Amsterdam, The Netherlands with Jeremy Bierbach

Amsterdam, The Netherlands with Jeremy Bierbach

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Where Do Gays Retire podcast, where we help you in the LGBTQ plus community find a safe and affordable retirement place. Join Mark Goldstein as he interviews others who live in gay friendly places around the globe. Learn about the climate, cost of living, health care, crime and safety, and more.

[00:00:22] Intro: Now, here's your host, Mark Goldstein.

[00:00:31] Mark Goldstein: Have you ever wondered what it's like to retire in Amsterdam, the Netherlands? Well, today we're going to find out. Our special guest is Jeremy Bierback. Jeremy is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, after graduating from Georgetown University in Washington, D. C. in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in linguistics.

[00:00:54] Mark Goldstein: Jeremy worked as an IT specialist for several years. In 2001, [00:01:00] Jeremy He emigrated to the Netherlands and in 2003, he changed his career direction and began studying law at the University of Amsterdam, where he earned a bachelor's degree in Dutch law in 2006 and a master's degree in constitutional and administrative law in 2007.

[00:01:20] Mark Goldstein: Jeremy subsequently worked as a legal advisor through Avocado Legal, where he focused on immigration and European migration law. In January 2014, Jeremy joined, I'm going to mess this up, Fransen Advocaten, and was sworn into the Dutch bar as an attorney. Did I do okay? Yeah,

[00:01:43] Jeremy Bierbach: that's

[00:01:44] Mark Goldstein: pretty good. And in September 2015, he successfully defended his Ph.

[00:01:50] Mark Goldstein: D. thesis in European constitutional law at the University of Amsterdam, a commercial edition of his thesis, Frontiers of [00:02:00] Equality in the Development of U. S. and E. U. Citizenship. was published in 2017 by Ossur Press. He is a member of the Work Group for Legal Aid to Immigrants, WRV, and the Specialist Association of Migration Law Attorneys, SVMA.

[00:02:19] Mark Goldstein: He also serves on the board member of the Stitching Transmotion. The nonprofit foundation behind the volunteer run Trans Screen Amsterdam Transgender Film Festival. Wow. His specialty and focus of interest is invoking norms of international law, EU law in particular, as a source of protection for members of minority groups who are unrepresented.

[00:02:46] Mark Goldstein: or underrepresented in the democratic process, in particular, EU citizens, their non EU citizen family members, and other non EU citizen immigrants to the Netherlands, including British [00:03:00] citizens as former EU citizens. He represented. Two non EU citizens, PNS, and challenging the Dutch state law on the laws providing for a fine to be imposed on immigrants who do not pass the civic integration exam.

[00:03:20] Mark Goldstein: The underlying questions of EU law were ultimately referred to and decided by the Court of Justice in the European Union. In 2015, establishing important limits on the extent of which immigrants can be penalized without a complete examination of their personal circumstances and needs.

[00:03:40] Mark Goldstein: Well, Jeremy, that's quite a bio. Thank you so much for coming to the podcast. We appreciate you and tell us your story. Tell us why you chose Amsterdam as a city in the Netherlands. And what made you make the move from [00:04:00] Pittsburgh?

[00:04:01] Jeremy Bierbach: So, yeah, I just, I. Amsterdam is just a place. It's a magical city and I literally fell in love with it the very first time I ever came here.

[00:04:12] Jeremy Bierbach: I was 19 years old and I was on my way to Munich where I was going to start my junior year abroad at the University of Munich. I flew KLM and so I had a layover in Amsterdam with KLM and it was like an eight hour layover. So I just, said, well, I'll go check out the center of the city and got on a train, which got me to Amsterdam central station in 15 minutes.

[00:04:37] Jeremy Bierbach: And I just walked out and and I walked down, I just, I just walked a few blocks and I just, I don't know. I was just very impressed with it. There's something, there's some, there's something very beautiful. There's something very, people often describe the look of the Netherlands as being like Legoland.

[00:04:52] Jeremy Bierbach: It's, there's this, especially, especially Amsterdam, there's this very sort of picturesque. [00:05:00] These picturesque, facades of buildings, all lined up, sort of identically and canals and, and, and bicycle paths. And I was just already fascinated. And because. I studied German as part of my degree, and that's why I was studying in Germany.

[00:05:15] Jeremy Bierbach: I was a German minor. I was walking down the street, and I was like, looking at storefronts, and I was like, I can already read this. If you speak German, you can already read Dutch. I could even read newspaper headlines. And I was like, I picked the wrong country to go to. And so then I got on my plane, and like, to Munich, and arrived there that night, but it was already sort of like, Ah.

[00:05:36] Jeremy Bierbach: And I couldn't stop thinking about Amsterdam and luckily because I was studying linguistics and I was in the linguistics faculty at the university of Munich, I, first thing I did, one of the first classes I enrolled for was a, was a Dutch course at the, at the university of Munich taught in German.

[00:05:52] Jeremy Bierbach: But I mean, When you speak, like, like I said, when you speak German Dutch is really easy to learn and I've had it since junior high. Dutch is, I mean, German's more difficult. [00:06:00] German's more complicated. It's sort of like if you learn Latin first and then step down to Spanish, something like that, right?

[00:06:06] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, it's a bit of an extreme example, but so I just, I just made it my life goal and during that year that I lived in Germany, I came to Amsterdam at least. Two or three more times went, also across the border to Maastricht, that was about the, one, one time made it like a sort of weekend trip from Munich to get us, close to the Netherlands as I could.

[00:06:28] Jeremy Bierbach: And that was, that was in Maastricht in the South. Another very beautiful city, very different. But I see. So yeah, I just, I just fell in love with it. I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the culture. I fell in love with, I don't know, but I, but I fell in love with what I like to say is I fell in love with the infrastructure more than anything else.

[00:06:44] Jeremy Bierbach: It was really just seeing how things can be so well planned out to be. Human size to be so welcoming, just, just by the very architecture of a place. I often like to say if, if some [00:07:00] aliens, took over the earth, and then they wanted to create a truly complete zoo of all the animal species on earth, for their own entertainment, sapiens would look like Amsterdam.

[00:07:12] Jeremy Bierbach: That's what, that's what I love about it. It's sort of, it's sort of like everything, it's sort of natural artificial. It's sort of like, okay, imagine these alien anthropologists, looking, or these alien zoologists looking at human beings and being like, okay, well we know they come from Africa.

[00:07:24] Jeremy Bierbach: We know they come from the Savannah. They like flat, grasslands, they okay. So we'll make a city that's flat. And not too many mountains or anything like that will make it, there's plenty of, there's plenty of water everywhere, parks to walk in that they can ride their bicycles everywhere.

[00:07:39] Jeremy Bierbach: And then, okay, then the animals in this habitat will be pretty happy. That's what I think of Amsterdam as awesome.

[00:07:46] Mark Goldstein: Tell us geographically, where is Amsterdam located within the Netherlands and tell us where is exactly the Netherlands in the EU?

[00:07:56] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, I mean, I'll start with where the Netherlands is.

[00:07:59] Jeremy Bierbach: There's the really [00:08:00] famous quote from Napoleon, who, who described the Netherlands as little more than the silt that, that, that is dumped out by our rivers. That is like geographically, that is an accurate description of the Netherlands. The Netherlands is largely the Rhine River Delta. So if you have the Rhine, which rises in Switzerland, I believe, and then you have the Meuse, which rises in France and they, they joined together, around, the Meuse comes up past Maastricht and the Rhine comes in.

[00:08:29] Jeremy Bierbach: From, from Germany and they join, but you know, the nature of the geography of the Netherlands, it is, is, is, it is a Delta. It's sort of, it's sort of, it's sort of, no different than say, like, the, the Delta of the Mississippi in Louisiana or, or Bangladesh, for that matter. So it was, so it's, most of the country is very flat, because it's not characterized by mountains that were formed in prehistoric times.

[00:08:53] Jeremy Bierbach: It's very sandy very flood prone. So it's, it's at the Northwest corner of Europe [00:09:00] sort of bordered by Belgium to the South and Germany to the to the East. And then a short about eight hour, eight hour boat ride across the North sea to England. And that's the, that's the location of the Netherlands.

[00:09:14] Jeremy Bierbach: And where's the location of Amsterdam in the Netherlands? It's in the, it's in the Northwest as well of the Netherlands. It's, it's definitely it's definitely situated, in what is known as the, the North of the Netherlands, but not the far North. And it's situated in the. West of the Netherlands, which is the urbanized part of the Netherlands.

[00:09:33] Jeremy Bierbach: The Netherlands really has almost two equally divided areas of population, total populations, about 18 million people, but about half of that population lives in the heavily urbanized Western area called the Ronstadt. So, Amsterdam Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht make up a circular metropolitan area called the Ronstadt, it means literally edge city.

[00:09:58] Jeremy Bierbach: It's a sort of donut shaped area [00:10:00] of urban development. And then the middle is what's called the green heart. The middle is still like farms, but the idea of the Ronstadt, the Ronstadt is Amsterdam itself is not, Amsterdam is the biggest city in the Netherlands, but it's still not a big city by American standards.

[00:10:12] Jeremy Bierbach: It's only about 850, 000. People in population. But if you take the entire Ronstadt, then you're, then you're looking at like 8 million people or 9 million people. So the entire Ronstadt can actually be compared to New York city in a lot of ways. I can say that same, same kind of number of people, same same kind of dense public transit networking.

[00:10:32] Jeremy Bierbach: Like there's a train system, which is. Actually, in a sense, comparable to the subway system in New York, just like you can get from the Bronx to Brighton beach if you really want to, but you know, you're in New York. Yeah, but we need to take about an hour and a half. Well, I know, I know the movie, the warriors.

[00:10:47] Jeremy Bierbach: That's, that's what I always think of, I remember that. Yeah, that's classic movie, but yeah, the, the, the Ronstadt is like that as well. Like for, for me in Amsterdam, getting anywhere in that, in that urbanized [00:11:00] area will take me no long from door to door, no longer than an hour and a half.

[00:11:04] Jeremy Bierbach: Public transit. So what's

[00:11:05] Mark Goldstein: the climate like? So if you're in the Northwest, I'm thinking cold winters and kind of dark winters and yeah,

[00:11:16] Jeremy Bierbach: Northwest of Europe. If you draw everywhere in, everywhere in Europe is North of where, what almost almost everything in the United States, if you draw, if you draw a line directly across the globe, where am I?

[00:11:30] Jeremy Bierbach: Amsterdam, Amsterdam is roughly between. Vancouver and the tail of Alaska. Okay. That's our, that's our latitude. Whereas Madrid, which we think of as warm, we think it was like warm Southern Europe, that's the same latitude as New York city.

[00:11:47] Mark Goldstein: Okay. I could see that. Yeah.

[00:11:49] Jeremy Bierbach: Madrid

[00:11:49] Mark Goldstein: and Spain. Because yeah, Madrid gets cold in the winter and warm in the summer.

[00:11:54] Mark Goldstein: It

[00:11:56] Jeremy Bierbach: doesn't get as cold in New York City. What does keep, what keeps Europe warm for [00:12:00] now until, until climate change starts changing, that is the Gulf stream. So the only reason we don't have the actual, the only reason, we're not quite as cold as somebody who would be in the middle of British Columbia would be, is because there's this, there's this stream of warm water pumped up from the Caribbean.

