For over five years working in operations, I have completely forgotten the concept of a weekend. It has always been long hours on weekdays and on call duties on weekends. To a certain degree, I built my life around work out of habit. Weekend, to people in the operations and service management profession, meant change requests, on call support work, project cutovers and server maintenance windows. Yes, for quite sometime, this has been my life… Not that I didn’t like it. This was a choice I made for the love of my craft.
If there is one good thing about moving to the Netherlands, it is that I rediscovered the phenomenon called “Weekend”. In my interaction with Dutch people in general, I found only two topics of interest and one of them is about the weekend. To a lot of Dutch people (maybe not only Dutch, but Europeans in general), weekend is the highlight of their week. It is like a culmination of a week of hardwork and stress. It is a time to be away from the pressures of the world, and simply enjoy a laid back time with the family.
For expats living in Holland, it doesn’t matter how one spends the weekend. There is always something going on during the weekends, that it is impossible to let one go by without having done anything. Personally, my social calendar is never empty on weekends. I’m either whipping up something in the kitchen, doing some sporting activities, partying the night away without getting too wasted, raiding the racks at the fashion outlets, travelling some 800 kilometers and back for a breathe of fresh air, or simply chillin’ at the beach with a good book on a sunny day (which is very rare in this country!).
Even on a lazy weekend, I would start mine with a trip to the market on Saturday morning. This is one of the things I fondly enjoy but don’t get to do quite often, as I am almost always in another country during weekends. But whenever I’m in Holland, I make it a point to visit the open market, which is 2 blocks away from my place. It is not only refreshing to have a set of new tulips by my window, but I find the whole experience of visiting the slagerij and bakkerij for fresh supplies, a therapy for homesickness. Yes, it makes me feel at home here.
Being able to immerse in the Dutch culture in the little ways that I know, helps to ease the loneliness of living alone in this cold country. It makes me feel like I am really part of this world now. Don’t get me wrong, I do not wish to lose my identity as a Filipino/Chinese. I still hold true to the values my parents taught me growing up, but in order to grow and find my happiness here, I am also enthusiastic about really living the Dutch life – and that includes having a gezellig weekend every chance I get!