Getting a Driving License in Netherlands

This post to touch the details about the driving license process in Netherlands. It covers both the normal process and the expats/foreigners coming to Netherlands with the International driving license. First we will look in to the expats who already poses an License from there motherland.
People from International community holds an valid driving license from there country can exchange to the Netherlands driving license based on some criteria.

European Union, Liechtenstein, Norway or Iceland
If your driver's license was issued in a Member State of the European Union or in Liechtenstein, Norway or Iceland, you can use this license in the Netherlands.
Other countries
Are you from another country than the ones mentioned above, than you may continue to use your license for a maximum of 185 days after making residence in the Netherlands, after which you must pass the regular CBR theory and driving tests.

Exchange

Licenses from the following countries can be exchanged, though only if they are valid in the categories mentioned:

* Taiwan - B - passenger car - Dutch driver's license category B
* Israël - B - passenger car - Dutch driver's license category B
* Japan IB - passenger car en motorcycle with more than 400 cm³ - Dutch driver's license categories A and B
* Singapore - Class 2 - motorcycle with more than 400 cm³ and Class 3 - passenger car - Dutch driver's license categories A and B
* Andorra - passenger car - Dutch driver's license category B
* South-Korea - second class ordinary license - Dutch driver's license category B
* Canadian province Québec – Class 5 – Dutch driver's license category B

You can get more info about this on http://www.cbr.nl/317.pp
and http://www.rijbewijs.nl/index.asp?id=6 pages.

For other country poeple can exchange there driving license if they are eligible/got there 30% ruling (See more about 30% ruling here http://www.expatax.nl/30ruling.htm )


Now comes for those not eligible for 30% ruling and don't have the license from there homeland (I am under this category). Getting a driving license in Netherlands is tough process involves lot of time and money. Netherlands is one of the toughest and costliest country to get the driving license. Ministry for Transport and Communication (Ministrie van verkeer en waterstaat), RDW and CBR are responsible for controlling and providing license for the Road users. The process follow like this
1. Theory test
2. Practical test

Theory Test
For this you have to read the rules and regulations of the road and traffic. There will be an exam for 1 hour where you have to answer yes or No or filling the answer to of questions. you have to register for the theory exam and you have to write the exam in designated centers. for this you have to pay €35,80. You can register using the driving school or can be done by individual. Theory test available in 3 languages. by default Netherlands and English and Turkish are two other optional languages. if you want to take test in English then you have to schedule it in advance as it is available only once in a week also only in less number of exam centers. You can register online in this site https://theoriereservering.cbr.nl/index.php .
While Going for the theory test you have carry the valid identification card(valid Passport/Resident permit) and a passport size photo.
CBR changed the theory test pattern lately(starting from 1st of March 2009), which consists
25 questions on awareness
30 questions on traffic
10 questions on traffic and understanding risk.
Once the Test is over you will get the results with in few minutes. You are passed the Exam the Theory certificate is valid for one year. Otherwise it will say the area's you need to concentrate for the next exam.
Practical Test
You can apply for the Practical test only through the registered driving school, the driving school will decide whether you can go ahead with the practical test or you need lessons. Once the Lesson over you can go ahead with the practical exam registration, This will be done by the driving school. the Practical Test consists of 35-45 mins. You have to carry your valid Theory certificate and identification card with you for the practical test. Initially the examiner will ask you read the registration number of the car from 25 meters distance to check your eye sight. He will sit next to you while you are driving and ask you to drive the direction as he suggests. He will note all your responses to the traffic situation and how you are able control the situation and how good you are reading the sign on the road. If you are not making any serious error you will get passed the exam. He will say the results once the exam is over. You can ask your driving school instructor to accompany you, so that he will also note down the strength and points to improve on your driving. If you are passed you can apply for the driving license from the Town Hall and you will get that with in 5 working days. If you are not passed the examiner will give the feedback to you and to your instructor, Also you will get this in your email.

Some points to find a driving school

> Check the pass percentage of the driving school from CBR site.( Slagging Percentage it's in dutch)
> Compare the price of the driving lessons with the other driving school
> Check the English proficiency of the instructor before you go for it.
> Check in the Internet or with the friends or colleagues about the driving school before joining.

I covered most of the part. you can get this details in other site also.

Best of Luck for the driving license.

Finding an apartment in NL

This post is to help the people who are in search of an apartment in any of the place in Netherlands.

Netherlands is the mostly congested country in the world and finding an apartment in the country is one of the tedious , time consuming and eat your wallet.
So let see the Process of finding the apartment and avoiding the pitfalls in that.

before going for the apartment decide on the following items.