[00:12:19] Jeremy Bierbach: Toward, toward Northern Europe, which keeps it temperate here, but the Northern latitude, there's one thing you can't do, there's one thing that no stream of warm ocean water can fix. And that's that we're simply astronomically at a, at a high latitude. And it means that the days in the winter are very short.

[00:12:36] Jeremy Bierbach: The days of light are less than eight hours. Sun goes up around nine. In December, December, mid, mid December, something goes up around maybe nine, nine 15 goes down again at 4 30 PM. Wow.

[00:12:51] Mark Goldstein: Nine o'clock in the morning. So I can't even imagine that. So you get

[00:12:57] Jeremy Bierbach: up in darkness and you go to work in darkness and you come [00:13:00] home from work in darkness.

[00:13:02] Jeremy Bierbach: But in the, in the summertime, it's the opposite. So it's

[00:13:05] Mark Goldstein: glorious. It's light almost all day long, right?

[00:13:10] Jeremy Bierbach: It's light until around June 21st, around the summer solstice, you can be out in the park and you can be like, Oh gee, what time is it? It feels like seven. Like, Oh, it's 10 30. So

[00:13:22] Mark Goldstein: it's still sunny at 10 30 at night.

[00:13:24] Mark Goldstein: And then the

[00:13:26] Jeremy Bierbach: sun will really set by 1130. No wonder why

[00:13:29] Mark Goldstein: people eat dinner at late.

[00:13:33] Jeremy Bierbach: I guess that's more, that's more Spain thing. Here in Spain, people eat dinner late. They well, they sleep in the morning. Cause it's so hot.

[00:13:40] Mark Goldstein: Yeah, it's so hot during the day. Okay. So, is living in an LGBTQ community important to you? Yeah. And if so, Is there such a thing in Amsterdam or is it pretty integrated?

[00:13:56] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. Well, Amsterdam, historically it was known as the gay capital of Europe. [00:14:00] Or some people said the gay capital of the world. I don't think, not everyone said it was the gay capital of the world. But it was, it used to be said it was the gay capital of Europe. So, it developed in the Netherlands because of the, the The, the famous tradition of tolerance in the Netherlands, which basically grew out of, the entire history of the Netherlands, the great majority of the history of the Netherlands is a history of religious conflict, all the religious wars that split Europe.

[00:14:29] Jeremy Bierbach: For, for years and years and years, starting from the 1600s. Always , the dividing line went straight through the went straight through the Netherlands. The Treaty of Utrecht, where it was finally settled that, okay, this part of Europe is going to be Protestant and this part of Europe is going to be Catholic.

[00:14:46] Jeremy Bierbach: Went through the city of Utrecht, which is about 30 miles South of Amsterdam. And so even to this day everywhere North of that line in the Netherlands is traditionally overwhelming, overwhelmingly Protestant and everywhere South of that line is traditionally [00:15:00] overwhelmingly Roman Catholic which creates still, a visible difference in the, in the culture.

[00:15:05] Jeremy Bierbach: This is a tiny country, we're, we're a country the size of, I don't know, New Jersey or something like that.

[00:15:10] Mark Goldstein: So what, what's more. What's more tolerant?

[00:15:13] Jeremy Bierbach: And I hate that word, tolerant. The reason for tolerant, the reason why I start off with that, that tradition, that, that history of like religious conflict was because a lot of the ways that the, because, for people who live together in one small country the notion of tolerance.

[00:15:28] Jeremy Bierbach: Originally developed as a sort of like, okay, well, you, you stay over there and you do your thing, and I'll stay over here and we'll do my, I'll do our thing, and we won't bother each other. It was not a, it was not a very loving concept. Let's put it this way. It was sort of like a, it's sort of like a ceasefire, concept.

[00:15:44] Jeremy Bierbach: Especially in areas where there were both Protestants and, and Catholics living in the same city. There were some areas where they were mixed. They lived very segregated lives. Very segregated lives. If you were Protestant, you, your family, your entire family was Protestant. You went to Protestant [00:16:00] schools.

[00:16:01] Jeremy Bierbach: Your, your parents read a Protestant newspaper. They voted voted for a Protestant political party. You went to the baker that was the Protestant, not to the baker across the street that was Catholic. If you were a Catholic, it was the other way around. And so the Netherlands was, the Netherlands was, was good at, whatever there was of Dutch culture.

[00:16:19] Jeremy Bierbach: It was, it was a lot of, it was about. This live and let live concept. And that also then made it fertile ground for for a sort of vibrant gay culture to develop in the sixties and seventies, of course, in the sixties were a decade of upheaval and change in a lot of ways, and, But, but, but, but gay culture was one of the things that flourished especially in the sixties.

[00:16:43] Jeremy Bierbach: But even before that there were, there were always sort of more than other places in Europe, it was easier to live a sort of don't ask, don't tell gay life, the oldest gay bar in Amsterdam, which is still open or reopen, I should say it, I can look [00:17:00] this up is I think almost a hundred years old.

[00:17:02] Jeremy Bierbach: It's 1927. The oldest gay bar in Amsterdam opened in 1927. It's called it Mantje. It was run by a butch lesbian named Bepir who's, sort of famous as being sort of like a very tough butch, leather jacket wearing, maybe motorcycle driving lesbian. And she, it was a sort of open secret, that this bar was a gay bar and there was a certain signal, but this was still a time of, this was still a time of great repression.

[00:17:27] Jeremy Bierbach: So, There was an owl, which is still there, usually is inside the door, where, where the eyes would light up, the owl was also a lamp should flip a switch if the cops were at the door and then all the, all the men who are dancing with men and all the women who are dancing with women would switch partners really fast to to to pair up man, woman, women, when the cops came in and then that would say, well, what are you bothering me for?

[00:17:54] Jeremy Bierbach: And apparently. So that bar, well that bar actually sort of closed [00:18:00] when Bette died. Maybe in the fifties or something, something like that, or 1983, apparently I'm looking at the history now on the internet. And apparently though her family didn't really care to reopen it. And it actually just literally remained closed like a vault for For almost, yeah, for 20, I'm looking at the history now, 1983 from 1983 until 2008, it was just closed like a vault.

[00:18:23] Jeremy Bierbach: And then in 2008, it was reopened, but it was reopened as a sort of living museum. It's a neat place to go to. So what they did was they took, they sort of re revived the decor that had been in there at the time they, they opened up the ball. Cause the time they opened up the ball, there were all these papers and posters and scraps of paper and people's phone numbers pinned to the wall.

[00:18:46] Jeremy Bierbach: And they took all of those original papers out and they went to the Amsterdam Municipal Museum and they made They made a really high quality scan of all that and they made wallpaper out of it. So, so you see, so you see a replica on the walls of [00:19:00] all the stuff that was, yeah, all this stuff that was on all the, all the flyers for for sex workers, all the, all the, all the numbers that people wrote on a, on a notepad, right.

[00:19:11] Jeremy Bierbach: They're their contact info for the dates they made there.

[00:19:13] Mark Goldstein: So do you live in like an L-G-B-T-Q neighborhood? Like a neighborhood or That

[00:19:18] Jeremy Bierbach: doesn't exist here? It doesn't exist. No, that

[00:19:21] Mark Goldstein: doesn't exist. It's so free and open. That doesn't matter.

[00:19:24] Jeremy Bierbach: It's that, and it's also that it's such, there's perpetual housing shortage in Amsterdam.

[00:19:30] Jeremy Bierbach: So even if there were, even if there were a, a gay, a neighborhood,

[00:19:34] Mark Goldstein: you couldn't get

[00:19:35] Jeremy Bierbach: in there. Yeah, you just, it's, you, you, you take what you get. That's, that's how it works with housing at Amsterdam. You, you look and look and you, you can't be too picky. You can't say, I definitely want to live in that neighborhood.

[00:19:46] Jeremy Bierbach: We'll get to that

[00:19:47] Mark Goldstein: as well. So, yeah, I'd like to know about that too. Speaking of that, we might as well go into that now. What is it like or how much would you [00:20:00] pay for to buy a house in Amsterdam or a condo? And what is it like a rental cost and how about utilities? We can talk about that.

[00:20:12] Jeremy Bierbach: Okay, that's a good question.

[00:20:13] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, everything, almost everything you're going to be buying or renting in Amsterdam is, I suppose, what you would call, or if you're buying is what Americans would call a condo. Meaning, like an actual freestanding house. Buying an actual freestanding house in Amsterdam doesn't exist. Not that much of it.

[00:20:29] Jeremy Bierbach: You know what I mean? There would be at most it'd be row houses or, or, or, or in some more outer neighborhoods, there'll be like, like duplex houses where you could buy one half of that. That's about as much actual house, as much freestanding houses you can find here. So, I mean, it's a, it's a city of apartments.

[00:20:45] Jeremy Bierbach: It's a city of apartments and you would. You'd buy an apartment. So, you could buy a studio apartment, a studio apartment in central Amsterdam, but what I mean by central Amsterdam is what we call inside the ring that's, that's generally agreed [00:21:00] to be done on as what is the most sort of desirable area of Amsterdam to live is anywhere inside the ring.

[00:21:05] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean that, I mean that's more than a neighborhood of course. That's, that's like 60 neighborhoods, but so you can, that is what you can choose to do. But yeah, inside the ring, a studio apartment, we're talking maybe like 400 square meters or 400 square feet. Sorry, I'm doing the conversion in my head.

[00:21:25] Jeremy Bierbach: Square meters to square feet is about a factor of 10. Yeah. So if you want to, modest studio apartment for four people, With 400 square feet where you ideally be living as a single person or living as a very in love couple to live in such a cozy, very, very cozy in love couple. That will run you at least 370 K, 370, 000 euros to buy that.

[00:21:52] Jeremy Bierbach: It's not,

[00:21:53] Mark Goldstein: it's not cheap. No, it's not cheap by any means. How about like a. What do you think a two [00:22:00] bedroom

[00:22:01] Jeremy Bierbach: to go for? 550 K 600 K.

[00:22:06] Mark Goldstein: Okay. That's not, that's like us prices. Well, pretty much

[00:22:13] Jeremy Bierbach: add, add, add 10 percent for the conversion from a dollars to right. Okay. So 600 euro K is 660 us K.

[00:22:22] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. It's expensive. It's expensive.

[00:22:25] Mark Goldstein: How about rentals? Like, the rental market, if, if you wanted to rent an apartment,

[00:22:30] Jeremy Bierbach: if you wanted to rent a two bedroom apartment, you'd be looking at 2, 020, 200, 2, 300 a month. I think it 300.

[00:22:44] Mark Goldstein: It's pretty much the same as here. I mean, and. Phoenix is, has increased in value real estate, over the past year or so, but yeah, so those prices are pretty up there.

[00:22:57] Mark Goldstein: And so I guess you get [00:23:00] what you pay for and Amsterdam is a desirable place. And, it's hard to get, let's talk about how do people get apartments? I mean, you're saying there's space is limited.

[00:23:15] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. You just have to be light and wait and get lucky and hear about something.

