Careful moving to the Netherlands with his wife and mortgage. Part 2: preparing documents and moving
So, in about a year (May 2017 - February 2018), I, a C ++ programmer, did find a job in Europe. I have responded to vacancies dozens of times in England, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands and even Portugal. I talked twenty times on the phone, skype and other video communication systems with recruiters, and somewhat less with technical specialists. I went to Oslo, to Eindhoven and three times to London for the final interviews. All of this is described in detail here . As a result, I received one offer and accepted it.
This offer was from the Netherlands. It is relatively simple for employers in this country to invite an employee from abroad (not from the European Union), therefore there is little bureaucratic red tape, and the process of registration takes only a few months.
But you can always create difficulties for yourself. Which I did, which delayed my move for another month. If you are interested in reading about the troubles (no, not very pleasant) associated with moving your IT family to Western Europe - welcome to Cat.
I don’t know how standard for Europe I received an offer, but the main points in it are as follows (except for the salary, of course):
As I later learned from conversations with colleagues, such a relocation package is estimated at 10 thousand euros. Those. leaving in the first 2 years is unprofitable, but some quit (hence the fame of the amount).
30% ruling is such an indulgence to foreign highly qualified specialists from the Dutch government. 30% of income is tax deductible. The size of the benefit depends on the salary, for an ordinary programmer it will be approximately 600-800 euros per month net, which is very good.
From the documents I was required to:
With copies of passports, everything is simple - only HR service needs them. Apparently, they are attached to the application for visas and residence permits. I made scans, sent them by e-mail, and they were not needed anywhere else.
For a visa and residence permit all my diplomas are not needed. They were required to check me (background screening), which was commissioned by an employer by a certain British office. Interestingly, they did not need a translation, only scans of the originals.
After sending the required, I decided just in case to apostil our diplomas. Okay, I already found a job, but it was assumed that the wife would work there too, and who knows what documents she would need.
Apostille is such an international stamp on a document, is valid in countries that signed the 1961 Hague Convention. Unlike documents issued at the registry office, diplomas can be apostilled, if not at any regional ministry of education, then in Moscow for sure. And although diplomas issued in other cities are checked longer (45 working days), it is still convenient.
At the end of February 2018, we gave 3 diplomas for apostille, at the end of April we took it. The most difficult thing is to wait and hope that diplomas will not lose.
Yes, the Dutch need exactly the birth certificates of adults. Such is their registration procedure. Moreover, we need an apostille for the originals of all these certificates, a translation of these documents (including an apostille), and an apostille for translation. And apostilles should not be older than 6 months - they told me so. Plus, I’ve already googled myself somewhere that the Netherlands may not accept our Soviet-style birth certificates, but modern Russian ones have no problems.
Yes, I read the story of JC_IIB , as he made only an apostille in Russia, and the translation was already in the Netherlands. There are so-called attorney translators, whose printing actually replaces the apostille. But, firstly, I wanted to come with fully prepared documents, and secondly, before the translation, I still had to get an apostille to the original.
And this is troublesome. Apostille on documents issued at the registry office, can put only the regional registry office of the region where the documents were actually issued.Where they received the card, go there. My wife and I are both from Saratov and the region, which, although not very far from Moscow, we did not want to dangle because of the three seals. Therefore, I first turned to a certain office, which seems to be engaged in such matters. But their terms (first) and price (second) did not suit me at all.
Therefore, a plan was drawn up: my wife draws up a power of attorney for me to apply to the registry office, I take a few days off and go to Saratov, where I receive 2 new birth certificates, I hand in 3 apostille certificates, wait, pick up, and return.
I called in advance all the necessary registry offices and clarified the schedule. There were no problems with the first three points (power of attorney, vacation, trip to Saratov). With the receipt of a new wife’s birth certificate, I also came to the registry office, wrote a statement about the loss (I didn’t think of it), paid the fee, received a new one. Given the break in the registry office for lunch, it took about 2 hours. They did not even ask about the old evidence, i.e. now we have 2 birth certificates :)
For my new certificate, I went to the district center where I was born. There, as a sole visitor, they issued me a new document in less than an hour. But the trouble is, it indicates another birthplace! Those. in my old certificate and in the registry office there are different settlements.
Both are related to me: in one there is the maternity hospital itself, in the other - the parents were registered at that time. By law, parents have the right to indicate any of these addresses in documents. At first, parents either chose or left by default - one. And after a few days (this is already from their words) they decided to change to another. And the registry office employee simply took and corrected the address in the certificate already issued. But she did not make changes to the archive or did not even intend to. It turns out that I lived for 35 years with a fake document, and nothing :)
So, now the record in the archive cannot be corrected, only by court order. Not only that, once, but also the court is unlikely to find a reason for this. I have the same place of birth in all documents, including the marriage certificate and internal passport, as in the old birth certificate. Those. they will also have to be changed. You do not need to change your passport, the place of birth is indicated very approximately: in Russian - “Saratov Region”, in English - “USSR” at all.
Under the law, up to 3 months are allowed for the exchange of a marriage certificate, although the passport is changed in 10 days. This is a long, very long time. My contract indicates the date of entry to work - May 1. In general, I had 2 options:
I already almost went the first way, but - thanks to the head of the registry office. She promised to exchange the marriage certificate as soon as possible. I agreed with the HR service to postpone my work date a month in advance, I issued a power of attorney for my father at the notary's office, handed over the marriage certificate for exchange, paid all fees in advance, left all other documents in Saratov and returned to Moscow region.
