“Speaking Dutch gives you freedom,” says Assel from Kazakhstan. There, she wrote to various people around the world, including a Dutch-Turkish man. He invited her to visit him in the Netherlands. “At first, he wanted to meet in Turkey, but that seemed too hot to me. The Netherlands seemed interesting.” She came here for the first time in 1998. “I stayed with his family; at that time, we were just friends. But within three weeks, I fell in love.” Five months after her visit, she returned and they got married. “It happened very quickly,” she laughed.
Cultures enrich the city
The first time she came to Rotterdam, it was autumn, so gray and rainy. What struck Assel even more were the people from many different cultures she saw here. “Kazakhstan is also a multicultural country, but here I saw other peoples and cultures. I think that enriches the city because you take something from every culture and tradition, and that helps you grow. Behind every person is a culture. In everyday life, you don’t think about that, but it’s good to delve deeper; that way, you learn something new.”
Shoes on and planning
In the Netherlands, she learned to plan a lot. “If you have an appointment at 10 a.m., you have to be there at 10 a.m. And you can book your vacation a year in advance. I’ve adopted that. So now I have a calendar. I didn’t used to have one. But sometimes it gets tiring. Spontaneous appointments are almost impossible.For example, you want to do something fun with your girlfriend, but it never works out and you have to plan something weeks in advance, which is a shame.“ She has become so accustomed to her new surroundings that she can hardly remember what is different in the Netherlands compared to Kazakhstan. ”Except that we take our shoes off immediately when we enter a house. Other than that, I really couldn’t say, I’ve been here so long…”
Language barrier
Different cultures mean different languages. Assel spoke (and speaks) Kazakh, Turkish, and English, but not yet Dutch. “Because of the language barrier, it wasn’t easy to feel at home. You can get by with English, but Dutch gives you real freedom. And it took a long time before I was allowed to take a course. My in-laws, with whom I lived for a while, didn’t speak Dutch either. So in the meantime, I tried to learn it on my own at home. I watched TV, starting with the Teletubbies,“ she laughs. ”Fortunately, you have subtitles in the Netherlands, which you don’t have in Kazakhstan. I also read a lot of children’s books. Because if you try something that’s too difficult, you get frustrated and give up. So I started with something easy and progressed step by step. After a year, I had a son, so I could learn together with him. That’s how I got my ND 2.”
She also advises others to learn the language quickly. “Don’t immediately say that you don’t have a knack for languages or that you’re too old. Anyone can do it! It’s a matter of wanting to. Don’t immediately ask someone what something means, but look it up yourself. And use the language, speak it, listen and be interested.”