[00:23:21] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. And do you own yours? Do you own yours? I own a, I own a studio apartment, which is really of all the ironies in the world. I bought, I bought a studio apartment right after I graduated from law school. The, I had a failed marriage behind me and all the other, dating and relationships I had weren't working out.

[00:23:40] Jeremy Bierbach: And I was 32 years old. I said, then that's it. I'm just gonna be single for the rest of my life. I'm just going to get my little, Get my little piece of real estate ground floor apartment for me and my cat so that I can put in a cat door and he can go outside. And the irony is as soon as I, established my, my, my happiness, with my little, my little studio apartment, [00:24:00] literally six weeks after, after I took possession of that apartment, I met.

[00:24:05] Jeremy Bierbach: My current husband, who I've now been together with for 16 years, married to for almost six years. And yeah, but it was way too small for us both to live in. So, I mean, I lived by, , we, we we had a crosstown relationship for six years until we finally moved in. And then since then I've been renting it out to various friends of mine.

[00:24:25] Mark Goldstein: So what's, what type of place are you living in now? Like how much, how big?

[00:24:31] Jeremy Bierbach: We live in a, we live in a rental apartment, which we live in, we live in a, he, he got really lucky. And it is one of the things where, you know, you, he just got, he just got fabulously lucky and he heard about his mom was standing at the bus stop and literally was chatting with some lady and she said, Oh, well I work for this real estate company.

[00:24:48] Jeremy Bierbach: We happen to have this apartment that's opening up and the people are moving out of, does he want to take a look? And that was also a few months into our relationship that Really lucked out and got the place about 580 [00:25:00] square feet one bedroom, but you know, it's about the minimum that we need, to not be bumping into us too much.

[00:25:07] Jeremy Bierbach: That's great.

[00:25:08] Mark Goldstein: Okay. How about utilities? Are they expensive? Like, electric gas?

[00:25:13] Jeremy Bierbach: Because of the war. Yeah, the Netherlands, the Netherlands Europe made a mistake by becoming far too dependent on Russian gas for years, the Netherlands itself was, was, was a producer of gas as well.

[00:25:25] Jeremy Bierbach: The Netherlands became fabulously wealthy by discovering a big bubble of natural gas under the North sea in the seventies and also in under, under the Northern part of the Netherlands around Colonia. So for a long time. Gas, especially heating was so cheap, in the Netherlands because the Netherlands produced so much of its own.

[00:25:43] Jeremy Bierbach: Now the Netherlands had to stop producing it because it's, it's, it's run out and also in fact, the, the, the, the, the pumping of gas in the Northern Netherlands has caused earthquakes and has caused actual structural damages, damage to people's houses. So, the Netherlands had to stop producing gas, but [00:26:00] then all of Europe.

[00:26:01] Jeremy Bierbach: Meanwhile, became overly optimistic that it was a really good idea to get more economically integrated with Russia, that if we bought, gas and oil from Russia that that would help encourage peace in Europe, but instead it had the opposite effect of creating a dictator, Putin, who got them, killed.

[00:26:22] Jeremy Bierbach: A little too over eager to take slices of neighboring countries in the former Soviet Union. So that's where we are. And so ever since, ever since the war between ever since Russia invaded Ukraine and the sanctions on Russia have started, our our gas bill has skyrocketed. So we have to be a little more careful with energy.

[00:26:39] Mark Goldstein: Yeah. So what would you say is, what do you pay for a month for gas?

[00:26:44] Jeremy Bierbach: Currently, I mean, I think it's, I don't, I think it's going to be readjusted by our, by our energy company, but I think currently it's like 200 a month. Wow.

[00:26:52] Mark Goldstein: That's a lot for, for,

[00:26:53] Jeremy Bierbach: So in any case, yeah, in any case, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a poorly, it's a poorly insulated apartment, [00:27:00] we, Due to it being cheap rent, we've got a landlord who is not very motivated to do any upgrades or or make it more energy efficient.

[00:27:09] Jeremy Bierbach: How about electric? Well, that's, that's together. Our total electricity bill is 200. But I think, I don't know which, That's electric and gas? Yeah. We can actually That's not too bad. We can look in my app and see what, what part is, what part is more Yeah,

[00:27:36] Jeremy Bierbach: it's slightly depressing, but yeah, no, when we I definitely, I definitely know if we, if we, if we upgrade, if we were able to like move into, move into a larger place, and we probably will move outside the ring because now we really are now we're old enough that, we really would actually like more space rather than more access to the central city.

[00:27:54] Jeremy Bierbach: But yeah, we'll be putting solar panels on the roof. And we'll be not, all that there's a [00:28:00] big push in the Netherlands to get off of gas altogether. So new housing developments are electric only. So, and they have heat pumps, right? So the idea is, if you, if you, if you, if you just get rid of the gas network when building, when building new homes, that'll motivate people to make use of more energy efficient options like heat pumps, induction.

[00:28:20] Jeremy Bierbach: So it's all turning into, I'll miss, I'll miss cooking on gas. It'll be, cooking on an induction. I don't know, induction stove, but you know, it's worth it. How about

[00:28:29] Mark Goldstein: price of groceries? Is that

[00:28:30] Jeremy Bierbach: expensive? That's great. Price of groceries is great. That's, that's one thing, that's, that's one thing that's extremely affordable and extremely high quality food and food.

[00:28:40] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, food. Yeah, exactly. ingredients, produce going out is way more is so it is. So the price and the price of food is lower and the quality of food is higher when you buy it in the supermarket compared to the U S. The Netherlands is a major agricultural producer. There's very high quality produce coming from the [00:29:00] Netherlands.

[00:29:00] Jeremy Bierbach: There's very high quality produce coming from the rest of the European union. One of the pillars of the European union is subsidizing Farmers to produce good quality products that might not be so lucrative for them. So, you have you have access to all the, all the delicious things, fresh mozzarella from Italy. Cheeses from cheeses from France. Like I just witnessed. Exactly. I, before I, before we began this podcast, I I finished, I polished off a capresa salad that my husband whipped up for me and it was really delicious. And it looked

[00:29:29] Mark Goldstein: delicious. So tell the audience, is it difficult to meet friends or gay people in person?

[00:29:39] Mark Goldstein: In Amsterdam, or is it pretty easy?

[00:29:42] Jeremy Bierbach: No, pretty easy. I mean, yeah, there's, there's, there's a, there's a large, there's a large gay scene. I mean, it's different than it used to be. I mean, everything's changing, of course it has, it has to do with generational changes. There was. Historically, there were three commercial gayborhoods, I don't describe [00:30:00] them as gayborhoods where people live because nobody would ever, like, live in one of those neighborhoods where the gay bars clustered, in fact, I think it wouldn't have been really, none of them would have been really nice places to live, to be honest, but there were places where there were, there were commercial entertainment districts where gay bars clustered, and so one of them was the one of the most difficult to pronounce names of a street.

[00:30:24] Jeremy Bierbach: I'm not gonna Even for speaker Yeah. People just call it, people who can't speak to us. They call it the gay street and everyone knows what you're talking about. Mm-Hmm. was a, was a street that at its peak, like when I first moved here in 2001, it had a huge cluster of gay bars. It was like, it was like the hive mind of gay bars.

[00:30:42] Jeremy Bierbach: There were like seven in one in one narrow street. Mm-Hmm. . And they do still sort of cluster in the middle. And it's a, and it's, and it's a trap. It's a it's a pedestrian only street. And so in the summertime, what's nicest about that little, there's a, there's a cluster of four gay [00:31:00] bars that's left in the middle.

[00:31:01] Jeremy Bierbach: In the summertime, it turns into a sort of permanent street party on on, on weekends. Where, where it's more, you people just get their beer from. It doesn't matter where you get your beer from. You're just standing out on the street with everybody. That's kind of nice. The bars themselves are not much to write home about, but.

[00:31:16] Mark Goldstein: So what, when I hear Amsterdam, I kind of equate it to like Las Vegas. Do they have like a red light district in Amsterdam as well?

[00:31:25] Jeremy Bierbach: Yep. So, so Amsterdam got big, as a as a, as a harbor. It's, Amsterdam actually is one of the youngest cities in, in Europe. It didn't have much of an existence in the middle ages, for instance.

[00:31:38] Jeremy Bierbach: Most of the really old cities, in Europe go back as far to, the Roman empire or, it became big in the middle ages. But Amsterdam wasn't even the most important city in the Netherlands for a long time. The most important cities in, in the, in the Netherlands or the low countries is sometimes they're described historically because the Netherlands and Belgium, we're sort of one unit for, for [00:32:00] many years of their history.

[00:32:01] Jeremy Bierbach: We're Harlem. Which is in between Amsterdam and the North sea coast and Antwerp. Those were the those were the real medieval centers, of, of, of religion and commerce. And Amsterdam was a swamp. Amsterdam was a, was on a flood plain of the flood prone Amstel river. And it wasn't until some local farmers and residents got together and banded together to damn the Amstel and tame it.

[00:32:30] Jeremy Bierbach: Damn the am That's that it became habitable Amsterdam, but it became a habitable area. And that's, and then, and then what also superpowered, the rise of Amsterdam as a power was that it turned into a major trading center. It turned into, because it was kind of a new city then this is, this is the magic of answer because it was kind of a new city.

[00:32:54] Jeremy Bierbach: It attracted migration. From a lot of places, a lot of places in the rest of the Netherlands, a lot of [00:33:00] places in the rest of Europe, people, people started flocking to Amsterdam. It became a sort of place where you could make it, if you can make it there, you'll make it anywhere. It's no surprise that New York is new.

[00:33:10] Jeremy Bierbach: Amsterdam, New York is founded on that Amsterdam spirit of being an entrepot, of being a place of trade, a place where, you wouldn't be judged, you could, anybody could come there, any religion And so is this, is this thriving trading center? That's

[00:33:28] Mark Goldstein: awesome. And

[00:33:28] Jeremy Bierbach: tell us about that also, that also, then, where you get trade, where you get sailors, you get hookers.

[00:33:34] Jeremy Bierbach: And that's why the oldest part of the Amsterdam, the part of Amsterdam that was the first habited part, the part of those called old side out of sides. That is the heart of what's now the red light district. That is the, one of the oldest businesses, not just the oldest profession in the world, but it's pretty much the oldest business in Amsterdam.

[00:33:55] Mark Goldstein: And also when I think of Amsterdam, I think people say, Oh, they have so [00:34:00] many hash bars. Tell us a little bit about that. Does that still exist?

[00:34:05] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, it still exists, but you know, Amsterdam or the Netherlands is now backwater compared to the rest of the world. Half of the United States has fully legalized weed.

[00:34:14] Jeremy Bierbach: And I think even Germany just actually legalized weed, although they legalized it in a weird way. There's not actually shops where you can get it, but you have to sort of grow your own or join a club of people growing their own and in the Netherlands. Which, famous for legal weed, it's still not actually legal.

[00:34:35] Jeremy Bierbach: It's still not actually legal. It's still actually on the books. It is still in the criminal code, but of course it's decriminalized. It's always, it's been decriminalized for a very long time. You know what I mean? You'll, you'll never get, you'll never get jail time, for having less than an ounce of weed, possessing less than an ounce of weed, I mean, it would be what's considered a non, it would be considered the equivalent of a misdemeanor.

