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This piece of pink paper has been causing me serious anxiety lately. <\/p>\n
It’s a Dutch drivers license and dammit I want one!<\/p>\n
When I first moved to the Netherlands I had my Canadian DL for almost 10 years already. Before moving here I got an international DL which was good for 6 months after moving here.<\/p>\n
We didn’t have a car so we’d just rent one off and on during that time. Driving here was different, for sure… but I was a very experienced driver and after driving in downtown Toronto while living there, I wasn’t that fussed.<\/p>\n
Once the six months was up, I could no longer legally drive in the Netherlands. Without a car it seemed pointless for me to get my license and without Xander getting his, a car wasn’t an option. He could get a company car which was better for us as we couldn’t afford to just go out and buy \/ lease one at the time.<\/p>\n
He was a true Dutchie though, loving his public transit (which was the bane of my existance) and over the last 7 years we have fought about it approx four milliion times. Finally ending in him giving in and getting his DL this past August and our first car in September.<\/p>\n
Now, of course, he LOVES to drive… <\/p>\n
So now it’s time for me to get mine. My Canadian license has since expired, which doesn’t make a difference anyway because it is not valid here and I can’t just trade it in. The Netherlands doesn’t just accept the Canadian license and they force us to have to do like new drivers… taking the lessons and the test here like any other new driver.<\/p>\n
Now, I’m after not driving for over six years. I’ve never been a nervous driver.. in fact, I’ve always been a very confident and agressive driver… which is good here. I haven’t driven in so long though, I’m a bit nervous. <\/p>\n
I’m not nervous about driving. If they just handed me my license I would just drive and go on with my business here. What I’m nervous about is having to take those damn lessons, and especially the TEST!<\/p>\n
Rotterdam is the most hellish city to drive in and we have the highest driving test failure rate. Xander failed twice before he got his license and the 2nd time they failed him it was because he hesitated for 2 seconds<\/strong> when merging on the highway. Literally, 2 seconds… and that was his only mistake.<\/p>\n If it was just a matter of failing, fine… but they charge you over 250 euros PER TEST. <\/p>\n So here I am, 31 years old… been driving since I was 16 and am being forced to take lessons and a driving test if I want to drive here. If I failed, I’d die of embarassment and probably flip out about the money wasted.<\/p>\n There is a sort of ‘fast track’ test for people who have driven in the past. People like Canadians and Americans who have had their license for years and want to drive here, but I can’t do that because during the time I’ve been fighting with Xander to get his license and a car, my Canadian license expired. Without that I can’t have this special test.<\/p>\n I also can’t just get a new license by mail because it has been expired longer than the allotted time so I’d have to go back to Canada to get my license renewed.<\/p>\n Bah, what a pain in the ass. I want to drive here so badly but at the same time I’m brutally anxious and nervous about this whole lessons \/ test thing. <\/p>\n I guess the only way to get over it is to start the lessons and see how it goes. God, how I miss Canada and learning to drive with friends and relatives before taking a piss-easy test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This piece of pink paper has been causing me serious anxiety lately. It’s a Dutch drivers license and dammit I want one! When I first moved to the Netherlands I had my Canadian DL for almost 10 years already. Before moving here I got an international DL which was good for 6 months after moving …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7094,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}