“We’ve been able to set up interviews with mayor Gerd Leers and Professor Luc Soete, and also with a student from the University of Maastricht who has just written a book about the Maastricht Treaty, but we are still very keen on interviewing you as well,” the young journalist from Radio France Internationale said to me on the phone. “I’m sure you’ve got many interesting things to say about Maastricht as a European city,” she added. [continued…]

I assume much has been said about living in Maastricht and having a car.
A lot can be said anyway, mostly about the availability of parking spaces, which practically is non-existent.

But it is not only that. It is also…

The traffic lights. [continued…]

“Alien Police”, “MVV”, “Residence Permit”, “SoFi Number”– just a few terms I’ve come across during my quest for work in Maastricht.

It started last August when I successfully got a “Working Holiday Programme” Visa glued into my Canadian passport from the Dutch Consulate in Vancouver. I remember thinking that everything was set: “Great, now I can work in the Netherlands, no problem”.

How naïve of me! Jumping through the bureaucratic hurdles in Maastricht to secure a job has been an utter nightmare! [continued…]

Ulrike Heigl describes the needs of the expatriate community in Maastricht and offers a few suggestions.

My arrival in Maastricht in January 2002 was acclaimed with a big party on the market square and even some fireworks. Well, to be honest, it was not really my presence that the city of Maastricht was celebrating, but the inauguration of the Euro. The new currency and I arrived here the same time and I felt proud to have moved from London to the most European city of the continent, at least in my opinion. [continued…]

Around this time last year, I had almost given up hope about succeeding in becoming Dutch. The Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) at the Ministry of Justice was on the verge of rejecting my application for naturalisation. The only option left for me was to obtain a new residence permit and pass a new Dutch language diploma as fast as possible, in the hope that in view of these documents, the IND would accept to reconsider my case and only then decide about my fate. [continued…]