[00:34:57] Jeremy Bierbach: But then it's, there's also prosecution [00:35:00] guidelines. Let's say they won't actually prosecute private individuals for possession of personal amounts, sort of this idea of we've got better things to do, but how it works out again, this goes back to the tradition of toleration. In the Netherlands, it's tolerated.

[00:35:16] Jeremy Bierbach: So there's, there's a marijuana industry that is tolerated. And it grew out of like sort of youth cultural centers in the late sixties and late seventies. That was a time of, of great upheavals in the culture and young people didn't really have anywhere to go. They often had to live at home.

[00:35:31] Jeremy Bierbach: Until the age of 28, until they could get their own place. So they needed places to gather. And so, a lot of places were squatted, a lot of empty buildings were squatted and young people turned them into places where bands would play and people could hang out and drink beer, but then it also evolved that a lot of these youth cultural centers, which were called coffee shops, people go to drink coffee.

[00:35:51] Jeremy Bierbach: There would end up being a sort of one corner of the space where there would always be a dealer sitting at a table selling selling hash and weed. [00:36:00] And it became institutionalized, it came, it came to be that then the cops and the public prosecutor's office came to, inventorize which places had their little house dealer and they said, okay, they would, they would go there and be like, okay, we know about you.

[00:36:18] Jeremy Bierbach: Do your thing, stick to the rules, don't sell to anybody under 18, don't sell any other kind of, don't sell hard drugs, don't sell anything that's harder than than weed or hash, don't sell any extracts of weed or hash don't, don't sell more than a couple of grams per person per transaction.

[00:36:36] Jeremy Bierbach: Something like that. And then we'll leave you alone. If you, if you, if you, if you told the line, we'll leave you alone. So that's what then evolved into what's called a coffee shop. So a place that calls itself a coffee shop, and also they're not allowed to like, they're not allowed to like expressly advertise that they sell weed there.

[00:36:51] Jeremy Bierbach: So if it says coffee shop in English on the. Yeah, then you know what it means. It doesn't mean they sell coffee there. They're not allowed to put a, they're not allowed to put a marijuana leaf, on [00:37:00] the on the on the, on the front to make it that obvious. But if it's called a coffee shop, that's what it means.

[00:37:04] Jeremy Bierbach: In fact, the coffee is notoriously bad in all those places. Notoriously bad. That's funny. All right. If you really have to ask for a coffee at one of those places, they'll give you like a senseo or something like that. Or some sort of dishwater coffee.

[00:37:19] Mark Goldstein: So if if I moved to Amsterdam, would I have to speak Dutch?

[00:37:25] Jeremy Bierbach: Or? I recommend, you don't have to. Do people speak English? Yeah. I mean, it is, it is, the Netherlands. Like the Netherlands is up there with the Scandinavian countries as being the parts of Europe, I mean, aside from of course, England, where we, or the, the non native speaking parts, the non native English speaking parts of Europe, where fluency in English is the highest level because like the Netherlands, like Sweden, like Denmark, these are all countries that realize that nobody's going to learn their language.

[00:37:57] Jeremy Bierbach: They have a consciousness of them, of not [00:38:00] speaking. A language that's spoken by that many people in the world. And so the educational system is very much oriented toward making sure that kids, making sure that Dutch kids learn to speak other languages from an early age. And historically it used to be in the Dutch educational system that it was expected of an educated Dutch person to speak, to be able to speak English, German, and French.

[00:38:20] Jeremy Bierbach: It used to be common, in the, in the, in the upper levels of schools that you weren't, you weren't considered to be properly educated for languages, but German and French have fallen by the wayside. French, I'm surprised it's lost so close. Yeah. French, French has lost in relevance in, in, on the world scene.

[00:38:38] Jeremy Bierbach: German, any Dutch speaker can speak. Can speak good enough German, right? And that's a Dutch speaker without ever having taken German lessons can sort of speak fake German. And so that's left it, but the only major foreign language that anybody really studies here is English. And so that means that all Dutch people speak, you know, varying degrees of good English, definitely enough [00:39:00] to to get the, get business done, it's always about getting, it's always about getting that.

[00:39:04] Jeremy Bierbach: It's always about getting that transaction done. Oh yeah, absolutely. Right. The Dutch are nothing if about business and trade. And so, anybody working in cash register, even if they're not highly educated, they will, they'll speak enough English to do the transaction. They won't be bothered by the fact that you're not conducting the transaction in Dutch.

[00:39:20] Jeremy Bierbach: But what I do say to my clients, I really, from day one, I say, go out of your way to make an effort to learn Dutch. Do it. I agree. Will not absorb it. I

[00:39:30] Mark Goldstein: agree. Especially in a missing. You're missing so much, too, of part

[00:39:34] Jeremy Bierbach: of the culture. You will not absorb it by osmosis. Absolutely not. There will never be a situation where you'll be forced to speak Dutch, where it'll be sink or swim.

[00:39:44] Jeremy Bierbach: Never. You really have to go out of your way. You have to pay somebody. You have to, you have to, you have to pay a teacher, you have to pay a school, enroll in classes, make an effort because it makes a difference in your life. It makes a real difference in your life. It's the difference between living life in black and white and living it in color [00:40:00] to use the sort of Wizard of Oz metaphor.

[00:40:02] Mark Goldstein: And I kind of think that if you make an attempt speaking Dutch and you're not doing so well that somebody might. in a business starts speaking English to you. So it makes it a little bit more difficult to even learn Dutch because you want to really speak Dutch, but you're having trouble.

[00:40:23] Jeremy Bierbach: So, and you have to be patient.

[00:40:25] Jeremy Bierbach: You have to, you have to just take that on. You have to like, you have to, you'll, you will have to push. You will have to say, I'm really sorry. I'm trying to speak Dutch to you. Please speak Dutch back to me. And some, some people will get some water. And vows of different, I've, I've cut off, I've cut off friends or, not, they weren't, may we, maybe friends, but there are people who I, sort of just made a decision not to become friends with because they didn't respect that I wanted to speak Dutch with them.

[00:40:48] Jeremy Bierbach: You get a lot of, you get a lot of Dutch people who think it's really nice and fun and exotic to have international friends. And they like to speak their English. They like to show off their English and they sort of, there's [00:41:00] something in there. There's something either, either it's like they want to show off their English or, there's something in their brain that makes them out of a feeling of sympathy or feeling sorry for you.

[00:41:08] Jeremy Bierbach: Oh, you're trying so hard to speak Dutch, but I don't want to make it harder for you. Right. I'm just going to switch back to speaking English. And those are the kind of people, if they, if they kept doing that, I would say, I don't think this is going to work out as a friendship. I

[00:41:19] Mark Goldstein: gotcha. I understand.

[00:41:21] Mark Goldstein: I totally understand because, you're living in the country, you should learn the language of the country. And I'm kind of like, that's a, how did you? So you were fluent when you pretty much got there, right? I was fluent

[00:41:36] Jeremy Bierbach: when I got here. I was, I was a freak. Yeah. I mean, I was fluent. I was, I was fluent in written Dutch.

[00:41:42] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, I was fluent in Dutch as a written language. I read a lot of Dutch newspapers in between my year in Germany and going back to the us. So I went back to the us. I graduated, I had my final year at Georgetown, left DC in 1996 to move to the West Coast to chase [00:42:00] the.com boom. The first one. And, but I always, I always kept reading Dutch newspapers and luckily for the internet coming up, that meant that I could read things on the internet.

[00:42:10] Jeremy Bierbach: I could practice my Dutch online. I even had a coworker who was Dutch, funnily enough, at at the last place I worked in San Francisco. And he and I would enormously annoy our coworkers all the time by speaking Dutch with each other. And and and then, when that was, that was a great job by the way.

[00:42:26] Jeremy Bierbach: It was a great company that I worked at. But when we You know, when we went bust because of the whole industry going bust at the end of the year, 2000 that's when I decided I, I don't necessarily have to stay, in the tech industry in San Francisco. I'm going to follow my dream and I can move to Amsterdam.

[00:42:43] Jeremy Bierbach: And that's why I made the move at the beginning of 2001 and George W. Bush getting elected was also another push. I didn't want to stick around for

[00:42:51] Mark Goldstein: that. Gotcha, gotcha. So, tell us a little bit about the arts and culture scene in Amsterdam.

[00:42:58] Jeremy Bierbach: It's huge. I [00:43:00] mean, I have a lot of one, one part of my of my law practice is helping people get artist visas.

[00:43:05] Jeremy Bierbach: And so, I have a large number of clients who are, they usually graduate from an, from an art institute in Amsterdam. There are, there are several, there's the, there's the, there's a major visual arts institute called the Rietveld Institute and a graduate program called Sandberg Institute.

[00:43:24] Jeremy Bierbach: There's a performing arts There's a performing arts Institute here, and there is a fashion design Institute here as well, all in Amsterdam. And

[00:43:34] Mark Goldstein: Yeah, Amsterdam is pretty major city for culture. I

[00:43:38] Jeremy Bierbach: think. Yeah. And there's lots of, there's lots of art spaces. I mean, you have gallery class at the top.

[00:43:45] Jeremy Bierbach: You have the world class museums of the Rijksmuseum Rijksmuseum, which houses all the, all the most famous Dutch masters, the most famous, which is the night watch by Rembrandt. You have the Stedelijk museum, which is a major modern art museum, which also has a lot of a lot of very [00:44:00] captivating exhibitions.

[00:44:01] Jeremy Bierbach: You have the photography museum, the foam museum just so many places when you live here you can pay 65 euros a year or off the top of my head, something about that for what's called a museum card. And it gives you unlimited free access to all the, all the public museums in the Netherlands. So it's only with the exception of a few.

[00:44:22] Jeremy Bierbach: Very privately run, museums. I never get my money out of it. And I know that I know that I'm subsidizing my husband and I are definitely subsidizing all the museums in the Netherlands by spending together 120 or 130 a year when we would have saved money by actually just, paying entry the few times that we go.

[00:44:38] Jeremy Bierbach: But it's a good cause. It's a good cause. But it's nice. Yeah. It's nice to know that you can just walk into a place whenever you want.

[00:44:43] Mark Goldstein: Right. How about live theater?

[00:44:46] Jeremy Bierbach: Live theater. There's live theater. I mean, there's even the, there's even now a theater which has only English language productions called the international theater Amsterdam.

[00:44:55] Jeremy Bierbach: Wow. Online supply. It used to be called the, the City Theater of Amsterdam, but [00:45:00] then two years ago it was converted to the, to the ITA International Theater of Amsterdam. So all the productions there are are not Dutch language. I mean most, most of theater, most of live theater is still Dutch language though.

[00:45:11] Jeremy Bierbach: Okay. That is something to, that is something to recall that, even if, even if Dutch people do speak fluent English, that doesn't mean that they necessarily wanna seek out all their entertainment. In English, they don't want to have to, they don't want to have to, they don't, they don't want to have to like read subtitles.

[00:45:25] Jeremy Bierbach: They, there, there is a huge well made Dutch film somewhat, but I mean, there's, yeah, there's a huge Dutch, Dutch language theater scene. I know this because my husband worked on, worked for the major musical theater. Musical production company in the Netherlands for many years. And he still does, still does a lot of jobs.