1. How many months/years you are going to stay in Netherlands?
2. What kind of apartment( studio, apartment, independent) u r expecting?
3. What type of contract apartment you want?(
* Fully furnished - everything included in the rent and u don't have to worry abt anything.
* Semi furnished - Part of the apartment is furnished and u have to arrange/pay ur self if u want extra facilities.)
* Only Apartment is rented to you and you have to take care of everything like from energy connection to carpeting the floor.)
4. How much amount you can spend on rent?
5. How much amount you can spend on commission to the Agent? (In most cases you have to pay one month rent of the house plus 19% tax you have to pay to agent.)
6. what location you want the apartment?( In the city, near to the city mostly expensive, but choosing a apartment in a small village or town near by to the city always cheaper.But depends on how you want to travel.)
6. How many members you are going to stay in the apartment?( In Netherlands the apartment can be rented to maximum members derived by the Municipality of the town/City. Once you rented the apartment you have to register with the Municipality in ur place, that is mandatory for everything from opening an bank a/c to your visa/resident permit, so It's not possible to stay four persons in the three persons apartment)

Once you found out the answers for the above questions you can go ahead with the internet search, rental agency and by other means..

I will list out the number of rental agencies and internet sites where you can search for your apartments at the end of my post.

There are two ways you can get the apartment, one is going through the process of Rental agency, the second one is going by the colleagues and friends to find out an apartment near by there places( direct contact with the owner).

By the first method you have less risk, but you have to pay the commission.
The risk in the sense the rental agency is responsible for everything abt the apartment rental, say for example once you are renting an apartment from an agency, but after that you found out any problems then you can contact the agency and they have to solve that and they will do it in most cases.
Here is one such example that I faced during my house search. myself and my friend are searching for a two bed room apartment and went to an agency. We found a match and signed the contract and shifted to the new apartment. After shifting there we went to the Town Hall to register ourself to the new address. In the town hall we came to know that the person sign the contract is not the actual owner and she is actually a renter like us and she wanted to sub rent the apartment to us. It's illegal to do that way in Netherlands with out the permission form the apartment owner. So we went to the agency and they took care of the problem and we were able to find an apartment shortly.

In the other case you won't pay any commission to any one, but you have to face all the risk by yourself.

I wanted to shade some lights in some bit falls in renting the apartments that need to be checked.

* Check the owner of the apartment and availability of the address for the registration in the town hall before singing the contract.
* Check on the contract period, different contract agreements are there, like 6 months contract and then you have to vacate the apartment, otherwise 6 months contract and extend the contract once the period over. so you have to be careful while choosing that otherwise you will end up in paying commission for every 6 months.
* If you are going for a unfurnished apartment( It will be more cheaper), but you have to consider the contracts (you have make arrangement for everything in this case) for the energy(Electricity, water, Gas), Television and internet connections, these connections always comes with minimum one year contract and if you are leaving the apartment before the contract period then you have to pay the remaining time amount to them.

So consider these thing before signing the contract for your apartment.

Here is some list of Rental agencies and Internet site to look for the Apartments.


* funda.nl
* marktplaats.nl
* expatica.nl
* PerfectHousing.nl
* Actys.nl Non profit agency
* pararius.com
* apartmentservices.nl
* RotsVast Group

these are some of the agencies available in Netherlands and you can find out more in Internet. Also check out the expatica.nl for more housing and other issues related to the expats in Netherlands.

Hope this will atleast will help you in understanding the apartment searching process and avoid some unpleasant situations. Happy House hunting and Good Luck!!!

My First try...

This is my first try to add a blog an d enter in to the world of web. I wanted to start my blog from my last weekend trip to Scotland :-). This is my second trip to the land of United Kingdom.
The plan for the trip was done 2 months before itself but still we were not able to get a cheap ticket to Edinburgh.

We planned the trip to go to Edinburgh and hire a car to roam around the places around Edinburgh, because we had seen enough of all the cities in the Europe. So for a change we wanted to try something different. We planned the trip with four people including myself and three of my colleagues, now become more close friends.
Among the four of us only one guy having the License that too xerox copy of Indian driving license. So we decided not to go ahead with the booking of the car online and rent the car directly there in the airport.

Hard time...

As like the other flight travel we started the flight journey and I did an online booking for four us to get the Window seat..(Still like childish..). Journey was not that great it started with some Bumpy ride as it surprised me that whether am I traveling in the road or in the air.. If I have to compare that It's like a back seat ride of the local bus trips in India. Finally we arrived @ the airport and looking for the Car hire. fortunately or unfortunately there where no cars available in the first three inquires we made at the different Car rental agencies, Then comes a car rental agency he accepted my friends xerox copy of driving license and offered a car of luxury for the same price of economy car. We were so happy, but still he don't have the GPS with him. so we hired a car with out GPS :-)
We started to our Hostel by 11.30 P.M , There were road works going on all around the city so as per the map I took the print out is not more than just a paper now. As we roamed around the city with out knowing the exact way to the destination. So It took more than 1 hour to reach the 8 km destination. we parked the car near the city center and walked towards the hostel. It was bitter cold rainy frustrating travel till now. When we reached the hostel by 12.40 A.M the receptionist guy did a great job to complete the formalities he took 15 minutes... finally we went to bed by 1 AM in the night.

