Mountains of paperwork, confusing public transport timetables and organising Internet and telephone connections. Just a handful of the things that expats have to deal with when they move to the Netherlands.
These things can cause a great deal of irritation to both Dutch expats when they move abroad and to foreign expats who move to the […]

The annual May Fair of the Lions Club Maastricht Mondial is just around the corner. This year, on 25 May, expatriates living and working in South Limburg and their families will be invited to practise their skiing talents at the SnowWorld indoor winter sports resort in Landgraaf. Peter van Dongen Torman, who has been organising the event for the past five years, meets with Crossroads’ writer Sina Spohr at a café by the Meuse river to tell her more about the club and the fair. [continued…]

The Council of the European Union invites you to visit its Justus Lipsius building at 175 Rue de la Loi/Wetstraat, 1048 Brussels, on Saturday 7 June from 10 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. The theme of this year’s Open Day is intercultural dialogue.
Throughout the day, visitors will be able to take a guided tour of the […]

Global Culture Festival
Saturday 07 June, 16h00-24h00 • Markt • Admission free
On Saturday the 7th of June, Maastricht turns again into a world city of music. We are organising a party on the Market Square, starring three top acts which will perform at the famous Tilburg Mundial Festival, followed by a swinging and energetic Balkan […]

Foreign minister Maxime Verhagen has said that the Netherlands would like to work more closely at international level with the countries of Latin America. Mr Verhagen was speaking in the Peruvian capital Lima at the start of summit talks between the countries of the EU, Latin America and the Caribbean.
‘Europe and Latin America are natural […]

The inhabitants of Maastricht are often very proud of their city, but what is it like for a foreign student or expatriate to live here? For her graduation traineeship, German Masters student of Media Culture, Alexandra Rosenbach, interviewed a number of them, including an American and a French student, and a Spanish doctor on their […]

Robbert Dijkgraaf says the quality of learning in the Netherlands will suffer unless research and development funding is rapidly increased. He took over as new president of the Royal Dutch Academy of Arts and Sciences on Monday. Professor Dijkgraaf believes Dutch scholars are still highly thought of, but that their kudos is largely the result […]

The number of families with four or more children living at home has dropped dramatically over the past decade. The decline was more substantial among families with a non-western background than among native Dutch families. Orthodox Protestantism rather than foreign background plays the most important part in the regional distribution of very large families.
Decline most […]

In recent years, the number of people obtaining a doctorate has increased in the Netherlands, particularly among women. In 2006/’07 over 3 thousand persons wrote dissertations, of whom over 40 percent were women. This is an increase relative to 1990/’91, when fewer than 2 thousand persons obtained PhD degrees, of whom only 18 percent were […]

* More immigrants from EU countries
* Many Poles in horticultural regions
According to the latest quarterly figures from Statistics Netherlands, nearly 32 thousand people immigrated to the Netherlands in the first quarter of 2008, nearly 6 thousand more than twelve months previously. People born in one […]

Human Rights Watch says that the examination many migrants have to take in their own countries before being allowed to come to The Netherlands is discriminatory.
Non-Western migrants such as Turks and Moroccans have to sit the exam, while immigrants from the European Union, Japan and the United States are exempt. Human Rights Watch says […]

Amnesty International held a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in The Hague on Friday, protesting against the imprisonment of Abdullah al-Mansouri, a Dutch human rights activist originally from Iran. Politicians from the Labour, Green Left and Socialist parties also took part in the demonstration.
Mr al-Mansouri has lived in the Netherlands since 1988 and was an […]

On Saturday, 31 May Maastricht School of Management (MSM) welcomes potential students to its campus in Maastricht. MSM will introduce its “Master of Science in Management in International Business” program as well as its MBA, Executive MBAs and Global Distance MBA.
Visitors can meet with MSM staff, students and alumni and obtain detailed information on […]

It should have been celebration, marked by optimism about the future of the Netherlands’ multicultural society. But instead, there was a cloud hanging over the presentation of this year’s annual ‘Inspiration for Integration’ prize.
At a formal ceremony in The Hague, Princess Maxima announced the winner before a hall filled with politicians, entertainers and people […]

Announcement from Lions Club Maastricht Mondial:
In response to the results of our “customer satisfaction survey” for the 2007 May Fair, we have decided to do things a little differently this year and have put together a package to ensure plenty of action for the young and not-so-young, but also plenty of opportunities to “mix & […]

Crossroads’ contributor Eliot Rolen discovers first hand the secret recipe behind the creation of what he calls “the delicious and universally welcoming weekly event that is dinner at the Landbouwbelang.” [continued…]