[00:45:43] Jeremy Bierbach: He works as a costume designer and the big, the big moneymakers in the theater world are Dutch language musicals that usually typically translations of of musicals from the English speaking world. So the bodyguard in Dutch Mama Mia [00:46:00] in Dutch. Wow. But it was a huge money spinners because like I said, even though those people do speak fluent English You know if they want if they want an experience of going out and being entertained How

[00:46:12] Mark Goldstein: about how about the restaurant scene?

[00:46:14] Mark Goldstein: Are you a foodie? You like to eat? Yeah,

[00:46:17] Jeremy Bierbach: do you go out? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we like we love to we love to go out. I mean Too much, to eat Patting my, patting my ample belly right now as I say that although, I have to admit my husband and I were sort of more, we're sort of more middle brow eaters.

[00:46:33] Jeremy Bierbach: We like to, we like to go out and get good burgers. There's a really good burger scene here. That's a real thing. That's, that's, that's come up in the last 10 years. Gourmet burgers. Wow. And of course, the, we're famous for fries here. French fries. Are you? Which originate, we are originated in Belgium.

[00:46:50] Jeremy Bierbach: The whole, the whole low countries, that's, that's one of the culinary areas of excellence is the idea of, of, of French fries or Belgian fries [00:47:00] or Flemish fries as they're called, which are, thick and they're, they're fried. They're first blanched. The trick is to first blanch them to first like cook them.

[00:47:10] Jeremy Bierbach: Cook them briefly and then, and then fry them again. And that creates this perfectly crispy jacket on the fry with a perfectly sort of mashed potato side. Sounds so good.

[00:47:22] Mark Goldstein: You guys do cheeseburgers or no, or is that a US

[00:47:26] Jeremy Bierbach: burger scene? Yeah. There'll be like, yeah, cause I will do it with cheese and bacon.

[00:47:31] Jeremy Bierbach: So that's good. That's good. But it's, yeah, but it's expensive, I mean, even that's the thing. I said, groceries are cheap when you go to the supermarket. Good. But dining is expensive dining is expensive any because because labor is expensive rightly so You don't have you know People get paid living wages Somebody can have a full time job, you know working in a restaurant Unlike

[00:47:54] Mark Goldstein: the u.

[00:47:55] Mark Goldstein: s. Where they don't pay.

[00:47:56] Jeremy Bierbach: They're not struggling. They don't

[00:47:58] Mark Goldstein: pay kids [00:48:00] U. S. they don't pay their waiter or waitress staff, so that's why they rely on tips. Yeah. Does Amsterdam accept

[00:48:08] Jeremy Bierbach: tips? Like Yes. Yeah, it's, it's You do? It's, yeah, it's, it's, it's, the idea is, but it's, it's, it's not seen as, tipping is not seen as an obligation.

[00:48:20] Jeremy Bierbach: In order to make it possible for this person to actually live. It's seen as a, as a, as a sign of appreciation. And so it's, you round up, so the bill is 1850. You say, make it 20. And, and tipping is always done here as it has to be done as a personal gesture. It would be considered actually to be an insult to just leave money behind on a table and walk away.

[00:48:44] Mark Goldstein: So, there's no such thing as they're not looking for like a 20%. Because we, if we don't leave 20%, you're like, Oh, something's really wrong either with you or the service. [00:49:00] So,

[00:49:00] Jeremy Bierbach: so no, it's not expected. It's always, so it's not expected. It's always appreciated. Always appreciate it. Even giving no tip is not seen as any sort of message. If it's not, it's not taken badly. It's not like the, it's not like the waiter would chase after you and be like, did I do something wrong?

[00:49:15] Jeremy Bierbach: I

[00:49:15] Mark Goldstein: prefer it that way. Are there like also five star restaurants? I'm sure they're really good. Yes,

[00:49:22] Jeremy Bierbach: there's a bunch of Michelin restaurants. We've only been to We've only ever been to Oh, I've been to I have been to another one. Oh, I've been to a really nice seafood restaurant that has a Michelin star. And and we went to, there's the, the, the best Japanese, what, what's up, what a lot of Japanese people say is the best Japanese restaurant in Europe is in Amsterdam.

[00:49:41] Jeremy Bierbach: That's a Michelin starred restaurant. That's a Kaiseki meaning like Japanese gourmet style restaurant at the Okura hotel, which is a Japanese run hotel. We've been there twice, three times. That's always an amazing experience.

[00:49:55] Mark Goldstein: Nice. Nice. Okay. Let's let's go on to public [00:50:00] transportation. Tell us Do they have a subway system buses, what kind of, how could I get around Amsterdam?

[00:50:07] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, there's a subway system, which is sort of It serves as sort of spine of the, of the city. It's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it doesn't get you everywhere, but the new line was opened up a few years ago, the North South line but you always, you can jump on, if the subway doesn't get you all the way to your destination, then you jump on a tram.

[00:50:30] Jeremy Bierbach: So there's three, there's three forms of public transport. There's the subways, there's trams, which are streetcars. They provide a little more, dense network service, and then there's finally buses. And so you can always, you can always get from A to B, usually in a maximum of two modes of transport.

[00:50:47] Mark Goldstein: Is, is like the town or is everything walkable? Like if I wanted to go to the market, could I walk to the market? Or if I want to go to the pharmacy, could I walk

[00:50:58] Jeremy Bierbach: to the pharmacy? [00:51:00] Yeah. Inside the ring. Most of the neighborhoods are dense and walkable enough that you can walk to a supermarket. Supermarkets are the major, the largest supermarket chain is Albert Heijn.

[00:51:11] Jeremy Bierbach: They're, they're actually, oddly enough, they're, I mean, they're, they're owned by the multinational conglomerate, Ahold, which start grew out of it, which also owns I think like giant in the United States, major East coast grocery store chain. That's actually owned by that same company, which grew out of the Netherlands.

[00:51:28] Jeremy Bierbach: So Albert Heijn. Is they've got the near monopoly, on on supermarkets. They've, they've got one in every neighborhood. And then there's other supermarket chains called Jumbo. And then Dierk is the disc, is the discount one. But the idea is when you live in a dense and walkable neighborhood, you've almost always got a supermarket within walking distance.

[00:51:47] Jeremy Bierbach: And

[00:51:47] Mark Goldstein: how about a pharmacy if I needed to pick up a prescription? Yes.

[00:51:53] Jeremy Bierbach: That too. That's multiple.

[00:51:55] Mark Goldstein: So all of that. So, post office, pretty much everything [00:52:00] is.

[00:52:00] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, post offices aren't what they used to be. The, the, the postal system has been completely privatized and, and sort of destroyed. So, there's no actual post offices anymore.

[00:52:09] Jeremy Bierbach: There's postal services at little, usually tobacco stores. So usually the local tobacconist also also doubles as a, as a, as a place where you can mail, where you can buy stamps and mail things and pick up packages. Interesting. Question about this pharmacy. I guess we could segue into the healthcare system.

[00:52:26] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah,

[00:52:27] Mark Goldstein: that's very good. Yep. So what's the healthcare system like? Is there a hospital near you? Tell us a little bit about private versus public.

[00:52:38] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, it's all It's, it's, it's all a private public system. So how health insurance works in the Netherlands is. It's compulsory. When you, when you are a legal resident of the Netherlands, you have to have health insurance.

[00:52:52] Jeremy Bierbach: You'll be fined if you, if you don't have health insurance. And that, but, but, but by the same token, it also means that no insurer is allowed to deny you [00:53:00] coverage for any reason whatsoever for pre existing conditions or whatever. They're, they're compelled to cover you. Even if And Even a private? Well, they're, they're all private.

[00:53:11] Jeremy Bierbach: So how it works is the front end of the, the front end of the healthcare system, the front of the front end of the health insurance system is private. You have to choose a private insurer. There's about 30 of them. You can comparison shop. I mean, the variations between them is actually limited in terms of actual coverage.

[00:53:27] Jeremy Bierbach: They all offer the same core coverage or obliged to by law, but they may offer various deals or discounts, for accepting a more limited network or something like that. So yeah, none of them is allowed to, your, your, your, your insurance company doesn't ask you any questions about your preexisting conditions.

[00:53:45] Jeremy Bierbach: They wouldn't be allowed to anyways, they wouldn't be allowed to deny you coverage for that anyways. You just sign up with them and they check, they simply check. They do want to see a copy of your residence permit if you're a foreigner which is like a credit card sized biometric [00:54:00] ID card that shows that you have the right to live in the Netherlands.

[00:54:03] Jeremy Bierbach: The reason why they ask to see that, and that's, that's, if you show them that and, they type in your Dutch social security number called your BSN they'll accept you. But the reason why is because, It's a private public system. The front end is private, and to your private insurance company you pay a premium of about varying from 100 to 140 a month.

[00:54:25] Jeremy Bierbach: Which sounds like a steal, you know compared to the USA and there's an annual annual deductible varying from 350 to 850 euros total per year meaning that yeah All of your any specialist care you get first comes out of that deductible So that gets billed back to you in addition to your, to your first few premium debits for the year.

[00:54:54] Jeremy Bierbach: But once you've burned through that with specialist care prescriptions or whatever, the rest is completely covered. 100 percent [00:55:00] visits to the GP visits to your, to your general practitioner, always 100 percent covered. The idea is you should never be afraid to go to your neighborhood doctor. It does have to be your neighborhood doctor.

[00:55:10] Jeremy Bierbach: This gets back to the point of walkability. You're actually obliged to choose a GP who is walking distance from where you live because they will make a house call if you need it. Wow. If you're that bad off, your doctor will come to your house. That's awesome.

[00:55:28] Mark Goldstein: Yeah, that's also that used to when I grew up.

[00:55:32] Mark Goldstein: I mean, when I grew up in New York, and I think they did away with it in the 60s or 70s. But when I grew up, I remember my doctor did house calls, but you'd have to wait all day long for him to show up.

[00:55:51] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, unfortunately for me, I've never, I've never had anything be bad enough that I ever had, that I ever couldn't make it, on my own steam to the, to the doctor's office.

[00:55:59] Jeremy Bierbach: [00:56:00] So, where it's actually paid for, I said it's private public, but where, of course, the cost of it is actually paid for, is paid out of your taxes. So, obviously, 140 a month. isn't going to be enough, for your health insurer to actually cover your actual costs of health care, especially if you need specialist care or if you have a chronic condition, but in reality, they claim it back from the government.

[00:56:20] Jeremy Bierbach: So the government refuses to pay them unless they can prove that their, that their customer, has a valid immigration status because those are the only people who are eligible for it. Insurance, but but it is a sort of, it is a managed care system. It can be described, by comparison to HMOs in the in the U S there's no, there's, if you, if you, if you go directly to a specialist, you'll have to pay for it yourself.

[00:56:46] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, if you really, really, really, wanted to like circumvent your GP and insist that you want to go to a specialist or something like that, you wanted to, you want to go to the dermatologist to get that mole lasered off that your GP told you is not cancerous and it's not nothing to [00:57:00] worry about, then you have to pay for it.

