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Three months of village living
We’ve lived in our new house for three months now (wow, it feels both much longer and much shorter) and it’s different than living in the city — in some subtle and some not-so-subtle ways. Here are my observations:
The smaller supermarket has everything but not every variant
The supermarket we visit now is of the same chain, but a smaller variant. It has everything we are used to, but not every variant of that thing. There’s foccaccia, but two variants and not three. There’s puffed cereal for breakfast, but not oats. It’s often not a problem, but sometimes it requires some planning.
There’s less turn-over in the supermarket
When a product is about to hit it’s use-by date, it gets steeply discounted. This is much more prevalent in this supermarket than the big one we went to in the city. Fewer people buying a similar spread of products means that some products just stay on the shelves. It’s really more pronounced.
People are up and about much earlier
I go to the supermarket early (I’ll be there around 08:20) and there are many more people there than in the city. Country people start moving earlier.
Stronger sense of community
I am aware that this depends strongly on the village itself, but there is a definite sense of “we’re out here by ourselves, gotta watch out for each other.” From the start we decided we’d invest in our life here, so we went to community events. It helps that everybody knows our house — it was, after all, the children’s day care facility so all the kids went here. So we can say “yeah, we’re the people living there” and the other villagers will know where that is and be curious about us. We went on some coffee dates that lasted from 19:30 until midnight because there was a ‘click’ and lots to discuss.
This sense of wanting to know the people who live around you, and helping each other out is certainly something we did not have in the city. As cliche it sounds!
You need a car
Public transport is… not great. After 19:00 it’s impossible to get to the village by public transport. So if you have business elsewhere and you know you will come back after that, you will need a car or someone who will come and get you. The distances are such that cycling could be an option, but that’s not very attractive if it’s the heart of winter. I am considering getting an electric scooter for medium distances, but that’s something for later.
Nijmegen is, still, the closest option for a lot of things
Living here felt so good right from the start that I had expected we’d only rarely return to Nijmegen. And it feels very far, but it’s only a 30 minute drive to the city centre of Nijmegen. That means it’s still the closest place to get some goods or services. We’ve been in Nijmegen more often than I had expected.
Youngsters are confident and friendly
In the city, young people often have to carve their own space in an overfull environment, and that makes them rude if they feel they have to defend their space. Out here, there is enough space to just fall through the cracks for a while and just do your own thing. Every young person I’ve met here is confident: they do not cower or get defensive when you ask something of them. But at the same time, they are polite and cooperative.
For instance, there was that one time when a group of kids decided to play around our house: it’s a playground after all. So I went outside to tell them that we lived there, and while they didn’t run away or got defensive, they did retreat after a short conversation. And when a boy climbed on the roof of the bike shed of the school next door, I asked him to be careful, and he thought about it for a bit and then said he’d climb down (which he did).
I kinda like it.
Crossposted from my blog. Comment here or at the original post.
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Je zou denken dat vanuit hier Eindhoven dichterbij zou zijn, maar de aziatische supermarkt in Eindhoven is 42 minuten rijden, die in Nijmegen 22...
En ik heb geen hekel aan Nijmegen, ik ben d'r graag! Daar is ook de meetup-groep waar ik lid van ben, klik gaat daar elke dinsdag naar Zen-les enzovoorts. Daar is het gewoon de dichtsbijzijnde optie voor