Munici-pals
The Puzzle: Get A Dutch Address, Bank Account, and Phone Number
Have you ever encountered a mind-bending bureaucratic paradox? Whether at home or abroad, share your creative workarounds below!
I’ll go first…
The business of moving is not something concluded on the day you actually take possession of the space nor is it when your furniture arrives. Instead, moving is a process that unfolds over weeks as you slowly acclimate and introduce yourself to the new home. Yes, there are the big event moments like getting the keys or making the bed for the first time, but it takes several more days or even weeks before everything that was ordered arrives or you’ve figured out all the little things like wastebaskets, hand towels, and power strips that you need to acquire.
Moving to a new country involves a lot more logistics.
If you recall our first adventure registering with the Rotterdam municipality, you’ll remember that William and I were recorded as “non-resident residents,” meaning we have citizen numbers but were still considered as “living in the US” since we didn’t have a Dutch address at which we could register. Further complicating the matter, we’d done so in Rotterdam but were now “moving” to Den Haag…
Rather like the LinkedIn job postings for entry-level positions that require five years of experience, the necessary steps for becoming a resident of The Netherlands are riddled with chickens and eggs where both are seemingly meant to come first. Obviously, we needed a permanent residence for the “having a place to live” part, but it is more difficult to rent an apartment without a Dutch bank account, something you can’t open without a permanent address…
We made all the formal steps needed with the immigration service so that wasn’t a concern, but they couldn’t contact us to come pick up our resident cards until we had a permanent address even though the cards themselves would be of great value in guaranteeing a lease or when opening a bank account. Securing an apartment is also infinitely easier if you have a local phone number so agents can, oh I don’t know, call to let you know they’ll be late for a showing so you’re not stuck in a cold, windy alleyway wondering if the neighborhood is one you’d like to live in long-term…
But you can’t get a phone number without a bank account…
Armed with a signed lease showing our permanent address and our previously issued citizen numbers, we found a bank that catered to expats in our state of flux, and I made an appointment at what I assumed was a branch…only to discover that the address was a storefront with books and gifts in the window instead of the bank’s iconic logo.
Curious as to what would unfold, we stepped inside to discover another fascinating part of Dutch culture. Yes, there was a small counter at the back for the bank teller to use when they were needed; however, the store also had a machine for buying rail passes, a counter for lottery tickets, and offered a full array of PostNL shipping options. They also sell wine, candles, and other “I had no idea what to get you” gifts alongside greeting cards.
I’ll admit it, I was a bit skeptical about the likelihood of opening a bank account inside what felt like a Hudson News on steroids.
Awkwardly hovering around the empty counter until our appointment, William enjoyed the selection of unicorn coloring books—something our nieces are gaga for these days. The teller came from selling lottery tickets and listened to our situation, making a phone call to make sure she wouldn’t get herself (or us) into any trouble. After some translation back and forth for the finer details of what we were signing, we were able to open our Dutch bank account in the combination store. By the time we finished, I had changed my mind and was impressed by the setup. There were lockboxes to safeguard the copier/scanner and paper shredder…and the bank teller had us watch her dispose of the copies of our passports (no residence cards yet) and the signed documents after the scans were uploaded.
Three out of four under our belt, next up was getting a Dutch phone number.
Our realtor advised us to use the provider that also offers home internet, giving a discount when you bundle…and I love a deal, especially appealing in the same week where we bought a household’s worth of goods from IKEA, a couch, and a bed. Everything we read said you need to be an official resident, but we figured having an address and the open bank account would work, even if we didn’t have physical residence or debit cards yet. After some checking on their part and the convenience of a Wise virtual card, we found ourselves with new phone numbers a mere hour after setting out for them!
That left the municipality registration.
We knew from our time in Rotterdam that we were meant to register our move with The Hague within five days, but found no available appointments for our unique case earlier than April. We didn’t realize it at the time, but registering as “non-resident residents” actually made it more challenging since we weren’t “registering for the first time” nor were we “registered and therefore able to indicate we’d moved” and so the available options did not fit our circumstances. Our legal team (bless them, they used WhatsApp the whole time) recommended calling and, even though William had already researched other ways of moving forward in the interim, he managed to call and secure an appointment for the end of February.
That appointment was the first time both of us nearly lost it.
After being we would be able to get what we needed done, it was a major disappointment to be at the counter and hear that we were not able to proceed since we had an appointment for “registering a move” not “changing from non-resident resident to actual resident.” What’s more, we learned that type of appointment isn’t offered at the gleaming four story open-atrium Den Haag Stadhuis in the centrum. Oh no, that service is offered at a satellite office and we were told to call and make appointments there…
I stepped away in frustration, not wanting to unleash my wrath in a civic building, knowing we would help there in the future. William was crestfallen, especially since he’d suspected that we needed the appointments he’d made for us in April and not the one we’d been given in February. We each processed our upset differently: I went in search of a cheap rain slicker while he opened our glossy black folder, sitting in a corner of the lobby to make another phone call.