[00:57:01] Jeremy Bierbach: But if you get a referral, then it's paid for. So it's all about getting the referral from your GP.

[00:57:06] Mark Goldstein: So, and I know we'll talk about visas in just a little bit, how to obtain one, but usually in the EU and I know from Spain, one of the requirements are if you're coming over and getting residency, they require you to have health care.

[00:57:25] Mark Goldstein: And in this case, in Spain's case, they require you at least one year of the private system, but the private system, the problem is they don't accept preexisting conditions. Yeah.

[00:57:39] Jeremy Bierbach: I think the Netherlands used to have a, used to have a system, something like that. I can say there is no, there is no EU in this area, by the way, this is not a subject of EU law.

[00:57:52] Jeremy Bierbach: So it's not, it's sort of, I, the EU can be understood By comparison to the US constitutional system, I'm sort of verging into my field of [00:58:00] academia. Just like, in the US, the federal government doesn't, doesn't set traffic rules and doesn't, doesn't, doesn't, doesn't regulate every single little thing.

[00:58:09] Jeremy Bierbach: The EU also doesn't, regulate every single little thing. So, so the subject of healthcare is not a, it's not, it's not, it's not a, it's not an area that the EU is empowered to legislate on. It just happens, through the development. of Europe after World War II, diverging from the way the United States developed, is that Every, every European country has a decent functioning universal healthcare system, but the details of how they work out do very widely among European countries.

[00:58:38] Jeremy Bierbach: So, so there's no conclusions to be drawn about, it works this way in Spain, therefore it has to work this way in the Netherlands. I'd say, the Dutch system is pretty good. They, there's no, there's, there's no catch 20 twos here. There's no, there's, There's nothing in immigration law where they say you have to first get health coverage on your own before we let you into the system.

[00:58:56] Jeremy Bierbach: The idea is, if you're allowed in, then you're allowed into the system.

[00:58:59] Mark Goldstein: How [00:59:00] close are you to a hospital? Is that walking distance?

[00:59:03] Jeremy Bierbach: No, no. The nearest well, yeah, I mean, you just go, I mean, there's, there's

[00:59:08] Mark Goldstein: if you're ill, you're not going to really walk.

[00:59:09] Jeremy Bierbach: Anyway, there's four major hospitals in five major hospitals in Amsterdam.

[00:59:14] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, well, yeah. Oh, you mean like, Oh, you mean like an emergency room? Like if something was really bad. Yeah. Oh, in that sense. I mean, yeah, again, Also, those concepts of like urgent care and stuff like that, like they have, like, where the healthcare system is not so reliant on emergency room treatment as it is in the U S that is, if it's, if it's a, if it's an urgent care ish situation, you call your GP.

[00:59:36] Jeremy Bierbach: If it's an urgent care ish you, then you're walking to your local, your local doctor's office with something like, minor, minor stitches you need or something like that. That's something you get through your GP. Or, minor They

[00:59:47] Mark Goldstein: do that. What? They do stitches?

[00:59:50] Jeremy Bierbach: GPs? Yeah. Wow.

[00:59:51] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, if it was, if it was something really small, if it was a little, I, I, I remember once the last time I went to the GP for an emergency I was, it was one morning I went to the gym and I [01:00:00] was just, it was one of those days I was just not in the mood to be there. I was, I was like, I hate the gym.

[01:00:04] Jeremy Bierbach: I want to get up early for this. And I was in the locker room and bent over, putting something in my gym bag. And I had left the, the door to my locker open. Oh, you hit your head. I stood up really, I stood up and hit the back of my head, against the point of the door pointing down. Hit head.

[01:00:23] Jeremy Bierbach: Just, just started bleeding like a stuck pig, and like, like blood like completely matting my, matting my hair, and they were like, the staff was all coming, and they were like, giving me a towel. So I immediately called the GP. I said, like, I'm bleeding, I'm bleeding like a stuck pig, and so.

[01:00:38] Jeremy Bierbach: Went in she saw me within like five minutes, I got on my bicycle and went there I mean, I was I wasn't walking distance from the GP anymore But Wow still still, mobile enough that I could get on my bicycle and go there You know while holding my head and she said yo, it's so scary the blood coming from your head No, this will heal this doesn't [01:01:00] need stitches she said here just she literally said let's let's actually just Well, how did she say she literally sort of like tied, tied some of my hairs into a little knot.

[01:01:15] Jeremy Bierbach: That's my one experience with an urgent care situation for that. We're on the weekend. What you'd have to do is there's a, there's a, there's a number you'd call for the, for the local. The local on duty GP, there'd be like an on duty emergency GP and they would talk to you on the phone and be like, is this bad enough?

[01:01:31] Jeremy Bierbach: And if it is bad enough, they would say, okay, come in. And then there's the, there's that urgent care GP clinic at one of the local medical centers. So for me, the nearest hospital is Well, if it were that bad, I would, I would, I would take a taxi. It'd be like, an eight minute taxi ride away, I guess.

[01:01:47] Jeremy Bierbach: Otherwise I could get the bicycle in 20

[01:01:49] Mark Goldstein: minutes. Do you think doctors in the hospital, like if you had an emergency, let's say I just moved here from the States and I had an emergency, I had to go to the hospital. You think they speak English? [01:02:00]

[01:02:00] Jeremy Bierbach: Of course they do. Yeah. They yeah. No, especially if somebody is highly educated, if somebody is, somebody has an academic education in the Netherlands, they have to speak English.

[01:02:09] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, half of the, half of the materials that they would have used, to study medicine would have been medical journal articles in English. That is the international language of science nowadays.

[01:02:19] Mark Goldstein: So let's, let's segue into how to obtain a visa. So, and tell us like the different types of visas.

[01:02:27] Mark Goldstein: I don't believe they have a retirement visa.

[01:02:31] Jeremy Bierbach: Is that correct? No. Yeah. So the Netherlands the, the notion of Dutch immigration law is it's It's based on, it's based on the concept of, it's based on, it's based on the, on the, on the precept that the Netherlands is full, that there's, there's enough people here already.

[01:02:50] Jeremy Bierbach: And so they don't want us, no, not, not just, there's no, so if you're a non EU citizen Dutch immigration law does not provide for any facility. [01:03:00] Just to be able to be here and be self supporting. They don't care how rich you are. They don't care if you bought a 1. 5 million Euro canal mansion.

[01:03:10] Jeremy Bierbach: They don't care. If you say, Oh, I'm going to be, I'm going to, I'm going to be completely self supporting and I'm not going to be, I'm not going to be a violence. They don't say, I don't care. They would say, yeah, we don't care. We don't, we don't, we don't want you here. Like, taking up taking up the scarce.

[01:03:23] Jeremy Bierbach: So how do we, what are the ways the only, yeah, the only ways are either you're an EU citizen and EU citizens have freedom of movement. EU citizens are allowed to come here, not just for work, but also just to be self supporting if they want to live here. Or the only category of non EU citizens.

[01:03:41] Jeremy Bierbach: Who's allowed to just move here is there's all now currently, there is one harmonized thing in the EU is that all EU countries have a harmonized system for granting permanent residence permit called long term resident. So if you've got a permanent residence permit in another EU country by living there for five [01:04:00] years and usually passing a language exam or something like that, that that does entitle you.

[01:04:04] Jeremy Bierbach: To move here as an economically inactive person. In that case, if you showed up, if you got, the longterm resident status in Italy or in Germany, and you showed up here and said, look, I'm, I'm just retired. Here's my pension. Here's, here's, here's a couple of 10, 000 in savings that I have.

[01:04:22] Jeremy Bierbach: They'd be like, okay, sure. That's fine. They would let you stay. In that case, that's allowed. But if you're a non EU citizen with no connection or, so then the next tier is. You're a non EU citizen, but you have a connection to an EU citizen who's living here.

[01:04:36] Mark Goldstein: Connection how? Marriage connection?

[01:04:38] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, like, like Family. Yeah, we're talking nuclear family. We're not, we're talking like not, not your sister, brother, aunt, uncle cousin. We're talking, the nuclear family is this, is this unit that's limited to, the partner or spouse. Or you're, or you're a child under 18 of, of that unit.[01:05:00]

[01:05:00] Jeremy Bierbach: And so if you have one of those family relationships, if you are the child, if you're the minor age child of. Somebody who legally resides here, or if you are the partner or spouse of any uses and legally residing here, you can get a right to stay here. Or if you're the, or if you're the partner or spouse of another non EU citizen who got a say work related right to be here, like, so work, work related migration, this is outside of the field of retirement, but you know, maybe you might still have a few working years.

[01:05:27] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, I'm still working. Exactly. So work related migration. So, so, yeah, that's either your family member of a new citizen, then it's more or less automatic. Your family member of a Dutch citizen, your Dutch citizen partner has to simply prove that they, make enough money to support you. The interesting thing about Dutch immigration law, by the way, as far as that goes, as far as partners or marriage goes, And this is one thing that I'm very proud of, where the Netherlands has always been very progressive, more than anywhere else in the world, is the Netherlands does not require you to get married.

[01:05:59] Jeremy Bierbach: There's no [01:06:00] requirement to get married. Even though, of course, we are the first country in the world to have introduced same sex marriage in 2001, even long before that, since the 70s, it has been possible to immigrate. To the Netherlands as the unmarried partner in a long term relationship of either a man or a woman.

[01:06:20] Jeremy Bierbach: Like, there was already, like, gay family migration in the Netherlands starting in about 1975. And that's one of the coolest things. So, if you're

[01:06:28] Mark Goldstein: not married, how do you prove that you're in a

[01:06:32] Jeremy Bierbach: relationship? Yeah, so then you, then it's what's called a de facto, a de facto stable relationship where you simply prove by other means that you share your life with this person, that you are a life partner.

[01:06:43] Jeremy Bierbach: Bank accounts and stuff like that. Bank accounts, leases. Bills. History of travel together, photo albums.

[01:06:50] Mark Goldstein: So you don't have to be legally married, but you have to live with someone or be a partner with someone outside of the [01:07:00] Netherlands to get in.

[01:07:02] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, , for instance, I mean, if you had a vacation, Let's, let's imagine you weren't married, let's imagine you you had a romance with a Dutch guy that you met in Jamaica, something like that.

[01:07:13] Jeremy Bierbach: And and then you dated, you had a long distance relationship and, you maintained your relationship with video chatting. And you flew back and forth to visit each other. And you went on, you went on vacations together and you could prove plane tickets from that proof, prove that you put an effort into maintaining your relationship and developing it.

[01:07:32] Jeremy Bierbach: Then you could get a right to stay in the Netherlands if they want to, , if your boyfriend wants to sponsor you, then you can get a right to stay in the Netherlands based on that evidence of a durable and exclusive relationship having been built up. Yeah, that's

[01:07:46] Mark Goldstein: cool.

[01:07:47] Jeremy Bierbach: That's what I'm really proud of that. I really love, that's one thing, I'm, I'm very happy being married and extremely happily married, but I'm also glad I'm also glad that there was no pressure on me and my husband to get married. And I, of course. [01:08:00] I became Dutch through my, through my first marriage.

