conard

hello all,

my name is michael, i am 19, i have managed to save about 3500 euro.
my plan was to go to amsterdam and stay in a hostel or a shared house until i can sort out all the legal stuff and start looking for work.

i dont speak dutch, i speak english, french and very basic spanish. im not fussed about what work i do, i was hopeing for somthing in a bar or hotel.

do you think i have enough money? and do i have any chance of finding work since dont speak dutch?

i would be my worst nightmare to go there and not find work then have to come back when money runs out.

i would be very greatful for any advice,

thank you

mike

Mitzyboy

Cant speak for living there, but my experience (certainly of the main cities) was that a huge majority seemed to speak English as well as I could

SoJohn

Hi,

As Mitzy has said the vast majority of people speak English, but don't let this be a false sense of hope for you. If you are thinking of bar work or something with heavy interaction with Dutch people, you will need to speak Dutch. They are rightly very proud of their language and would be pretty insulted if you were in some kind of public contact (bar, restaurant) and couldn't speak Dutch.

Another thing for you to consider is IT work. You probably have a reasonable chance of finding work in a Datacenter there (I know some that don't speak Dutch). That kind of work will buy you a year or so but after that, people around you will have expected you to have made a good effort to learn Dutch.

username132

Try www.kamernet.nl to find a room before you leave - that should work out cheaper than a hostel, I think. You have to pay about 15 euro to make 30 responses to adverts. When you reply to an advert, always make a note of the telephone number and ring the person as well (since many people don't respond to the emails). Since you will be calling from a foreign country, I suggest you use a Skype, or a similar VOIP service.

Which country are you coming in from? In my experience (from the UK), you need

a) a housing contract (from whoever you rent the room from) in order to register with the local council/municipality,
b) registration with a council municipality in order to get a SOFI (national insurance) number
c) a SOFI number in order to get paid (it will be a lot easier to get a job when you already have you sofi number but it's perfectly legal to work before you get it, except you can't be paid until you have it!)
d) a job in order to get a bank account (this was Rabobank - maybe others are different).

(the whole thing was very stressful and I had to go back and forth a bunch of times before everythnig was sorted).

Why did you choose Holland, instead of, for example, the UK?