The registry offices really did everything very quickly - in two and a half weeks they exchanged a marriage certificate, and another 4 days were spent on apostilling. At the end of March 2018, my father on business came to Moscow and brought me all the ready-made documents. The rest was relatively simple and uninteresting: I ordered a translation into English at the agency, I received an apostille for translation in the Moscow Ministry of Justice. It took a week and a half. In total, each leaflet A5 of the certificate turned into 5 A4 sheets, certified by seals and signatures on all sides.
Traded through public services. That's all as promised: a week after submitting the application, a letter came that I could get a new passport in my local Ministry of Internal Affairs. True, the Ministry of Internal Affairs deals with passports only 2 days a week, so I received my passport on the 18th day after the application.
A residence permit, a work permit is all good, but then. First you need to come to the country. And for this we need visas.
When I finally collected all the necessary documents, I scanned them and sent them to HR. It is good that in the Netherlands ordinary scans have the same legal force as the originals, it was not necessary to send documents physically. HRs applied to the migration service. After 3 weeks, the migration service issued a positive response. Now my wife and I could get visas at the Netherlands Embassy in Moscow.
So, in the middle of May, I have to start work in Eindhoven on June 1. But all that’s left is to stick a visa in your passport, pack your suitcase and fly. How to get to the embassy? Make an appointment on their website. OK, when is the nearest date? In the middle of July?!
I was not even worried after the adventures with the documents. I just started calling the embassy. They didn’t pick up the phone. My phone found a useful auto redial feature. A few hours later I got through and explained the situation. My problem was solved in a few minutes - my wife and I made an appointment after 3 days.
From the documents, the embassy needed passports, photographs, completed questionnaires and a signed employment contract. We had all this. But for some reason my wife’s photo didn’t fit. None of the three options. We were sent to do the fourth in the house opposite.
They took photos and even didn’t take them for exorbitant prices, not even twice :) By the evening I took our passports with multi-visas for 3 months. Everything, you can choose a flight and fly.
The employer paid me for the transport of things. The transportation is handled by an international office, HRs communicated with her in the Netherlands, and I with her representatives in Russia.
About a month and a half before my departure, a woman from this office came to our home to assess the volume of transported things. We decided to go relatively light - no furniture, the hardest thing is my desktop (and the one without a monitor). But then we took a bunch of things, shoes and cosmetics.
Of the documents again, I needed a power of attorney to go through customs. It is interesting that it is impossible to export paintings from Russia without the conclusion of experts, even if it is just a sketch made by you. My wife does a little painting, but we didn’t take any paintings or drawings, we left everything in the apartment. In his (albeit mortgage) apartment. If we were to leave "completely" or from rental housing, there would be one more problem.
A week before departure, at the appointed time 3 packers arrived. And very quickly, very cool all our junk was packed. It turned out 13 boxes of different sizes, on average - somewhere around 40x50x60 cm. I gave the power of attorney, got a list of boxes and remained without a computer, with only one laptop for the next 6 weeks.
The plan for moving with us was this: first I fly only, settle down there, rent permanent housing, go through a probationary period. If all is well, I’ll return for my wife, and together we will fly to the Netherlands.
The first difficulty I encountered upon arrival was how to call the Netherlands number. All the contacts were given to me in the format +31 (0) xxxxxxxxx, but for my attempts to dial + 310xxxxxxxxx I received a robo-answer “Invalid number”. Good thing the airport had free wifi. I googled and figured out: you need to dial either + 31xxxxxxxxx (international format) or 0xxxxxxxxxx (internal). A trifle, but I had to take care of this before arrival.
For the first month I was placed in a rented apartment. A bedroom, a kitchen combined with a living room, a shower, a washing machine and a dishwasher, a refrigerator, an iron - for one person it’s the most. I didn't even have to sort the trash. Only the superintendent forbade throwing glass into general trash, so the whole first month I carefully avoided buying anything in a glass container.
The day after arrival, I met Karen, my guide to the world of the Dutch bureaucracy and part-time real estate agent. She set up appointments for me at the bank and the expat center in advance.
Everything was very simple at the bank. “Do you want to open an account with us, but you are not yet registered in the Netherlands and you do not have a BSN? Not a problem, now we’ll do everything, and then just update the data in your profile on our website. ” I suspect this relationship was facilitated by the signed contract with my employer. Another bank sold me liability insurance - insurance in case I break someone else's thing. The bank promised to send a plastic card to the local system by regular mail within a week. And he sent - first the pin code in the envelope, after 2 days - the card itself.
About the plastic cards. Even when my wife and I came to see the Netherlands in the fall, we experienced it on our own - Visa and Mastercard accept here oh how not everywhere. These cards are considered credit here (although we had debit cards) and many stores simply don’t contact them (because of fees for acquiring? I don’t know). The Netherlands has its own type of debit card and its own online payment system iDeal. From my own experience I can say that at least in Germany and Belgium these cards are also accepted.
The expat center is a kind of lightweight version of the migration service, where I was officially registered at a temporary address, they gave me BSN - the main number of the resident of the Netherlands (the closest analogue in Russia is the TIN) and told me to come for a work and residence permit a few days later. By the way, my pile of documents (apostille, translation, translation apostille) caused slight surprise, I had to explain what is what. By the way, number two - the country of birth in my Dutch documents indicates Sovjet-Unie, and the country of arrival is Rusland. Those. at least local clerks are aware of this metamorphosis of our state.
