free to attend and happen in 14 cities simultaneously. Photo: Unsplash

Every year on May 5th, Liberation Day, the Netherlands celebrates the end of German occupation in World War II with fourteen simultaneous free music festivals across the country.

The day begins with a flame. The Prime Minister lights it in the courtyard of Hotel de Wereld in Wageningen, the exact building where German forces surrendered to Allied troops in 1945. From there, groups walk across the country carrying the flame in relay, spreading the light from the original site of liberation outward.

By afternoon, every provincial city has a stage, a crowd, and free concerts running until the evening. The day closes with a televised concert in Amsterdam on the water, performed in the presence of the King and Queen.

The entire thing costs nothing to attend. That detail surprises almost every expat. A national celebration of this scale, completely free, because the Dutch believe liberation belongs to everyone.

---

3. A stranger once handed me a biscuit with blue sprinkles and I had no idea why

Beschuit met muisjes is how the Dutch announce a new baby. Photo: Unsplash

This one is told by almost every expat in the Netherlands at some point.

You are at work, or in a shop, or visiting a neighbour. Someone offers you a rusk with small round sprinkles on top. Blue and white, or pink and white. You eat it and say thank you, genuinely unsure what just happened.

The answer is: someone just had a baby.

Beschuit met muisjes, rusk with little mice, is the Dutch way of announcing a newborn. When a baby arrives, the family serves these anise-seed-covered rusks to every visitor. Blue and white for a boy. Pink and white for a girl. And when a member of the Royal family is born, the muisjes are orange and white.

The tradition is centuries old. New parents buy dozens of packets and spend the first weeks of their child's life serving them to everyone who comes through the door. Neighbours, colleagues, the postman. Everyone gets one.

Expats who discover this tradition through a spontaneous workplace biscuit describe it as the moment the Netherlands stopped being a country they lived in and started being a place they belonged to.

---

4. When a student graduates, the whole street knows

Somewhere in every Dutch residential neighbourhood, at the end of June, you will see a school bag and a pile of books hanging from a flagpole or dangling from a window.

No announcement. No ceremony. Just a bag in the wind.

This is how Dutch students tell the street that they have finished school. The bag goes up, the neighbourhood sees it, and the congratulations follow. Some families add banners. Some use a bicycle. The specific objects do not matter. What matters is the visibility, the public declaration that something worth celebrating has happened here.

It is a tradition that requires no explanation to Dutch people and completely baffles everyone else. Which is, in some ways, the most Dutch thing about it.

---

5. Turning 50 means a giant rag doll appears in your front garden overnight

Abraham and Sarah dolls appear outside Dutch homes without warning. Photo: Unsplash

In the Netherlands, your 50th birthday does not pass quietly.

At some point during the night before, your friends and family sneak to your house and install a life-sized stuffed figure in your front garden. Abraham for a man. Sarah for a woman. The names come from the Bible, from a passage in which the wisdom of old age is connected to having "seen Abraham." In the Netherlands, reaching 50 means you have lived long enough to have that wisdom.

The tradition has evolved over time. Today many Dutch people do not know the biblical origin at all. It has become a lighthearted prank, a celebration, a way for friends to publicly mark a milestone that cannot be hidden or ignored.

The doll is often dressed to match the birthday person's job or personality. A nurse gets a doll in scrubs. A cyclist gets a doll on a tiny bike. The whole street wakes up to see it. You cannot pretend you have not turned 50. The whole neighbourhood knows.

Expats who witness their first Dutch 50th birthday from the outside, not knowing what the doll means, describe it as one of the most confusing and eventually heartwarming things they have seen.

---

6. The Dutch never say "we should meet up sometime" unless they mean it

One of the things that surprises expats most about building a social life in the Netherlands is not the directness. It is the reliability that comes with it.

In many countries, "we should get together soon" is a pleasantry. A way of ending a conversation warmly without making a commitment. In the Netherlands, people do not say this unless they mean it. If a Dutch person says they want to meet up, they will follow through with a specific date, a specific time, and they will be on time.

For an expat who has just moved to a new country with no existing network, that reliability becomes one of the most valuable things about Dutch friendship. Every plan made is a plan kept. Every coffee suggested is a coffee that actually happens.

It takes longer to be invited in. But once you are, you are in properly.

---

7. Gezelligheid: the word that explains everything about Dutch life

A Dutch brown cafe (bruin cafe) is the physical embodiment of gezelligheid. Photo: Unsplash

There is no English translation for gezelligheid. Cosy comes closest, but it misses the social dimension. Hygge is the Danish approximation that most people know, but gezelligheid is older and carries a slightly different weight.

