As a Dutch person living in Slovenia, I have had the pleasure of meeting many other Dutch people who also reside here. I stay in regular contact with most of them, but since they almost all live quite far away, we unfortunately don’t see each other very often. Whenever we do get together, it’s always pleasant. This is also true for my relationship with Ruud and Astrid, a Dutch couple who have been living in Slovenia for about two years now. As often happens, they reached out to me after coming across my blog.
The last time they visited, Ruud mentioned that he also enjoys writing and suggested contributing to my blog with a guest post. I thought that was a fantastic idea, so today I’m sharing the first piece by Ruud. If any other readers like this idea and think they can provide a funny, interesting, or useful contribution to my blog, I warmly invite you to send your writing to my email address: arlette.cundric@gmail.com. Over to you, Ruud 😊 (with a few nice autumn pictures from me):
If you are Dutch and interested in Slovenia, or looking for information about the country, there’s a good chance you’ll stumble upon Arlette’s website. That’s exactly what happened to us a few years ago. “We” are Astrid and Ruud and we emigrated to Slovenia in 2024.
We had fallen for a unique house near Maribor, but it ultimately turned out not to be the right place for us. However, we had truly fallen in love with Slovenia itself. So, we decided to put the house on the market and look for a new home in a better location. During this search, we thought it might be a good idea to reach out to Arlette. Who knows, perhaps she could offer us some tips! We were also quite curious about Žužemberk and its surrounding area. Arlette responded enthusiastically and invited us over right away. It turned out to be a very pleasant visit; we had so much to share (with her husband Bine as well 😊) about both the Netherlands and Slovenia. Time just flew by. We’ve stayed in touch and now see each other a few times a year.
Žužemberk and its surroundings are beautiful, though we personally found it a bit too quiet and a little too far from the motorway. We eventually fell in love with the area around Polzela, in the Lower Savinja Valley. It’s very centrally located in the country, not far from Celje, Slovenia’s third-largest city after Ljubljana and Maribor.
In one of her recent blogs, Arlette mentioned that she was considering to stop writing. She has since decided not to put down her pen, which is a good thing, as she has a truly engaging writing style! This gave me an idea. We’ve been through a lot over the past few years; emigrating to another country is quite a challenge, and we even moved again once we were already in Slovenia. We’d love to share our experiences with other Dutch people who are interested in Slovenia, and pass on our enthusiasm for this beautiful country. I’ve asked Arlette if I could share these stories on her site as a guest blogger. Both Arlette and I are curious to hear if you think this is a good idea!
I already have plenty of topics in mind to write about. First of all, what it is that draws us to this country, but also practical matters like finding a home, navigating paperwork (banking, permits, etc.), living costs (taxes, prices, etc.), healthcare, and learning the language. You might be wondering why we decided to emigrate in the first place. We both grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Over the past few decades, we have watched the Netherlands change in the wrong direction, and we had no confidence that the tide would ever turn. That led to the question: where could we go? We visited Portugal and Spain, and very nearly bought a house in Croatia. In the end, we wound up in Slovenia. It’s not a particularly well-known destination for Dutch emigrants, but we feel very much at home here. We always say it was simply meant to be. So much for this initial introduction.
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