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Amsterdam is pretty socially liberal. However, in the whole country the conservative mindset has a tremendously strong foothold. In most of the country the dutch version of the N-word is still completely acceptable, there are two parties that are comparable to Donald Trump racism and phobia-towards-any thing non-white and non-straight (PVV and FVD), and not having national holidays centered around Jim Crow-like characters is still a fight in progress. The gentrification is indeed very strong. The gritty subcultures have almost disappeared; the places that managed to survive despite gentrification aren't very welcoming to 'expats' unless you come to actually help protest gentrification and help maintain and staff the old, formerly squatted buildings they're in. An american acquaintance of mine became an immigration lawyer and helped a LOT of people who suffered under the pretty horrible refugee laws created by the liberal (as in market-liberal but socially conservative) VVD. He was fully welcome in the surviving underground spaces, despite being one of those rich 'expats', because of the work he does. Amsterdam is still a pretty sweet place to live, even though it's slowly losing the things that made it so interesting and becoming more and more a generic big city. It's got a lot of things the large capitals of the world have, but with the difference that you can cycle from one side of town to the other in 45 minutes or so. It's incredibly compact. The public transport is reasonably functional, but if you live there you often just don't bother with it unless it's horribly rainy - because you either walk or cycle somewhere. The compact, 17/18/19th century layout does mean that the city feels overcrowded. I have lived in Osdorp, a 1950s designed suburb. I preferred it over the inner city because there isn't that never ending stream of tourists and visitors that you have to watch out for, or who are noisy or whatever. As a student i paid €350 a month for a room with a shared living room, 10 years ago. My upstairs neighbor who still had her original rental contract she got in 1990, paid €450ish for a whole 2 bedroom apartment. Just to show how much prices have risen. Both exluding utilities. Heating cost is probably a lot, those old apartments are really badly isolated. Natural gas and electrity cost has skyrocketed, for 2023 the price of 1kWh of electricity is capped at €0,40 and €1,45 per m^3 of gas. Expect to pay at least 150 euro per month in heating cost in the winter months for a well isolated single family home from the post 2000s, going up to 600 euro a month if you have a free standing bungalow style house from the 1960s. If you consume more than 2900kWh and more than 1200m^3, anything over that amount is just billed at whatever price the utility company wants to charge. Be very careful if you both heat and cook on electrics, you can easily get over that amount. The price cap will likely not continue after 2023, and it depends on the russia situation if the cost will ever go down again. Internet's cheap, starts at 30 euro or something for home internet, and 10 euro for 2gb of mobile data a month. Train travel is expensive, check https://www.ns.nl for train travel cost and https://www.gvb.nl for within-amsterdam public transport. So, in short - it's hella expensive, it's not anymore what people in the 1990s told you it is, but it's pretty alright to live here. I don't live in Amsterdam anymore, but as a gay dude it still is where most fun stuff happens so i wouldn't want to live too far from it. LimaBiker fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Dec 19, 2022 |
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Dec 19, 2022 17:11
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| # ¿ May 18, 2024 15:10 |
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