I received a residence permit with the right to work as a highly qualified specialist (English highly skilled migrant, nid. Kennismigrant) after about 3 working days. Such a delay did not affect my work in any way - my three-month visa allowed me to work. I can change jobs, but I must remain just such a specialist. Those. my salary must be at least a certain amount. For 2019, it's € 58,320 for people over thirty.
I bought a local SIM card myself. Karen advised me the operator (KPN) and where to find his store. Because I didn’t have a financial history in a local bank, they wouldn’t conclude a contract with me, just sold prepaid SIM card. I was lucky and the store accepted Visa, I paid with a Russian bank card. Looking ahead, I’ll say that I’m still using this prepaid card. I studied the rates of this and other operators, and decided that it was prepaid that suits me best.
As a newcomer from a not very prosperous country, I had to undergo fluorography. A record for 2 weeks (in the Netherlands, in general, compared to Moscow, everything is not very hasty), almost 50 euros, and if they do not call me in a week, then everything is in order. Do not call :)
Of course, I was also watching ads from apartments from Russia, but on the spot I had to quickly part with the hope of finding housing in the range of if not € 700, then at least € 1000 (including a communal apartment). About 10 days after my arrival, Karen sent me links to a couple of dozen ads. I chose 5 or 6 from them, and the next day she took me to watch them.
In general, in the Netherlands it is a common practice to rent out housing not only without furniture, which I can still understand, but also without a floor - i.e. without laminate, linoleum and other things, just bare concrete. I don’t understand this anymore. Residents take the floor when they move out, but what's the use of it in another apartment? In general, there are few furnished apartments, which somewhat complicated my task. But on the other hand, 5 views a day is just a fairy tale compared to Dublin or Stockholm.
The main drawback of Dutch apartments is the inefficient, in my opinion, use of the area. Apartments are different, from 30 to several hundred square meters, but, of course, I was interested in inexpensive ones, i.e. small ones. And now, for example, I look at an apartment of 45 squares. There is a corridor, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen combined with a living room - and that’s all. The constant feeling of cramped space, 2 desktops we need is simply nowhere to put. And on the other hand, I remember very well how my family of 4 lived well in the standard Khrushchev at 44 meters.
Even the Dutch have other ideas about thermal comfort. In that apartment, for example, the front door is just one layer of glass, and from the apartment it leads directly to the street. There are still apartments in old houses, in general all the glazing is single-layer. And you can’t change anything, because the house is a monument of architecture. If it seems to some that the winters in the Netherlands are mild, then that's how it is, but there is no central heating, and locals can keep +20 at home and wear a single T-shirt. But my wife and I, as it turned out, can’t. We hold more degrees and dress warmer.
However, I was distracted. Of the 5 options, I chose one: 3 rooms, 75 meters, obviously not new, as we would have written - “without European-quality repair” (ironically, huh?). I signed the contract, paid for the first month, paid a deposit in the amount of a monthly fee and something about € 250 to the realtor from the side of the hostess. The employer then refunded these € 250 to me.
The apartment rental market, as I understand it, is regulated by the state here. For example, my contract (officially - in Dutch, but there is a translation into English) consists of only a few pages, which mainly list personal data and differences from a standard, officially approved contract. By law, a landlord cannot raise a fee by more than 6 or 7 percent per year. For example, in the second year I was raised the price by only 2.8%. By the way, the owner of my rented apartment is one of the very few people I have met here who speak English very poorly. But after signing the contract, I never saw her, I just congratulated each other on Christmas and New Year on Whatsapp, that's all.
I also note that housing here is becoming more expensive from year to year - both rent and purchase. For example, one of the colleagues was vacating an apartment that he had been renting for several years for approximately € 800 and wanted to offer his friend to rent it. But for a friend, the price was already € 1200.
The rented apartment did not have the most important thing - the Internet. If you google it, there are a lot of providers here, most of them are connected via fiber optic. But: not everywhere is this optical fiber already, and several (up to six!) Weeks pass from application to connection. My house, as it turned out, is deprived of this good of civilization. To connect through such a provider, I need to work - naturally! - time to wait for the installer. Moreover, having cooperated with all the neighbors from below, as the cable runs from the first floor. I decided that I was not ready for such an adventure and canceled the application.
As a result, I connected the Internet from Ziggo - via a television cable, with a download speed of 10 times less than the download speed, one and a half times more expensive, but without an installer and after 3 days. They just sent me the whole set of equipment by mail, which I myself connected. Since then, everything works, the speed is quite stable, we have enough.
I found housing, there were no problems at work, so according to the plan in early August, I went for my wife. My employer bought her a ticket, I bought myself a ticket for the same flight.
I pre-booked her an appointment with the bank and the expat center, there was nothing complicated about it. In the same way, they opened an account and issued a residence permit and work permit. And unlike me, she has the right to get any job, not necessarily as a highly qualified specialist.
Then she herself registered in the local municipality and did fluorography.
Every resident of the Netherlands is required to have health insurance and pay for it at least one hundred with something euro per month. New arrivals are required to take out insurance for four months, it seems. If they do not, they are automatically assigned default insurance.
After the first month of being in the Netherlands, I chose insurance for myself and my wife, but it was not very simple to arrange it. Did I mention that the Dutch are leisurely people? Every few weeks they asked me for personal data, then documents, or something else. As a result, my wife and I took out insurance only at the end of August.
