2008-12-10 20:14:00
Remember this one? Or this one? Or how about this one? We've been thinking about moving away from the big cities for a while now and we've finally made our decision:
We're moving to the province of Drenthe.
As you can see from the map on the left, the province of Utrecht is one of the most densely populated areas in the Netherlands (after Zuid Holland and Noord Holland). We've lived in Utrecht all of our lives and we've had it pretty damn good. Our houses in Nieuwegein and Utrecht (the city) were both comfortable and they suited our needs. And living in the city we always had the benefit of all kinds of shops and facilities nearby.
Now that I'm nearing my thirties and Dana's joined our family things look different though. We want to have a nice, big house that'll last us at least ten years (and possibly a second child). Since we'll be living off of my wages alone said house needs to be affordable, leaving us enough money for food, upkeep and savings. And since housing prices in the deep red provinces on the map suck we've decided to try our luck elsewhere.
Flevoland (the island in the middle) doesn't offer us much interesting because I particularly dislike the cities over there. Housing is a bit more affordable than elsewhere, but it doesn't help much that Almere is atrociously ugly :/ And since we've always like the countryside of Friesland and Drenthe, we've decided to move to the latter!
We've been browsing Funda for a few days now and even when limiting our search to the southwest of Drenthe there's more than two hundred houses to pick from! Houses within our budget that is... Right now we're eyeballing a house that's close to my in-laws, close to an Intercity railway station and close to both schools and a forest. It's about 130m2, has five rooms and two bathrooms. The kitchen looks alright, as do the two yards and the terrace. All of that rings in at around 190k, which is only 40k more than what we paid for our 80m2, first floor apartment.
Unfortunately there are a few downsides to living in Drenthe, the largest being the distance I need to travel for my daily commute. By moving further east I'm limiting the area that I can work in quite a bit. Quite severely actually, since most of the really big IT jobs are in the outmost west of the Netherlands. One could say that Amsterdam and Utrecht are about as far west as I could go to find jobs, while the west coast is my current limit. Oh well...
The other downside is that we'd be moving further away from all of our friends (except you Kaijuu, you'd be right around the corner!) and our family. But then again, the house'll be big enough to have a guest room, so hey! ^_^
It's a pretty big decision to make, but I do believe it's a good one.
kilala.nl tags: house, family, netherlands,
View or add comments (curr. 13)
Posted by Floor (website)
Sounds really good. Don't want to live in the city my whole life either, want lots of animals etc :P and well, the prices are just SO much better...
Posted by Martijn
Congrats....I hope you, Marli and Dana will be very happy over there. Knowing you, that will not be a problem. And you now, Holland is small compared to where we want to go.
Cheers mate,
M.
Posted by Cailin Coilleach
Thanks for the reassuring words guys. :)
And yeah, you're absolutely right Martijn. The Netherlands really is only a few hundred kiloms end-to-end. Traveling in the US is simply on a completely different scale! :D
Posted by Kaijuu (website)
Well, Drenthe is something totally different indeed. It's nice, but depending on where you're going to live, be prepared to be "that city folk" for a long time. :)
Posted by Remco (website)
Good one dude! I knew it, you're actually pretty smart indeed. ;)
Posted by Nicole (website)
Hi Thomas!
Great! Enjoy the silence and peace up there :)
Good decision and -with a few exceptions- you will not regret!
(see my http://blog.nerdette.org/?p=64 - living for 3 years in Germany and not missing Atla^H^H^H^HHolland a bit ;)
BTW - iPhones are great stuff, I'm only missing the 'external' keyboard when using my ssh clients ..
Posted by Digitist
A very good move indeed (as a Groninger i'm a bit biased). Once you live in the north you probably don't want return to the west. That was the case for most of the KPN'ers that were force to work and live in Groningen in the eighties. Keywords are space, laid back, affordable houses, nice nature and environment.
You get used to commuting and there are good IT jobs in the North. Oddly most vacancies can be found in Friesland while Groningen has the name of IT City of the North.
I wish for you and your family to find a nice and affordable house in Drenthe. With the econmic crises it's definitely a buyers market now.
Posted by Paul (website)
The east part of Drente has beautiful nature. Only drawback is the travel time to work. To Amsterdam or Utrecht it will be about 4 hours a day by car. The train from Assen or Hoogeveen is a good alternative.
I have a house for rent if you want to try living in the country for a while ;).
Posted by Willow (website)
Wow, Drenthe is far away, but really beautiful :)
I think I'd do the same if I didn't have lots of friends and family keeping me in Noord-Holland. Like where I live now, you'll probably have a lot of nature and space around you, which is a most excellent environment for Dana to grow up in. Good luck!
Posted by Guldan (website)
Hey, why are you making my possible ict placings more difficult here in the North part...!!! But it is very nice to live here, just relax and enjoy the things nature brings here. Hope to see you in your new house some day, i will be cycling all around.
All content, with exception of "borrowed" blogpost images, or unless otherwise indicated, is copyright of Thomas Sluyter. The character Kilala the cat-demon is copyright of Rumiko Takahashi and used here without permission.
2008-12-10 21:12:00
Posted by Edmond
Now that is a good decision! We've been pondering on it, too. Maybe we'll join you in a few years. ;-)