[01:08:01] Jeremy Bierbach: Of course, I'm in my second marriage. This is, that was the practice one. But I was also very, but I mean, I was glad that in Dutch culture, even straight people don't get married a lot of the time. It's it's something, they, people have kids, straight people, like, move in together, have kids, buy a house together.

[01:08:19] Jeremy Bierbach: They don't feel pressure to get married here. There's no, there's no idea of, You have to be married to get access to your partner when they're lying in the hospital for instance That's one thing. That's a big

[01:08:30] Mark Goldstein: that's a big thing because here in the States. It's totally opposite. So You know, you have to be married you have to show proof that you're that your spouse you're a spouse.

[01:08:45] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. I think that goes back to like the crazy liability culture in the U S yeah. Like everyone's afraid of a lawsuit and that's one thing that's so refreshing here. So refreshing. That's one thing that's nice. I can, I can, I was from my lawyer's [01:09:00] perspective, I can say about this is where, A different legal system really makes a difference.

[01:09:05] Jeremy Bierbach: And the fact that there's no crazy lawsuit culture here, that doesn't exist, none of that fear of liability, none of that. And so that doesn't, that also keeps to, that also makes it that certain prices don't get driven up, due to, due to liability related. But that was one cool. I mean, that's, it's not my field of the law that most that I'm most passionate about torts.

[01:09:29] Jeremy Bierbach: I had torts my first semester of a Dutch law school. I was like, Oh God, this is so boring, but torts, is what we call it. That's the notion of liability of suing somebody for the damages they caused you. But it's, I mean, the most valuable lesson, first semester of law school, you learn in Dutch law school, that liability is limited to the actual damages you suffered, the actual financial, put a, put a Euro sign on what is the actual damage.

[01:09:57] Jeremy Bierbach: actual financial damage that you suffered. That's the [01:10:00] most you can get out of somebody who injured you or, or, or, or wronged you in some way, there's no punitive damages. There's no pain and suffering damages. It would literally be. You crashed into my car. I had to pay 3, 500 euros to get the body work done.

[01:10:19] Jeremy Bierbach: That's what I get out of it, liability.

[01:10:21] Mark Goldstein: So getting back to visas. So bottom line really is the only ways to get into the Netherlands would be from somebody living there. Yeah.

[01:10:31] Jeremy Bierbach: I was like, I always like to build up dramatic, dramatic tension, be like, sort of. First, clear the, clear out the notions that you'll be welcome here simply because you have money, clear out the notion that you're just, that you're welcome to rock up, clear out the notion, but, but,, but I will say, if you are lucky enough to have a partner who's established here, that's a nice way to come.

[01:10:55] Jeremy Bierbach: Immigrating for love is a good way to do it. But if you don't have that, if you're two non [01:11:00] EU citizens who are married to each other, and neither of you has a connection to the Netherlands and you want to move here, what can you do? For U. S. citizens, there's one very, very, very nice facility that does allow you to kind of move here on your own steam without being sponsored by an employer.

[01:11:18] Jeremy Bierbach: Work related migration, by the way, means typically being sponsored by an employer who wants to pay you a high salary. If if you're recruited by a big corporation here, like Phillips, or Heineken, and they want to pay you a salary over 70, 000 a year, of course, then that's taken care of.

[01:11:33] Jeremy Bierbach: Then, yeah, then, then you'll, then you'll be allowed it for that, for that, for the purpose of that job. And you have to tow the line, you have to, you have to, Tow the line with your employer or always make sure to find an employer who pays you enough for five years until you can finally get your permanent residence permit and then you can just be yourself.

[01:11:51] Jeremy Bierbach: That's, that's how, that's how it always works. You always have to, your, your first five years in the Netherlands are always your probationary period in immigration law. You always have to like, [01:12:00] Totally, jump through the hoop of whatever condition is on your stay for five years before you get your independent right of stay.

[01:12:08] Jeremy Bierbach: So if I

[01:12:08] Mark Goldstein: get, if I get my 70, 000 job and I get laid off,

[01:12:13] Jeremy Bierbach: like, didn't that happen to you? Then you better find a new employer. Then you better find a new employee. Yeah, it happened to me. I, I came here as a work related migrant and the company went bankrupt two weeks after I arrived. That was my first, my, my first residence permit was work related.

[01:12:27] Jeremy Bierbach: I had to really scramble to find, I had to scramble to find a new employer right away. Otherwise they get,

[01:12:32] Mark Goldstein: they let you

[01:12:33] Jeremy Bierbach: go back, they deport you back. So yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And but you know, so I'm just, so, so if you're not lucky enough to be an EU citizen, if you're not lucky enough to already have a long term resident permit from another EU country, if you're not lucky enough to have a partner who's an EU citizen, and if you're not lucky enough to have a partner who himself or herself has a residence permit for work that EU citizen.

[01:12:56] Jeremy Bierbach: Or you're not lucky enough to yourself, be sponsored for work. What is your option? Well, if you're a [01:13:00] U. S. citizen, have I got news for you. There is a treaty that the Netherlands somewhat unwittingly signed with the United States in 1956 called the Dutch American Friendship Treaty. And this is part of a sort of friendship offensive that the U.

[01:13:15] Jeremy Bierbach: S. was going on. It was the Cold War, the U. S. was trying to sign these treaties with as many countries as possible to sort of out compete the Soviet Union on the charm offensive. And you look at this treaty nowadays, and most of it is really anodyne. Most of it is just like, Oh, we're going to be friends and we'll have free trade with each other.

[01:13:30] Jeremy Bierbach: And, Nationals of one signatory state will have freedom of speech and freedom of religion, when they're on the territory of the other one. There's all this sort of obvious stuff. But in the 90s, Dutch immigration lawyers dusted off this treaty, and they discovered that there was a really interesting provision in it, and said that that each signatory state, the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the United States of America, was obliged to allow citizens of the other country.

[01:13:57] Jeremy Bierbach: To legally reside in their [01:14:00] territory for the purpose of developing and running a business in which they have invested a substantial amount of capital. And what makes the Netherlands so attractive for us citizens relying on this provision of the treaty is that the notion of a substantial amount of capital has not been revised since 1956.

[01:14:20] Jeremy Bierbach: So what was a lot of money in 1956? 10, 000 Dutch guilders is now 4, 500 euros. So it means any us citizen who starts any kind of business in the Netherlands, even if it's a little freelance operation, even if it's a little DBA, and they can invest 4, 500 euros in their business, meaning put it in your business.

[01:14:41] Jeremy Bierbach: Don't take it out. It's sort of you'd see it as a deposit. I was describing it as like a game of bowling. Like when you go to the bowling alley and you put down a 20 deposit on your bowling shoes. It means, if you run out of money, you can't go back and say, well, I'll hand in the shoes. You give me back my [01:15:00] 20, my 20.

[01:15:00] Jeremy Bierbach: So I can pay for a few more games of bowling. No, that's it. Then it's game over. But the idea is, you're putting a 4, 500 year old deposit, so to speak on your, on your residence permit by making it, it makes it that your business always has a reserve if it goes bankrupt, but that it could pay off its debtors with.

[01:15:16] Jeremy Bierbach: But based on that, The treaty says that means then that the Dutch government is obliged to give you a residence permit for the purpose of being an entrepreneur without subjecting you to the normal requirement of Dutch immigration law of having to prove what the added value is of your business. To the Dutch economy.

[01:15:38] Jeremy Bierbach: That's a really big, that's a really big privilege because normally to get a residence permit as an entrepreneur here, it's really hard. It's really about like demonstrating what is the concrete interest of the Dutch economy that you're serving with that business? What is the unique selling point that you have?

[01:15:54] Jeremy Bierbach: What do you have going on that nobody else, no other business here is offering, but with the Dutch American friendship to you, the U S [01:16:00] citizen is exempt. And then the U. S. citizen's spouse will get a right to stay here, no questions asked. And the U. S. citizen's children will get the right to stay here, no questions asked.

[01:16:09] Jeremy Bierbach: So let's say,

[01:16:12] Mark Goldstein: so let's say I have a business, Where Do Gays Retire? And I put in 5, 000 in my software, all the, the, everything that, my computer equipment, my microphone, all my monthly stuff, and, I get my income is from people. If I have a subscription or something like that. So that's a viable possibility.

[01:16:44] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. It's best to make the investment in the form of cash, of course, because your microphone and your laptop depreciate. Right. If you spend exactly 4, 500 euros on a brand new microphone, a brand new laptop, well, guess what? Next month, it's not worth 4, 500 euros anymore. Okay. It's already [01:17:00] lost value. So that's not the best way to make your, make your investment.

[01:17:03] Jeremy Bierbach: The best way is just to put it in cash, cash, put the cash in the bank, in a bank account belonging to your business. I'd leave it there. It's about maintaining that level. I like that. I

[01:17:14] Mark Goldstein: like that little loophole.

[01:17:16] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah, it's a loophole, but of course I all, and, and, and it's, it's, it's not for everybody though, there's some people they, they say, wow, how is it so easy?

[01:17:28] Jeremy Bierbach: And I say, yeah, really? I mean, but it's not really easy. I can get it for you if you have 4,500 Euros and if you have a US passport, I can get you this residence permit. But I have to like often. The people who doesn't work out for other people turn out not to be really dyed in the wool entrepreneurs who don't have, When it doesn't work out with their business and they come to me and they say hey Can I pick up a job on the side working at a bookshop or working at a restaurant?

[01:17:52] Jeremy Bierbach: No, that's not allowed It's one big restriction. It has to be your business. You have to be working for yourself.

[01:17:59] Mark Goldstein: [01:18:00] And does that, oh, so you have to do that for at least five years to become a permanent resident. Yeah. And then after that five year period, can you, like, retire?

[01:18:11] Jeremy Bierbach: If you, yeah, exactly. If you, if you applied for the permanent residence permit.

[01:18:14] Jeremy Bierbach: Right. Which typically requires you to pass a Dutch exam. So would say from day one, make an effort to learn. Don't expect that you'll pick it up. Normally you would have to, so you, after five years you would have to pass that exam or within the five years you pass the exam. And at the five year point you prove, look, I passed the exam and I have sufficient stable resources to support myself, which is actually not that much.

[01:18:37] Jeremy Bierbach: And that's considered to be about 2000 a month for a couple. Yeah. Then you'll get a permanent residence permit and then you can completely retire. Hmm.

[01:18:47] Mark Goldstein: Sounds really good. This sounds really good, Jeremy. So let's how about the tax structure while we're on like the immigration visa, the tax structure, [01:19:00] do I know I have to pay us taxes.

[01:19:03] Mark Goldstein: So if I come over, right, and then do I pay us taxes and have to pay. Netherland

[01:19:11] Jeremy Bierbach: taxes. Yeah. Well, let me start off by explaining a lot of us. Citizens are really surprised to find out that, that the U S is the odd ball in the world. They think it's the most normal thing in the world that a country charges its citizens taxes wherever they live in the world.

[01:19:31] Jeremy Bierbach: And nobody does that. Nobody else does that in the world, except for Eritrea, the United States and Eritrea are the only two countries in the world that have citizenship based taxation. So we'll start off with that. We'll start off with the, the, the U S is the old, this is the odd ball of the world. So the U S is the, so that said when you're a U S citizen living abroad, so you do have to file us taxes.