In the first two months, I realized how inconvenient the local debit card is. On the Internet, it can be paid only where there is iDeal. Those. only on Dutch sites. Neither pay Uber, for example, nor buy a ticket on the Aeroflot website does not work. I needed a normal card - Visa or Mastercard. Well, Mastercard, of course. Europe is the same.
And here it is only credit cards. Moreover, they are not issued by the bank itself, but by a certain national office. In early August, I sent a request for a credit card from my personal account on the bank’s website. A few weeks later, they refused me on the grounds that I did not work too long on my current job. I asked in a reply letter, but how much? A month later, they suddenly approved a credit card and sent me by mail within a couple of weeks.
30% driving is a great thing. But to get it you need to be kennismigrant'om and the last 18 months before arriving in the Netherlands to live further 150 km from the Netherlands. It is a pity that less and less taxing is given - once it was issued for 10 years, then for 8, now only for 5.
My employer pays for the services of an intermediary office, which submits to my local tax application for my tax. As my colleagues told me, it usually takes 2–3 months, after which the “net” salary becomes much higher (and paid for months without taxing).
I filled out the form and sent the documents in early June. The tax office replied that right now they are switching to electronic document management, and therefore approval of the taxi may take longer. OK. After 3 months, I started kicking the intermediary office. The office sluggishly handed kicks to the tax and back to me. In early September, they sent me a letter from the tax office asking me to provide evidence that I did not live in the Netherlands for 18 months until April 2018.
Coincidence? I don’t think so. It was in April that I received my new civil passport. Now I don’t remember exactly, but it seems that the scan of the passport was attached to the application for the taxi. As evidence, you can show utility bills in my name. Again, it’s good that I lived in my apartment for several years, and all the bills came in my name. And I keep them all :) Relatives sent me photos of the necessary accounts, and I sent them (with an explanation that there is something) to the intermediary office.
Again I received a notification that the tax is switching to electronic document management, and it will take longer to consider the application. In November, I again began to kick the middle man, and kicked him until mid-December, when I was finally approved of driving. He began to influence my salary in January, i.e. It took me 7 months to complete the taxi.
Here, too, everything went according to plan. My wife is a software tester with experience in 4 years. The first few months she continued to work for her Moscow employer. Special thanks to him for allowing me to switch to a completely remote work. Plus this solution: do not rush headlong into an unfamiliar environment and earn yourself extra stress.
Less: as it turned out, from the moment of registration there is a wife - a tax resident of the Netherlands. Accordingly, she must pay taxes on any income. Maybe the local tax system would not have known about these incomes, or maybe it would have known (since 2019, an automatic exchange of tax data between Russia and European countries has begun). In general, we decided not to take risks and indicated these revenues in the tax return. How much will have to pay - is still unknown, the declaration is in the process of filing.
Somewhere in November, the wife began to look for work already here. There are few vacancies for Software Tester and QA Engineers, but they are. In the vast majority of cases, ISTQB and / or Tmap certificates are required. She has neither one nor the other. As I understand from her words, in Russia there is much more talk about this than real necessity.
As a result, his wife was refused twice, not even inviting for an interview. The third attempt was more successful - at the beginning of December she was called for an interview. The interview itself lasted a little over an hour and took place in a “conversation for life” format: they asked what she was doing, how she coped with such and such situations. They asked a little about the experience in automation (there is, but very little), there were no technical issues. All this is a little over an hour in English, of course. This was her first experience of being interviewed in a foreign language.
A couple of weeks later they called for a second interview - with the owner and part-time director of the company. The same format, the same topics, another hour of talk. A few weeks later they said they were ready to make an offer. We started to discuss the details. Remembering my relatively successful experience, I advised a little bargaining. It turned out here.
The offer itself is a 1-year contract with the prospect of switching to a permanent one, if all goes well. Permission for any work was very useful, because on a salary the wife doesn’t reach kennismigrant yet. And she is not supposed to be taxed, for she has been living in the Netherlands for several months.
As a result, since February 2019, his wife has been fully working as a software tester in a local company.
My kennismigrant status, in addition to taxing, gives me the right to exchange Russian rights to local ones without passing an exam. This is also a big savings, because driving lessons and the exam itself will cost several thousand euros. And all this will be in Dutch.
Now that I’ve got the wheel, I started exchanging rights. On the CBR website - a local analogue of the traffic police - I paid 37 euros for a medical questionnaire, where I simply noted that I have no health problems (I always wear glasses, but there was nothing about glasses, can I only see with both eyes?). Because I have a taxi and I exchange category B rights, a medical examination was not required. After 2 weeks, I received a letter stating that CBR approves the exchange of rights for me. With this letter and other documents, I went to my local municipality, where I would pay another 35 euros and gave my Russian rights (without translation).
After another 2 weeks, they informed me that the new rights were ready. I picked them up in the same municipality. Russian rights were in effect until 2021, but the Dutch rights were issued for 10 years - until 2029. Plus, in addition to category B, they indicate AM (mopeds) and T (tractor!).
The Dutch will send Russian rights to our consulate, and the consulate will send them to Russia at the end of the year. Those. I have several months to seize the rights in The Hague, so as not to search for them later in the MREO - either in Saratov, or in the Moscow Region.
On this, our process of moving and arranging, I consider complete. Plans for the next few years are to live and work quietly. In the next and last part I will talk about the domestic and working aspects of life in the Netherlands.
Part 3
This offer was from the Netherlands. It is relatively simple for employers in this country to invite an employee from abroad (not from the European Union), therefore there is little bureaucratic red tape, and the process of registration takes only a few months.
