I'm Julie, 27 years old, French (Parisian).

I moved to Rotterdam end of April 2011 to follow my partner who has been transferred over there.

What challenges did I face during the move? I didn’t know I must register to the cityhall and give some papers to get the sofi number to be considered as citizen. I needed this number to find a work, to be paid, to open an account, to get an apartment.. for almost everything here. And also, as we are not married, I had to do a lot of paperwork to do more. He didn’t have to do it as expat.   more ...

My name is Stuart. I'm an Englishman in his early 30s with a well documented reputation for accident proneness and bizarre situation finding. I moved to Holland to start working as a designer in the computer games industry. Originally this was only supposed to be a stay of sixth months but the tempting lure of "lekkere bitterballen" and good beer has turned it into a much longer stay.

My favorite colour is army green, my lucky number is seven and when I grow up I want to be a Ghostbuster.

I moved to Holland in the summer of 2001 but it was not really planned. It was kind of an accident but a happy accident none the less. A short while after I had finished college I tried to find a job in the computer games design industry so I could use my education as an excuse to play computer games all day.   more ...

My name is Tiffany Jansen. Originally from the United States of America, I now live in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with my husband and our dog.

I moved to Utrecht early December 2008 after marrying my Dutch husband. We were tired of the long-distance relationship and wanted to live together. He had the better job and an apartment, the economy is better here than in the US, and if you think immigrating to the Netherlands is a nightmare, you don't want to mess with trying to get into the US! I had also had quite a lot of experience abroad and jumped at the chance to live in another country.   more ...

My name is Arwa Lokhandwala and I am an Indian expat living in The Netherlands with my husband.

We relocated to The Netherlands from India because of my husband's work. It has been a little more than a year now. The initial paperwork was mostly hassle free but took some time. We arrived in Rotterdam in Dec, 2008 which is one of the coldest months of the year so the weather tested us too. The language and the culture in The Netherlands is entirely different from that of ours. But it also presented a great opportunity to learn about different things.   more ...

My name is Anne Galloway and I’d like to share a small part of my story of becoming an expat for the first time in the hope that it can help and inspire other expat spouses. I am married with two children who were 10 and 7 when we had to move. I gave up a job I really enjoyed and took my kids away from their friends and all because of my husband’s work.

My husband moved to Holland in April 2006 and the children and I followed in the summer. The day after we arrived was the start of 2 weeks of thunder storms and non-stop rain – you might think that I’d be used to it coming from Scotland but honestly we don’t have that much rain!   more ...

My name is Anna Gilhespy, I am 29 and I run my own business (www.thehouseofmouse.co.uk) making handmade ornaments which I sell mostly online.

I moved to Hoofddorp (just outside Amsterdam) with my husband in 2003 when he was offered a good job over here. There was little work where we were living in the UK and the opportunity was too good for us to pass up.   more ...