In a final attempt to get yet another perspective into the world of academia in Maastricht, Crossroads writer Rosanne Rademaker meets with Nancy Nicholson, an American assistant professor at the department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology at Maastricht’s faculty of Psychology and Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. “Nancy always comes across as a very driven and intelligent person who very much enjoys her work… and hers may very well be the perspective I’m angling for,” hopes Rosanne. Read on to find out Rosanne’s final verdict on life in academia. [continued…]

ComProsers, an online forum for writers and musicians, will present the results of its inaugural congwriting contest on Sunday, May 18 at AINSI, one of Maastricht’s newest major cultural centres.
The project is headed by Maastricht University masters student Amrit Dhir and is aimed at “encouraging collaboration between aspiring writers and musicians”. Those interested […]

On May 20 at 8 pm, a public debate will take place on China’s strategy in international relations and trade vis-à-vis the European Union and Africa.
With Prof. David Zweig, Director of the Center on China’s Transnational Relations at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Yang Guang, Director-general of the Institute of West-Asian […]

The authorities in Limburg, the southernmost province of the Netherlands, are going to work more closely with Belgium and Germany to tackle cross-border crime more effectively.
In a bid to improve co-operation, police, justice and state officials from all three countries will share a single office building in the Dutch city of Heerlen. They will be […]

Selling prices of Dutch homes will develop moderately positively, according to Rabobank analysts. They are predicting price rises of around 3 percent annually in 2008 and 2009.
The median house price is currently 244,000 euros, up 6,000 euros from last year. “The moderate rises of recent years are expected to continue in 2008 and 2009.” Rabobank […]

The government will not allow universities and colleges (HBOs) to recruit only the best students. The cabinet will only introduce ‘intake interviews’.
A diploma at VWO level provides access to university courses, and a HAVO-level diploma, to a HBO. This will not change, said Education Minister Ronald Plasterk after the weekly cabinet meeting.
Plasterk was thereby signalling […]

The cabinet has decided to set up a House for Democracy and the Constitutional State. It will start in the course of the 2008/2009 academic year.
The institute (Huis voor Democratie en Rechtsstaat) will “focus on the transfer of knowledge about the core values of our democratic constitutional state and the working of democracy in all […]

The Jewish community of Maastricht, Netherlands, together with the municipality and the local Sphinx Tiles manufacturer, arranged for the reburial of Jewish remains from an 18th century cemetery.
According to local historians, the area surrounding the planned construction of a new Sphinx building was used by the Jewish community as a cemetery from 1782 to 1822.
Read […]

I’m sitting in the shade on my boat and the weather is just great. Huge carp are cruising around the harbour as the spawning season begins. Boats of all kinds are beginning to gather on the lake, from small sailing dinghies to monster power boats taking a break from zooming up and down the Maas. Swans glide over to snatch some bread before stomping off after the latest unwanted intruders. It’s wonderful to be on the water.

Read on further to get a glimpse of what it is like for British expat Gary Evans to live on the river Maas.

The knowledge migrant scheme of the Netherlands - which was introduced by the Dutch government as a work authorisation programme for highly skilled foreign workers (knowledge migrants or Kennismigranten) who are not citizens of Switzerland or the European Union - has turned into a very popular scheme for young Indians.
This programme was meant to […]

Europe is facing a “demographic winter” as pensioners outnumber teenagers and birth rates fall, according to a report by the Institute for Family Policy.
The snapshot survey of family life in 27 European countries also says that marriages across Europe are breaking down at the rate of one every 30 seconds. Because of this, the average […]

Two honorary degrees, the Distinguished Service Award, and the Outstanding Recent Alumni Award, will be presented during 2008 spring commencement exercises at the University of Central Missouri.
More than 1,000 new graduates are eligible to participate in the ceremonies, beginning with the graduate commencement at 7 p.m. Friday, May 9, and followed by undergraduate ceremonies […]

The Maharishi commune in the Limburg village of Vlodrop faces fines of up to €10,000 a time for breaking building regulations on its estate, NOS tv reports on Tuesday.
The former convent occupied by the transcendental meditation group was raided by building inspectors last autumn, who found 13 infringements.
Now the council says 164 flagpoles […]

The number of new businesses started by Bulgarians and Romanians in the Netherlands in 2007 has grown explosively, the Dutch Chamber of Commerce said in a report published on May 5. They form the fastest growing groups of new businesses in the Netherlands, are younger on average and a remarkably high percentage is female.
The report, […]