But you can always create difficulties for yourself. Which I did, which delayed my move for another month. If you are interested in reading about the troubles (no, not very pleasant) associated with moving your IT family to Western Europe - welcome to Cat.
Offer
I don’t know how standard for Europe I received an offer, but the main points in it are as follows (except for the salary, of course):
- perpetual contract
- trial period 2 months
- 40 working hours per week
- 25 working days leave per year
- 30% driving (see below)
- payment of all documents (visas, residence permits) for the whole family
- one-way tickets for the whole family
- payment for the transport of things and furniture
- payment of temporary housing for the first month
- assistance in finding permanent housing
- assistance in opening an account with a Dutch bank
- assistance in filing the first tax return
- if I get fired during the first year, they also relocate me back to Russia for free
- if I decide to quit in the first 18 months, I must reimburse half of the cost of my relocation package; if I quit between 18 and 24 months, then a quarter
As I later learned from conversations with colleagues, such a relocation package is estimated at 10 thousand euros. Those. leaving in the first 2 years is unprofitable, but some quit (hence the fame of the amount).
30% ruling is such an indulgence to foreign highly qualified specialists from the Dutch government. 30% of income is tax deductible. The size of the benefit depends on the salary, for an ordinary programmer it will be approximately 600-800 euros per month net, which is very good.
Documents
From the documents I was required to:
- translated and apostilled birth certificates (mine and wives)
- translated and apostilled marriage certificate
- copies of my diplomas
- copies of our international passports
With copies of passports, everything is simple - only HR service needs them. Apparently, they are attached to the application for visas and residence permits. I made scans, sent them by e-mail, and they were not needed anywhere else.
Diplomas of education
For a visa and residence permit all my diplomas are not needed. They were required to check me (background screening), which was commissioned by an employer by a certain British office. Interestingly, they did not need a translation, only scans of the originals.
After sending the required, I decided just in case to apostil our diplomas. Okay, I already found a job, but it was assumed that the wife would work there too, and who knows what documents she would need.
Apostille is such an international stamp on a document, is valid in countries that signed the 1961 Hague Convention. Unlike documents issued at the registry office, diplomas can be apostilled, if not at any regional ministry of education, then in Moscow for sure. And although diplomas issued in other cities are checked longer (45 working days), it is still convenient.
At the end of February 2018, we gave 3 diplomas for apostille, at the end of April we took it. The most difficult thing is to wait and hope that diplomas will not lose.
Birth and marriage certificates
Yes, the Dutch need exactly the birth certificates of adults. Such is their registration procedure. Moreover, we need an apostille for the originals of all these certificates, a translation of these documents (including an apostille), and an apostille for translation. And apostilles should not be older than 6 months - they told me so. Plus, I’ve already googled myself somewhere that the Netherlands may not accept our Soviet-style birth certificates, but modern Russian ones have no problems.
Yes, I read the story of JC_IIB , as he made only an apostille in Russia, and the translation was already in the Netherlands. There are so-called attorney translators, whose printing actually replaces the apostille. But, firstly, I wanted to come with fully prepared documents, and secondly, before the translation, I still had to get an apostille to the original.
And this is troublesome. Apostille on documents issued at the registry office, can put only the regional registry office of the region where the documents were actually issued.
Therefore, a plan was drawn up: my wife draws up a power of attorney for me to apply to the registry office, I take a few days off and go to Saratov, where I receive 2 new birth certificates, I hand in 3 apostille certificates, wait, pick up, and return.
I called in advance all the necessary registry offices and clarified the schedule. There were no problems with the first three points (power of attorney, vacation, trip to Saratov). With the receipt of a new wife’s birth certificate, I also came to the registry office, wrote a statement about the loss (I didn’t think of it), paid the fee, received a new one. Given the break in the registry office for lunch, it took about 2 hours. They did not even ask about the old evidence, i.e. now we have 2 birth certificates :)
For my new certificate, I went to the district center where I was born. There, as a sole visitor, they issued me a new document in less than an hour. But the trouble is, it indicates another birthplace! Those. in my old certificate and in the registry office there are different settlements.
Both are related to me: in one there is the maternity hospital itself, in the other - the parents were registered at that time. By law, parents have the right to indicate any of these addresses in documents. At first, parents either chose or left by default - one. And after a few days (this is already from their words) they decided to change to another. And the registry office employee simply took and corrected the address in the certificate already issued. But she did not make changes to the archive or did not even intend to. It turns out that I lived for 35 years with a fake document, and nothing :)
So, now the record in the archive cannot be corrected, only by court order. Not only that, once, but also the court is unlikely to find a reason for this. I have the same place of birth in all documents, including the marriage certificate and internal passport, as in the old birth certificate. Those. they will also have to be changed. You do not need to change your passport, the place of birth is indicated very approximately: in Russian - “Saratov Region”, in English - “USSR” at all.
Under the law, up to 3 months are allowed for the exchange of a marriage certificate, although the passport is changed in 10 days. This is a long, very long time. My contract indicates the date of entry to work - May 1. In general, I had 2 options:
- to hope that the regional registry office will not ask for confirmation from the district and put an apostille on my old certificate, and the Dutch will accept it
- change marriage certificate and passport
I already almost went the first way, but - thanks to the head of the registry office. She promised to exchange the marriage certificate as soon as possible. I agreed with the HR service to postpone my work date a month in advance, I issued a power of attorney for my father at the notary's office, handed over the marriage certificate for exchange, paid all fees in advance, left all other documents in Saratov and returned to Moscow region.
