I live in Delft, the netherlands. five years ago i finished my PhD and was looking forward to do a postdoc and to continue in academia. i couldn’t find any openings in Brisbane, so i thought I’ll look interstate. i also found nothing. then i thought, if I’m gonna get on a plane to fly to sydney/melbourne, i might as well look further abroad.

i came across this job listing at TU Delft on linkedin after searching for “biomedical engineering postdoc” under “worldwide”. i didn’t really exclude any locations except for the US (i really didn’t want to go there hehe). long story short, i did the interview, they offered me the job the next day, booked flights and off i went three months later. it was life changing, for better or for worse.

would i do it again? definitely yes. do i regret anything? perhaps not. the main downsides are that you cannot visit your friends and family on a whim (and vice versa), and the weather sucks. but of course you make new friends and you *kinda* get used to the weather or just fly to spain for a long weekend and enjoy yourself there.

i have since gotten a new job, and have just applied for permanent residency. let’s see where it takes me, I’m just going with the flow. i don’t think I’ll return just yet, as I’m a travel junkie and i haven’t visited all the countries and islands in Europe yet. if i could choose (let’s say i had a dutch-based remote job), I’ll split my time roughly equally between the Netherlands, spain and Australia. cycling is also very big in my life and here there’s a lot of cycling going on - nice rides, races to do, places to go to etc.

oh, and the property market here is also crazy af. i don’t know which is worse. australia or the Netherlands. haha 😁