"Everything is different here than in Cuba!" Dayron Albeirus says with a smile. Because he likes it in the Netherlands. "Even the weather I love! In Cuba, the sun is just really too hot and there are only two seasons: summer or slightly less summer. Here you have four real seasons and it's the first time in my life that I've experienced spring! I think that is so beautiful! The colors in nature are so fresh and bright."
Dayron is also enthusiastic about the people in the Netherlands. "They are open and friendly and everyone wants to help you right away." Something that came in very handy when he and his wife recently lived here and they found themselves in something of a Catch 22 situation. Renting a house was difficult without a bank account, but opening a bank account could only be done by registering at their own address... Luckily, there was his manager Joey Stroek to assist him with advice and a little bit of action. "And my current landlord! He's from Colombia and totally understood my problem! He got me to live in the house permanently and register at the address and then everything was arranged."
‘You have to keep learning’
Which is just as well, because Dayron not only loves the Netherlands, he also loves his work. He works as a DevOps on a new platform for a client that will soon be implemented and therefore he is always working with new technology. "There is always development in the technologies I work with. You blink once and there's already something new. That means you always have to keep learning. But in the Netherlands that too is much easier than in Cuba. You just have much easier access to all kinds of tooling here and a lot of information is public. That's not the case in Cuba."
What was public in Cuba was LinkedIn. As one of the few places on the international internet. Dayron: "This allowed me to search for the job I wanted. I found it at ENTER and then I just sent an application. The nice thing is that more of my friends from Cuba work in the Netherlands, so we can easily keep in touch."
And then of course it's nice to be able to communicate in your own language for a while. "Although we do plan to stay here," Dayron explains. "So I'm learning Dutch. I do find it a difficult language, but on the weekends I try it out more often. We often go on trips in the Netherlands, to cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Nijmegen and Maastricht. And Delft... I really liked that city! I really want to get to know its culture and history."