The registry offices really did everything very quickly - in two and a half weeks they exchanged a marriage certificate, and another 4 days were spent on apostilling. At the end of March 2018, my father on business came to Moscow and brought me all the ready-made documents. The rest was relatively simple and uninteresting: I ordered a translation into English at the agency, I received an apostille for translation in the Moscow Ministry of Justice. It took a week and a half. In total, each leaflet A5 of the certificate turned into 5 A4 sheets, certified by seals and signatures on all sides.
Passport
Traded through public services. That's all as promised: a week after submitting the application, a letter came that I could get a new passport in my local Ministry of Internal Affairs. True, the Ministry of Internal Affairs deals with passports only 2 days a week, so I received my passport on the 18th day after the application.
Visas
A residence permit, a work permit is all good, but then. First you need to come to the country. And for this we need visas.
When I finally collected all the necessary documents, I scanned them and sent them to HR. It is good that in the Netherlands ordinary scans have the same legal force as the originals, it was not necessary to send documents physically. HRs applied to the migration service. After 3 weeks, the migration service issued a positive response. Now my wife and I could get visas at the Netherlands Embassy in Moscow.
So, in the middle of May, I have to start work in Eindhoven on June 1. But all that’s left is to stick a visa in your passport, pack your suitcase and fly. How to get to the embassy? Make an appointment on their website. OK, when is the nearest date? In the middle of July?!
I was not even worried after the adventures with the documents. I just started calling the embassy. They didn’t pick up the phone. My phone found a useful auto redial feature. A few hours later I got through and explained the situation. My problem was solved in a few minutes - my wife and I made an appointment after 3 days.
From the documents, the embassy needed passports, photographs, completed questionnaires and a signed employment contract. We had all this. But for some reason my wife’s photo didn’t fit. None of the three options. We were sent to do the fourth in the house opposite.
They took photos and even didn’t take them for exorbitant prices, not even twice :) By the evening I took our passports with multi-visas for 3 months. Everything, you can choose a flight and fly.
Things
The employer paid me for the transport of things. The transportation is handled by an international office, HRs communicated with her in the Netherlands, and I with her representatives in Russia.
About a month and a half before my departure, a woman from this office came to our home to assess the volume of transported things. We decided to go relatively light - no furniture, the hardest thing is my desktop (and the one without a monitor). But then we took a bunch of things, shoes and cosmetics.
Of the documents again, I needed a power of attorney to go through customs. It is interesting that it is impossible to export paintings from Russia without the conclusion of experts, even if it is just a sketch made by you. My wife does a little painting, but we didn’t take any paintings or drawings, we left everything in the apartment. In his (albeit mortgage) apartment. If we were to leave "completely" or from rental housing, there would be one more problem.
A week before departure, at the appointed time 3 packers arrived. And very quickly, very cool all our junk was packed. It turned out 13 boxes of different sizes, on average - somewhere around 40x50x60 cm. I gave the power of attorney, got a list of boxes and remained without a computer, with only one laptop for the next 6 weeks.
Arrangement in the Netherlands
The plan for moving with us was this: first I fly only, settle down there, rent permanent housing, go through a probationary period. If all is well, I’ll return for my wife, and together we will fly to the Netherlands.
The first difficulty I encountered upon arrival was how to call the Netherlands number. All the contacts were given to me in the format +31 (0) xxxxxxxxx, but for my attempts to dial + 310xxxxxxxxx I received a robo-answer “Invalid number”. Good thing the airport had free wifi. I googled and figured out: you need to dial either + 31xxxxxxxxx (international format) or 0xxxxxxxxxx (internal). A trifle, but I had to take care of this before arrival.
For the first month I was placed in a rented apartment. A bedroom, a kitchen combined with a living room, a shower, a washing machine and a dishwasher, a refrigerator, an iron - for one person it’s the most. I didn't even have to sort the trash. Only the superintendent forbade throwing glass into general trash, so the whole first month I carefully avoided buying anything in a glass container.
The day after arrival, I met Karen, my guide to the world of the Dutch bureaucracy and part-time real estate agent. She set up appointments for me at the bank and the expat center in advance.
Bank account
Everything was very simple at the bank. “Do you want to open an account with us, but you are not yet registered in the Netherlands and you do not have a BSN? Not a problem, now we’ll do everything, and then just update the data in your profile on our website. ” I suspect this relationship was facilitated by the signed contract with my employer. Another bank sold me liability insurance - insurance in case I break someone else's thing. The bank promised to send a plastic card to the local system by regular mail within a week. And he sent - first the pin code in the envelope, after 2 days - the card itself.
About the plastic cards. Even when my wife and I came to see the Netherlands in the fall, we experienced it on our own - Visa and Mastercard accept here oh how not everywhere. These cards are considered credit here (although we had debit cards) and many stores simply don’t contact them (because of fees for acquiring? I don’t know). The Netherlands has its own type of debit card and its own online payment system iDeal. From my own experience I can say that at least in Germany and Belgium these cards are also accepted.
Residence
The expat center is a kind of lightweight version of the migration service, where I was officially registered at a temporary address, they gave me BSN - the main number of the resident of the Netherlands (the closest analogue in Russia is the TIN) and told me to come for a work and residence permit a few days later. By the way, my pile of documents (apostille, translation, translation apostille) caused slight surprise, I had to explain what is what. By the way, number two - the country of birth in my Dutch documents indicates Sovjet-Unie, and the country of arrival is Rusland. Those. at least local clerks are aware of this metamorphosis of our state.
