Why Living in the Netherlands Tries My Patience

Overall, I do like living in the Netherlands. However, I've learned that some room must be made for cultural differences. Like sacrificing value, convenience, and customer service. If you can do that, living in the Netherlands becomes a much more tolerable affair. Just today I needed to exchange a torn 50 euro bill and here is my story. I went to ABN-AMRO (a bank) to exchange the bill, and I guess that was my first mistake. The second was assuming that it would be a simple matter. ABN cannot accept damaged currency apparently. Only the Bank of the Netherlands can do that. It's conveniently located in Wassenar (20 minutes away by car). So one can either go to the bank in person between the hours of 9am and noon or you can fill out a two-page form and mail it to the bank. Of course, there is no telling how long the process could take. Perhaps years as they may have to wait until the next time they print currency to give you a new bill. It shouldn't amaze me any more that an assumably simple task would have a very complicated process in order to persuade the consumer that their demands are hopelessly beyond any measure of fulfillment and therefore pointless to entertain. So there you have it. I brought home the form which we can either decipher (from Dutch) or Kim can bring in to her office to be translated, but I'm not really that interested in tracking down this bank in Wassenar and then waiting around for hours in order to be told that "it's not possible," a distinctly Dutch phrase that seems to inevitably follow any request, and is heard nearly as often as "hello." Perhaps if we mail the form in this week we can get our new bill early sometime next year. However, it's likely that a reply will come in the mail sometime next spring saying that in order to process our request we need 4 forms of ID, a complete medical history, a two paragraph summary of how the bill came into our possession and how it was damaged, and the signature of the queen. I am, of course, exaggerating a bit but it's hard not to churn out cynical and vitriolic hyperbole when seemingly innocuous tasks are overly complicated by bureaucratic red tape and esoteric processes.