NB: This post was originally intended to be published sometime early Jan. But am getting to it only today (02-Aug-2015).
I returned from the Netherlands mid-December 2013 after a brief stint of 7.5 months. I went there to serve one of our clients, on a transformation project. The project was continuing and I could've stayed there longer if I had wished to, but chose to return for certain reasons.
Though the duration of my stay was not very long (I was earlier in Sydney for 5.5 years), I thought I felt sadder leaving Amsterdam than when I felt leaving Sydney, which seemed a little confusing. I had a thought about the reasons for this.
Firstly, I didn't 'leave' Sydney. I was only taking a break. Given that I am someone who gets bored easily and needs a change quite often (5.5 years working for the same client??? Ahem...), I felt the change would do me some good (it sure did!!!). So I guess I was actually looking forward to the change of place so much so that leaving Sydney did not actually bother me much.
Secondly, given that I am an Australia PR, I probably felt that I will be returning at some point in time, in fact sooner than later (I returned early Jan 2014). Also after 5.5 years, you get to know a place somewhat like the back of your hand, that while you can take someone out of the country, you cannot take the country out of someone. So all in all, there was no separation. It was just an extended holiday.
On the contrary, when I left Holland, I was inexplicably sad. I didn't have any close friends there, no one came to see me off at the airport (Well, that was a bit sad :( ) and to top it all, I had big problems with my baggage allowance (Damn the bathroom scale that deceived me!!!) - which, in hindsight now helped in not saddening me more. I was just glad to get it over with and get into my flight.
But in the run-up to my departure, the last few days were really sending me off on spells of nostalgia and sadness. I kept thinking of my stay there and realized that I had no major problems during my stay there. In fact I experienced lots of nice things while there.
The day I arrived, my friend came to receive me at the airport. I stayed with him for about a couple of months, and so had no house-hunting to do immediately upon arrival; had everything set-up for a complete home. My work was not pressurizing initially, so that was good; I gradually eased into the schedule, made a good first impression on my client manager, learnt my stuff well and everything went fine on that front thereon.
During my first two weeks there, we had long weekends, and I visited the wonderful Keukenhof tulip gardens on one of them. I went alone, but hardly felt lonely. There was so much to see and click that I didn't notice that I had spent almost 7 hours there and was on my feet for almost the entire duration. To top it all, I clicked 188 pics, a world record by my standards.
After a few weeks, I started my house hunt and got a very, very nice place, which was also very convenient to get to work from. It was expensive, but was situated upstairs of the main shopping plaza of the city centre and therefore everything was at arm's reach. My mother came to visit me and stayed for 2.5 months. During this time we did a two-day tour of the Amsterdam city attractions including a night boat ride on the canals, visited The Hague, Rotterdam, Paris, Brussels, Bruges and the Black Forest area. We had planned a trip to Cologne too during the last week of my mother's stay, but the constant weekend travelling wore me out and so we just decided to take it easy. Luckily, I also got most of my train ticket money refunded. :)
By the time my mother left, I too had decided to leave Holland and had just a couple of months left. Therefore, I vacated the apartment, cleaned it up so well that the house agent thought I had gotten a professional cleaner and therefore managed to get a full refund of my deposit (one of my friends lost almost 75% of his deposit when he vacated). I then shared an apartment with someone introduced to me by my neighbour. Luckily, the new place was also in the same locality (I initially had plans to stay with a colleague, a bit far away, but fortunately happened to chat with my neighbour one evening, and found this new place). Also the new flatmate was a very nice person. Absolutely no problems there.
On the work front, I made very good progress. I had a lot of freedom, spoke when I had to, spoke good sense every time, had great opportunities to interact with various business managers and suppliers and commanded the respect and admiration of the people I worked with. In fact, my program manager, a very senior lady, took to liking my work so much that she made sure I was present in all important meetings with the supplier, and even let me lead discussions with them - things which were definitely not in my realm when I joined the team. It really felt good to be recognized and appreciated and I reckon that drove me to raise the bar every single day. To top this all, I was given a very warm farewell and also received highly appreciative notes of thanks from many and was told I was more than welcome back any time....So, couldn't ask for more.
So, as you can see, everything went good for me in Amsterdam. But why was I sad? I can think of a few reasons:
1. Well, as I mentioned earlier, you almost always never want a holiday to end. But my Amsterdam *holiday* did.
2. I made a couple of good friends while there, but was not sure if/ where/ when I will get to meet them again. And given that Australia is almost half-way across the world, it is going to take a great amount of effort for either me or my friends to travel that much. So that's probably another reason.
3. And another regret that I had/ still have is that I didn't travel around much while in Europe, which I reckon is a big miss. The few countries that I visited were in fact a result of my desire to take my mom (she LOVES to travel) around, rather than actually see those places for myself. Keukenhof was the exception, but that was because it wouldn't have helped if I had waited for my mom to arrive in Amsterdam as the gardens would've been long closed by then (They are open for just about 2 months in a year, the remaining 10 months are used to plan the following year's display).
4. One of my closest friends from school had moved to Helsinki in July 2013. I have not seen her in many, many years. So if I had known she were there, I would've definitely flown in to see her. Now, I don't know when I will get to see her again.
5. Amsterdam was indeed a nice place to live and work. It is an absolutely beautiful country, friendly people, not very crowded, great public infrastructure, has a great work culture - no unnecessary formalities, no beating around the bush, no need to follow the hierarchical approach to get things done at work (And anybody who's worked in India would know what I mean; of course, the situation is not very different in Sydney either) - which worked to my advantage.
6. But most of all, the Netherlands is a country that accepts people for what they are without any judgments. I find that an amazing quality. Its citizens are not riddled with *morality* issues and are not subjected to unnecessary scrutiny. After all, sometimes the people who most profess standards for a society might themselves have loads of dirt on their back. So it seems so refreshingly un-hypocritical that no one is allowed to prescribe any for others in that country. Do whatever you want, just don't disturb me!!
It's been more than 1.5 years since I left Netherlands, but man I long to get back! Hopefully, even live there sometime again....Let's wait and watch....