I received a residence permit with the right to work as a highly qualified specialist (English highly skilled migrant, nid. Kennismigrant) after about 3 working days. Such a delay did not affect my work in any way - my three-month visa allowed me to work. I can change jobs, but I must remain just such a specialist. Those. my salary must be at least a certain amount. For 2019, it's € 58,320 for people over thirty.
cellular
I bought a local SIM card myself. Karen advised me the operator (KPN) and where to find his store. Because I didn’t have a financial history in a local bank, they wouldn’t conclude a contract with me, just sold prepaid SIM card. I was lucky and the store accepted Visa, I paid with a Russian bank card. Looking ahead, I’ll say that I’m still using this prepaid card. I studied the rates of this and other operators, and decided that it was prepaid that suits me best.
Medical checkup
As a newcomer from a not very prosperous country, I had to undergo fluorography. A record for 2 weeks (in the Netherlands, in general, compared to Moscow, everything is not very hasty), almost 50 euros, and if they do not call me in a week, then everything is in order. Do not call :)
Search for rental housing
Of course, I was also watching ads from apartments from Russia, but on the spot I had to quickly part with the hope of finding housing in the range of if not € 700, then at least € 1000 (including a communal apartment). About 10 days after my arrival, Karen sent me links to a couple of dozen ads. I chose 5 or 6 from them, and the next day she took me to watch them.
In general, in the Netherlands it is a common practice to rent out housing not only without furniture, which I can still understand, but also without a floor - i.e. without laminate, linoleum and other things, just bare concrete. I don’t understand this anymore. Residents take the floor when they move out, but what's the use of it in another apartment? In general, there are few furnished apartments, which somewhat complicated my task. But on the other hand, 5 views a day is just a fairy tale compared to Dublin or Stockholm.
The main drawback of Dutch apartments is the inefficient, in my opinion, use of the area. Apartments are different, from 30 to several hundred square meters, but, of course, I was interested in inexpensive ones, i.e. small ones. And now, for example, I look at an apartment of 45 squares. There is a corridor, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen combined with a living room - and that’s all. The constant feeling of cramped space, 2 desktops we need is simply nowhere to put. And on the other hand, I remember very well how my family of 4 lived well in the standard Khrushchev at 44 meters.
Even the Dutch have other ideas about thermal comfort. In that apartment, for example, the front door is just one layer of glass, and from the apartment it leads directly to the street. There are still apartments in old houses, in general all the glazing is single-layer. And you can’t change anything, because the house is a monument of architecture. If it seems to some that the winters in the Netherlands are mild, then that's how it is, but there is no central heating, and locals can keep +20 at home and wear a single T-shirt. But my wife and I, as it turned out, can’t. We hold more degrees and dress warmer.
However, I was distracted. Of the 5 options, I chose one: 3 rooms, 75 meters, obviously not new, as we would have written - “without European-quality repair” (ironically, huh?). I signed the contract, paid for the first month, paid a deposit in the amount of a monthly fee and something about € 250 to the realtor from the side of the hostess. The employer then refunded these € 250 to me.
The apartment rental market, as I understand it, is regulated by the state here. For example, my contract (officially - in Dutch, but there is a translation into English) consists of only a few pages, which mainly list personal data and differences from a standard, officially approved contract. By law, a landlord cannot raise a fee by more than 6 or 7 percent per year. For example, in the second year I was raised the price by only 2.8%. By the way, the owner of my rented apartment is one of the very few people I have met here who speak English very poorly. But after signing the contract, I never saw her, I just congratulated each other on Christmas and New Year on Whatsapp, that's all.
I also note that housing here is becoming more expensive from year to year - both rent and purchase. For example, one of the colleagues was vacating an apartment that he had been renting for several years for approximately € 800 and wanted to offer his friend to rent it. But for a friend, the price was already € 1200.
the Internet
The rented apartment did not have the most important thing - the Internet. If you google it, there are a lot of providers here, most of them are connected via fiber optic. But: not everywhere is this optical fiber already, and several (up to six!) Weeks pass from application to connection. My house, as it turned out, is deprived of this good of civilization. To connect through such a provider, I need to work - naturally! - time to wait for the installer. Moreover, having cooperated with all the neighbors from below, as the cable runs from the first floor. I decided that I was not ready for such an adventure and canceled the application.
As a result, I connected the Internet from Ziggo - via a television cable, with a download speed of 10 times less than the download speed, one and a half times more expensive, but without an installer and after 3 days. They just sent me the whole set of equipment by mail, which I myself connected. Since then, everything works, the speed is quite stable, we have enough.
Wife moving
I found housing, there were no problems at work, so according to the plan in early August, I went for my wife. My employer bought her a ticket, I bought myself a ticket for the same flight.
I pre-booked her an appointment with the bank and the expat center, there was nothing complicated about it. In the same way, they opened an account and issued a residence permit and work permit. And unlike me, she has the right to get any job, not necessarily as a highly qualified specialist.
Then she herself registered in the local municipality and did fluorography.
Medical insurance
Every resident of the Netherlands is required to have health insurance and pay for it at least one hundred with something euro per month. New arrivals are required to take out insurance for four months, it seems. If they do not, they are automatically assigned default insurance.
After the first month of being in the Netherlands, I chose insurance for myself and my wife, but it was not very simple to arrange it. Did I mention that the Dutch are leisurely people? Every few weeks they asked me for personal data, then documents, or something else. As a result, my wife and I took out insurance only at the end of August.