I don’t know if it was the strain in his voice or his natural charm, but somehow he managed to secure a single appointment for less than an hour from that moment at the satellite office more than twenty minutes away. Yes, we needed two appointments total, but getting his registration moving forward is more important since it is also holding up starting his business.
Doing our best Home Alone airport impression, we booked it to the tram station and I spent the entire ride trying to see if I could find an online appointment for anytime soon. I thought I found one that same day but the time would pass while we were on the tram and the system wouldn’t confirm it. I finally secured one…for even later in April than our first would’ve been.
A little worse for the stress, we made our way to the gemeente satellite office on Fahrenheit Street for William’s appointment. Scanning the QR code, we took a seat with the little slip of paper indicating his position in the queue. On the whole, Dutch society is nicely automated: many online merchants accept iDEAL where you don’t provide your payment information but are instead authenticated into your banking app where you can use Face ID to approve the transaction and then sent back to the shop.
At the counter, William mentioned we’d made the appointment barely an hour before and the very kind woman explained that their online system is being upgraded and no one seems to be able to make appointments…except one specific window in April. I slipped William my passport, in case she was feeling merciful—although I do know that one is more than two! As expected, she wasn’t able to process me because they are short staffed, deserve to take breaks, and, if they did that for me, what would happen to the others on the benches patiently waiting their turn?
That kind of egalitarian principle makes sense unless it’s you being told “no” when you really want to be told “yes.”
Before we left the US, we knew enough to get our birth certificates and marriage certificate apostilled—a stupidly expensive and timely paper-only process that results in a blue stamp and cover sheet stapled to the same document you had at the start that makes it “globally recognized.” Up until we arrived at the satellite gemeente, no one had asked for any of them, and I was glad to finally have a use—the kind civil servant did add a copy of the marriage certificate to my record even though I wasn’t going to be processed that day.
The rest of William’s appointment went off without much of a hitch, although they did mention that his faded paper birth certificate is in a format too old to be usable if we seek more permanent means of staying in the country in the future. I wondered what they would make of mine since it is actually a photograph…a relic from another era indeed.
We spent the time while she made entered everything into the system by researching how to get new apostilled birth certificates, just in case. Birth certificates are such a strange thing to be considered “official” and “not”—isn’t my standing here physically enough of a record that I exist, no matter what the paper says? After reading about a printed form that gets mailed to the US and the envelope that comes back weeks later, William decided that was a job for another day and checked the appointment calendar again.
Lo and behold—a newly available time slot for twenty minutes hence!
I went over to the scanner where it read my QR code and spit out a number. When I stepped up to the adjoining counter, the woman who processed William’s application said she didn’t realize my appointment was so soon or she would’ve helped me too. Explaining we’d just secured it, she and her colleague seemed genuinely excited for us…though perhaps they were more glad we’d gotten everything in the single trip and wouldn’t be back again in five weeks. Either way, their excitement was nothing in comparison to our own. After the frustration at the Stadhuis, things were taking a decidedly better turn!
There was also no mention of an issue with (the age of) my birth certificate.
Returning to the city center, we decided to celebrate with a dinner at Pavlov (“the name that rings a bell!”) and planned what we hoped would be our final day of errand running before we could just exist in our new home. We’re still waiting on the dining room and office furniture, but we’ve got pictures on the walls, have finally caught up on laundry, and even found a way to rent American movies with Dutch subtitles on our new smart TV.
FYI, a lot of the dialect in Drop Dead Gorgeous doesn’t translate super well; however, we did learn some Dutch curse words…
Having solved so many residency problems, it feels petty to complain about something as trivial as shopping for housewares…but I contain multitudes. I’m used to searching for most things online, but I have been talking myself out of seeking the “perfect” items, finding many that are more than serviceable nearby—we even found a seal for the shower door!
Still, I was baffled by lampshades.
Frustrated by trying to translate the description of what I wanted into Dutch and then doing conversions from centimeters to inches, I realized that perhaps it would be better to simply go out looking at them in person and hoped I would get lucky finding a store with glittering chandeliers and a wide selection of options. After a long walk all around The Hague and stopping in plenty stores that sell lamps but no “lampenkappen,” I settled on the first pair I found…and we think they look good upside down.
My other errand was to pick up a pair of hand weights in store (after I ordered them online) in the vain hope that I’ll want to start exercising again now that my excuses of living in a too-small temporary rental, having none of my things from storage, and being “on vacation, but not on vacation” have all evaporated.
The sporting good store was hopping, with several folks trying to figure out what was going on with one of the new model bikes someone had just returned. When the clerk handed me the pair of dumbbells and I felt my reusable tote strain, I was glad I saved the nearly 9 pounds of dead weight for after I’d confirmed all the places you can’t get a lampshade.
After handing me the receipt, the sales clerk looked me up and down and said, “You have a very cool vibe about you.” Stepping back out into the sunshine, the bag didn’t seem as heavy—Pavlov’s delicious burgers be damned, I’ll be dining out on that compliment for weeks!
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De lampenkappen zijn stijlvol. Our little lamps look as though we’ve bent each downward. So dope.