[01:19:55] Jeremy Bierbach: That said, most of the time your obligation to actually pay U. S. taxes is mitigated. The [01:20:00] U. S. has what's called avoidance of double taxation agreements with most countries in the world, including the Netherlands. So how that works out in practice is the IRS offers one of two avoidance of double taxation schemes.

[01:20:15] Jeremy Bierbach: It's either You file your us taxes and you say, look, I earned less than, I don't know, it's 130, 000 us dollars last year. And you say, look, I wasn't in the U S you have to fill in all the dates that you entered and left the U S to prove that you were there for less than, I don't know how many, a hundred, 180 days.

[01:20:33] Jeremy Bierbach: I'm a human rights lawyer, not a tax lawyer. So nobody nobody sued me. Nobody sued me in a U S court. For hypothetical for Exactly. I'm getting, I'm admitting as a lawyer, this is not my field of actual expertise. So no one can, no one can get that pain and suffering damages out of me in a New York court, especially

[01:20:54] Mark Goldstein: in the U S

[01:20:57] Jeremy Bierbach: But so it's either you earn less [01:21:00] than a certain amount, 130 K and you say to the IRS, look, I don't live in the U S I live, I live in the Netherlands.

[01:21:05] Jeremy Bierbach: They say, okay, good. And then you're exempt. You owe us nothing, thanks for filing. Or it's, you earn more than that amount, and you say, but I don't live in the US, I live in the Netherlands, and so you say, I earned X, and I paid Y in Dutch taxes. But if I lived in the U. S., I would have paid Z in U. S. income taxes.

[01:21:29] Jeremy Bierbach: So they subtract, they subtract Y from Z, and then obviously if it's negative, it's not like you get money back, but they'll say, okay, then it's zero. You, you paid more taxes in the Netherlands than you would have paid in U. S. taxes. Therefore, Your net, what you, what you owe us net is zero. So

[01:21:47] Mark Goldstein: do, do I pay Netherland taxes first and

[01:21:53] Jeremy Bierbach: then, and then.

[01:21:55] Jeremy Bierbach: Yeah. The Netherlands is a modern country. The Netherlands is a normal country in the world, which [01:22:00] means it's a, it's a residence based tax system. Whoever lives in the Netherlands pays Dutch taxes. Whoever lives in the Netherlands is domiciled. For all intents and purposes in the Netherlands and has to pay Dutch income tax.

[01:22:12] Jeremy Bierbach: So you, so you would pay that first and then you would file your U. S. taxes based on that. But, but yeah, taxes is another reason that, people say to me, Oh, can it be really that easy to move to the Netherlands? I'm like, well, first you gotta decide that you're, willing to be restricted to only working in self employment.

[01:22:30] Jeremy Bierbach: Second of all, There's things about the Dutch tax system that really scare a lot of Americans, especially a lot of wealthy Americans.

[01:22:39] Mark Goldstein: It's one thing to look into, yes.

[01:22:41] Jeremy Bierbach: It's one thing to look into. You've got to talk to a tax lawyer here, called a fiscalist. You gotta talk to a tax lawyer and talk about what your maximal maximum exposure would be to the Dutch tax system, because it's, Yeah.

[01:22:51] Jeremy Bierbach: You're going to pay more taxes than you're used to in the U S most. This is one of these interesting things where the board, the border lines between, [01:23:00] between progressive and conservative are very, very different here. A lot of Americans think of themselves as progressive too. Yeah, a lot of Americans who think of themselves as progressive, if they're wealthy, they'll be at the conservative end of the Dutch spectrum if they, if they come here and they are upset about how much they get taxed, a lot of that's unfortunately the legacy of Reagan that and Clinton, you know, that that in the U S it's, it's become, Indispensable to become wealthy because of course you have to, if you, if you, if you don't want to end up destitute, because there's no safety net.

[01:23:35] Jeremy Bierbach: And so a lot of, a lot of normal, I do, I do see this in my practice. A lot of people who think of themselves as normal, I'm only wealthy because I had to be, I had to save this money. I had to put this all into my 401k. They're shocked when they move here and they find out there's a wealth tax.

[01:23:49] Jeremy Bierbach: That's one thing that's really shocking. I looked into

[01:23:51] Mark Goldstein: that in Spain too. There is a wealth tax, there's an inheritance tax, and wealth tax is based upon global assets. [01:24:00]

[01:24:01] Jeremy Bierbach: So not just, not just capital gains, but it's, you're literally taxed on the value of your assets that are just sitting somewhere.

[01:24:08] Mark Goldstein: Right.

[01:24:09] Mark Goldstein: Yeah. So, and the difference is also U. S. Wealthy people usually don't pay taxes because there's so many loopholes. And that's probably how they become wealthy. But anyway, that's besides the point. But in, in the EU and, you get services for your taxes. So you pay taxes and social security all your life and you get healthcare which is not a privilege.

[01:24:37] Mark Goldstein: You get all of those services, whereas we Probably pay less taxes and get less services.

[01:24:44] Jeremy Bierbach: So, yes, you really get, you get something for it. It's worth it. But yeah, you're going to be, yeah, it's living here is expensive. I mean, how, Yeah, no, I'll scrap that to the point I was going to [01:25:00] say. Yeah, just the quality of infrastructure, right? Like there's no potholes in the road, like the public transit works.

[01:25:06] Mark Goldstein: Yes. So are there any cons living in Amsterdam or the Netherlands in general, as opposed to living in the U S Pittsburgh or anywhere else?

[01:25:17] Jeremy Bierbach: Well, I haven't moved back yet. That's, I mean, I'm testimonial to it. I mean, I I go back, it's fun seeing friends, there's, there are places, there are places in the world that are more exciting than Amsterdam. Amsterdam is still, it's still a small city. It's a kind of sleepy city in its own way.

[01:25:33] Jeremy Bierbach: It has this exciting pockets. It has a really good, that's good. It's a decent, decent queer scene. Really, really cool underground stuff. That's my, that's my thing. A lot of good, a lot of good underground dance parties, a lot of good, like, nice nightclubs, where you can go all night, for a nice queer party on the edge of the city.

[01:25:51] Jeremy Bierbach: We do that well here. But it's a, but it's still a small city. You have to keep in mind, it's a small city. It's sleepy in a certain way. It's not definitely doesn't stack up to the, [01:26:00] to the, to the mega cities of the world. It doesn't stack up in terms of excitingness to the Berlin's and London's and the New York's of the world.

[01:26:08] Jeremy Bierbach: It's a, it's a small, small city. So, and got it. Cons cons. Yeah. I mean, other cons, I mean, for me, it's, it's nice, I love, I love having government services. I love having things being taken care of. I love knowing that there's a social safety net. And I'm willing to take, the things that come in exchange for that, not just that you not just that you pay taxes, but also that the government is.

[01:26:34] Jeremy Bierbach: up in your shit here in ways that people would not believe in the U. S. It's like the one, it's, I liken it, I liken it to living in a gated community. Like the gated communities in the U S where the homeowners association has is all up in your business about what color you paint your house.

[01:26:55] Jeremy Bierbach: And what kind of Christmas decorations you're allowed to put out. That's the entire [01:27:00] Netherlands. The entire Netherlands is zoned out. The wazoo you, if you, there's, there's, there's this notion of. Even if you own a property, you're not, you're not, you're not just free to do with it whatever you want.

You have to, if you, if you even want to like build, if you, if you want to build so much as like a little a little extra window in your roof, see, you can see across the street from, you see this sort of tiled roof. Yeah. You have to get permission If you own one of the, if you own one of those apartments and you wanted to like, break through the roof to build a little, eve style windows sticking out. You would have to ask the local planning commission. They might say no. They might say that doesn't fit into the look of this neighborhood. That doesn't fit into the architectural style. If you have an older house, if you have a house That's that has monumental status, where it's like 150 or 200 years old, you're really limited in the things you're allowed to do.

[01:27:50] Jeremy Bierbach: You're not even so much as allowed to like, put a nail in the wall to hang up a a painting in your own, in your own apartment. If it's monumental status, then you're not allowed [01:28:00] to damage that stuff. You have to, you have to suspend, you would have to suspend your painting from like a, find a, find a wood beam in the ceiling and suspend it from there.

[01:28:07] Jeremy Bierbach: When I first moved here, I put out my trash on the wrong night. And at that time there was still, nowadays there's the, the trash is done really nicely in Amsterdam. They've got these underground containers where you drop, you drop your general trash whenever you want. And you also have like, there's a, there's a glass container and a paper container, right?

[01:28:26] Jeremy Bierbach: You can recycle, you can take your trash out whenever you want nowadays. But when I first moved here, there were certain pickup days for every neighborhood and you put your trash out on the wrong day. Somebody from the, City from the municipality would come along. They'd grab that trash bag. They would take it back to whatever, special secret secret police headquarters were tear open, tear open your trash bag, wearing gloves and look for anything with your name and address on it.

[01:28:52] Jeremy Bierbach: And then send you a fine, fine, like a hundred euros for putting out your putting out your trash on the wrong day, big brothers watching. [01:29:00]

[01:29:00] Mark Goldstein: So in wrapping up Jeremy, what would you say to our audience? If they're considering relocating to Amsterdam, like you did,

[01:29:10] Jeremy Bierbach: I would say understand that, understand that Amsterdam's crowded, understand that Amsterdam has limited housing stock.

[01:29:16] Jeremy Bierbach: Understand that do please learn Dutch. Please learn Dutch, and ring your neighbor's doorbells, and get to know them, because there is, there is generally getting to be a feeling that Amsterdam has, has become overrun with quote unquote expats. And so, realize it is a wonderful city to live in.

[01:29:38] Jeremy Bierbach: I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else in the world, but there is, there is resentment. The, the, the People, one, one newspaper column called called expats moving into sort of formerly working class neighborhoods of Amsterdam that used to have a lot of social cohesion where everybody knew each other.

[01:29:58] Jeremy Bierbach: People moving in those neighborhoods, they're [01:30:00] called Pokemon zombies based on all their neighbors ever see them doing is like. Down the street, staring at their Google Maps, or staring at their phone and following their social media and I'm going into their going into their apartment and coming out again while still staring at their screens

[01:30:19] Mark Goldstein: but anyway, Jeremy, and we're gonna wrap it up now and I just want to thank you so much.

[01:30:25] Mark Goldstein: For doing this and taking the time to, twice to , meeting you and now doing the podcast. It was a pleasure learning so much about Amsterdam and the Netherlands. And thank you again so much.

[01:30:39] Jeremy Bierbach: Thank you for having me on here. It was nice to, nice to talk about it. Nice to share, something about life and what I think is.

[01:30:46] Jeremy Bierbach: Best city in the world. She always my.

[01:30:49] Mark Goldstein: Really my pleasure. So thank you again, and we'll talk soon. Okay.

[01:30:53] Jeremy Bierbach: Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye Thank you for listening to the [01:31:00] where do gays retire podcast if you enjoyed today's episode Please subscribe to our podcast and consider making a donation by clicking the coffee cup on any page at www.

[01:31:11] Jeremy Bierbach: wheredogaysretire. com Each cup of coffee that you buy costs five dollars and goes towards helping us continue the podcast Thank you for your continued support.