Credit card
In the first two months, I realized how inconvenient the local debit card is. On the Internet, it can be paid only where there is iDeal. Those. only on Dutch sites. Neither pay Uber, for example, nor buy a ticket on the Aeroflot website does not work. I needed a normal card - Visa or Mastercard. Well, Mastercard, of course. Europe is the same.
And here it is only credit cards. Moreover, they are not issued by the bank itself, but by a certain national office. In early August, I sent a request for a credit card from my personal account on the bank’s website. A few weeks later, they refused me on the grounds that I did not work too long on my current job. I asked in a reply letter, but how much? A month later, they suddenly approved a credit card and sent me by mail within a couple of weeks.
Rouling
30% driving is a great thing. But to get it you need to be kennismigrant'om and the last 18 months before arriving in the Netherlands to live further 150 km from the Netherlands. It is a pity that less and less taxing is given - once it was issued for 10 years, then for 8, now only for 5.
My employer pays for the services of an intermediary office, which submits to my local tax application for my tax. As my colleagues told me, it usually takes 2–3 months, after which the “net” salary becomes much higher (and paid for months without taxing).
I filled out the form and sent the documents in early June. The tax office replied that right now they are switching to electronic document management, and therefore approval of the taxi may take longer. OK. After 3 months, I started kicking the intermediary office. The office sluggishly handed kicks to the tax and back to me. In early September, they sent me a letter from the tax office asking me to provide evidence that I did not live in the Netherlands for 18 months until April 2018.
Coincidence? I don’t think so. It was in April that I received my new civil passport. Now I don’t remember exactly, but it seems that the scan of the passport was attached to the application for the taxi. As evidence, you can show utility bills in my name. Again, it’s good that I lived in my apartment for several years, and all the bills came in my name. And I keep them all :) Relatives sent me photos of the necessary accounts, and I sent them (with an explanation that there is something) to the intermediary office.
Again I received a notification that the tax is switching to electronic document management, and it will take longer to consider the application. In November, I again began to kick the middle man, and kicked him until mid-December, when I was finally approved of driving. He began to influence my salary in January, i.e. It took me 7 months to complete the taxi.
Wife finds a job
Here, too, everything went according to plan. My wife is a software tester with experience in 4 years. The first few months she continued to work for her Moscow employer. Special thanks to him for allowing me to switch to a completely remote work. Plus this solution: do not rush headlong into an unfamiliar environment and earn yourself extra stress.
Less: as it turned out, from the moment of registration there is a wife - a tax resident of the Netherlands. Accordingly, she must pay taxes on any income. Maybe the local tax system would not have known about these incomes, or maybe it would have known (since 2019, an automatic exchange of tax data between Russia and European countries has begun). In general, we decided not to take risks and indicated these revenues in the tax return. How much will have to pay - is still unknown, the declaration is in the process of filing.
Somewhere in November, the wife began to look for work already here. There are few vacancies for Software Tester and QA Engineers, but they are. In the vast majority of cases, ISTQB and / or Tmap certificates are required. She has neither one nor the other. As I understand from her words, in Russia there is much more talk about this than real necessity.
As a result, his wife was refused twice, not even inviting for an interview. The third attempt was more successful - at the beginning of December she was called for an interview. The interview itself lasted a little over an hour and took place in a “conversation for life” format: they asked what she was doing, how she coped with such and such situations. They asked a little about the experience in automation (there is, but very little), there were no technical issues. All this is a little over an hour in English, of course. This was her first experience of being interviewed in a foreign language.
A couple of weeks later they called for a second interview - with the owner and part-time director of the company. The same format, the same topics, another hour of talk. A few weeks later they said they were ready to make an offer. We started to discuss the details. Remembering my relatively successful experience, I advised a little bargaining. It turned out here.
The offer itself is a 1-year contract with the prospect of switching to a permanent one, if all goes well. Permission for any work was very useful, because on a salary the wife doesn’t reach kennismigrant yet. And she is not supposed to be taxed, for she has been living in the Netherlands for several months.
As a result, since February 2019, his wife has been fully working as a software tester in a local company.
Local rights
My kennismigrant status, in addition to taxing, gives me the right to exchange Russian rights to local ones without passing an exam. This is also a big savings, because driving lessons and the exam itself will cost several thousand euros. And all this will be in Dutch.
Now that I’ve got the wheel, I started exchanging rights. On the CBR website - a local analogue of the traffic police - I paid 37 euros for a medical questionnaire, where I simply noted that I have no health problems (I always wear glasses, but there was nothing about glasses, can I only see with both eyes?). Because I have a taxi and I exchange category B rights, a medical examination was not required. After 2 weeks, I received a letter stating that CBR approves the exchange of rights for me. With this letter and other documents, I went to my local municipality, where I would pay another 35 euros and gave my Russian rights (without translation).
After another 2 weeks, they informed me that the new rights were ready. I picked them up in the same municipality. Russian rights were in effect until 2021, but the Dutch rights were issued for 10 years - until 2029. Plus, in addition to category B, they indicate AM (mopeds) and T (tractor!).
The Dutch will send Russian rights to our consulate, and the consulate will send them to Russia at the end of the year. Those. I have several months to seize the rights in The Hague, so as not to search for them later in the MREO - either in Saratov, or in the Moscow Region.
Conclusion
On this, our process of moving and arranging, I consider complete. Plans for the next few years are to live and work quietly. In the next and last part I will talk about the domestic and working aspects of life in the Netherlands.
Part 3