It describes a quality of atmosphere and connection. A warm room. A round table where everyone fits. Conversation that continues past the point when anyone intended to stay. The Dutch phrase "Gezelligheid kent geen tijd," cosiness knows no time, is used to tell anyone who tries to leave too early that they are simply not allowed to go yet.

You find it in the small brown cafes where locals sit elbow to elbow over beer. You find it at a Sunday afternoon borrel with bitterballen going cold because nobody wants to stop talking. You find it in Dutch homes with big windows and fresh flowers and furniture arranged for conversation rather than for watching television.

Expats who stay in the Netherlands long enough to understand gezelligheid often describe returning to their home country and realising for the first time that something had been missing. They just had not had a word for it.

---

8. On Ascension Day, some Dutch people walk barefoot through the morning dew

Dauwtrappen, which translates literally as "kicking the dew," is an old Dutch tradition of waking early on Ascension Day to walk or cycle barefoot through morning dew. It was once believed that dew on that particular morning had healing properties. Though less common today, many Dutch people still enjoy early morning walks in nature to mark the day.

Nobody tells you about this one. You find out because you are awake early on an Ascension Day morning, walking through a park, and you see a Dutch person take their shoes off and keep walking. If you ask why, they will explain with the mild embarrassment of someone sharing a tradition they love but cannot fully justify.

The Netherlands has been Christian, pragmatic, secular, and Protestant in rotation over the centuries. It has accumulated traditions from all of those eras without always being able to explain where they came from. Barefoot dew-walking in May is one of them. It is strange and old and completely charming.

---

9. Dutch windows have no curtains, and there is a reason that is four centuries old

Dutch windows have been uncurtained since the era of Vermeer. Photo: Unsplash

One of the first things visitors notice in the Netherlands is that Dutch people do not close their curtains. From the street, you can see directly into living rooms, kitchens, entire ground floors of homes, all lit up and visible.

The assumption is that it is about openness, or pride in the home. The actual origin is older and more interesting.

It traces back to the Dutch Protestant tradition of the 17th century, the era of Vermeer and Rembrandt. In Calvinist culture, moral virtue was demonstrated publicly. Having nothing to hide meant showing nothing was hidden. Open curtains were a statement: look at my home, look at my life, there is nothing in here that cannot be seen.

Dutch masters like Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch painted this exact quality, capturing the light coming through open Dutch windows into domestic interiors. Four hundred years later, the tradition endures, now more habit than theology but still distinctly, unmistakably Dutch.

---

10. When everything stopped, the Dutch showed up for each other

Dutch community comes into focus most clearly during difficult times. Photo: Unsplash

This is the one that expats who lived in the Netherlands during the COVID-19 pandemic talk about most.

Groups of students organised spontaneously to deliver groceries to those in self-isolation. Every Tuesday evening at 8pm, the entire country stepped to their windows and balconies to applaud healthcare workers. Churches throughout Amsterdam tolled their bells. A hashtag called coronahulp collected hundreds of heartwarming stories and offers of help from people across the country.

For expats living alone in a new country, far from their families, that moment of collective care was significant. Not because it was dramatic or unusual by Dutch standards. But because it revealed something about the social contract that exists in the Netherlands, a quiet understanding that people look out for each other when it matters, without being asked.

The Netherlands will not always be warm to you in the ways you expect. The Dutch are direct. They do not perform friendliness. But when it counts, they show up. And knowing that, for an expat who has left their whole network behind, is worth more than any welcome party.

---

One last thing

If you are considering moving to the Netherlands or have just arrived, these stories are not the exception. They are the texture of ordinary Dutch life. The biscuit with blue sprinkles will arrive on a random Tuesday. The 8pm silence will stop you in your tracks on a May evening. Gezelligheid will sneak up on you over a beer you did not intend to stay for.

The Netherlands rewards patience. Give it six months before you decide what you think of it.

Planning your move to the Netherlands? Start with our complete expat checklist for 2025 and step-by-step BSN guide.

---

Sources

• DutchReview: Dutch Quirk 86: Abraham and Sarah traditions
• Expat Housing Network: Why we love living in the Netherlands
• IamExpat: How I fell in love with the Dutch way of life
• Access NL: Dutch traditions you should know
• Wikipedia: Dodenherdenking
• Wikipedia: Liberation Day Netherlands
• Expat Focus: 10 things to love about Dutch life
• Civilisable: Holiday traditions in the Netherlands