Again Next day morning we planned to get GPS from the airport and the morning weather was ok compare to the previous night. Again the same problem and we took 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach the Airport to collect the GPS.

Trip..

At last It's 10 AM in the Saturday morning we started our trip. As we already planned to cover the Isle of Bute we started to Glasgow which is on the way to the destination. Now again weather started playing spoil sport.. it's started raining again.. When we reached Glasgow it is totally raining there.
we heard that Glasgow is a very good place to visit and walk in the city streets, but because of bad weather we canceled that plan and started towards the 'The Falkirk Wheel' [http://www.thefalkirkwheel.co.uk/]. It's a good concept of connecting two canals which is different level of heights. We went on a ride in that wheel and It was nice one, but still we were not able to take much photos what we used to do normally during the trips, because of the bad weather.

We checked in the internet the weather in the south was not bad and expected to be no rains at all. so we started from there and now moving towards the south of Scotland. We set the GPS to show direction to Dumfries one and half hours drive from the F.Wheel. So during the course of the journey, our hopes got much better until we covered 75% of the distance. Here comes the downpour again with more vengeances. Now it's become very hard to drive itself.. so my friend started to drive some what slower than the normal speed. But all the way towards the south it's awesome nature all around, Places one must visit if they are around the europe..
No hope for the rain to stop, so we decided to turn back to hostel and try walking around the Edinburgh city as it's already getting darker. we experienced the darkness of 10.PM at 6 o clock in the evening. Here I have to appreciate my friend for driving safely also not reducing the speed much due to the rain, pitch darkness and the narrow road ( As one other friend sets the GPS to avoid the motor way to see the beauty of the inner roads of Scotland..)

After the whole day ride we reached the hostel and parked the car opposite to the hostel, thanks to the GPS. we took our umbrellas and started to walk towards the street in search of some Indian restaurants. finally we ended by in a Chinese restaurant as there was not plenty of Indian Rest. around. After having plenty of food we went to bed again, but this time we were able to managed it to 10.40 P.M itself. So It was full of travel and total weather oriented day.. purely it's a weathers day not the day counted for us.

Total Turn around.

To the surprise the night we slept is the day the day light saving goes back to the original time, it means the current time will be pushed back one hour, so we will get one more hour. As we are already confused about this time changes, I woke up 6 o clock in the morning then got ready by 6.30, after two of our friends got ready I had noticed the clock outside it's showing 5.50 as my mobile shows 6.50 a.m. then only we realized that I woke up by 5 o clock itself. So we started our journey by 7.10 itself today. But the second surprise is the weather was good, the sky is clear there is no sign for the rain today.
we planned to cover the district of east lothian and then come back to Edinburgh to visit the castle and then finally reach the airport. We reached the town of Dunbar hoping to get some breakfast there. As we reached there we found out the town center with only total of 10 shops. But to a surprise there was a Indian restaurant out of the 10 shops there. we wondered abt the Indian population roots towards all over the world. But still there was no restaurant, so we statisfied ourself with chocolates, lays and a bitter sugarless coffee.
we took pictures there as that is the main aim of the trip.

Click of a landscape in the East Lothian



from there we started again and we traveled towards Edinburgh, but through the coastal road.
we went to a castle on the way, Tantillion castle which is constructed in AD 1353 and destroyed during the period. That is most beautiful place of the trip where we took our pictures. As we go top of the castle we are able to witness the specular beautiful view as well as the power of wind.

Click from the top of the castle



After enough of pics, enough of experiment we started back from there. when we got in to the car it was drizzling again. But rain stopped when we reached Edinburgh castle.
Edinburgh was a beautiful city, we didn't visited much of the city attractions, but from the view of streets , the building architecture and the castle I can say its worth for the money you spend.

We returned back to the Airport and successfully we are able to come to the airport with in 20 minutes :-) . Took the flight back around 7.30 p.m and reached the Schiphol airport by 10.15 p.m as there is 1 hour time difference btw Scotland & Netherlands. We missed the our train by 1 minute and waited for the next train for 30 minutes there in the airport. Atlast I reached my home by 11.40 p.m , but If I think of the trip now and check the amount of money we spent for the trip is very less and had a good time good experience we got. As the Nature inspired me a lot in Scotland I am waiting for my next turn to go there again in a sunny climate.. Hope that will be possible soon..