Essential Dutch phrases

Your citizen service number, issued when the gemeente registers you. Salary, banking, insurance and tax all hang off it — nothing works before it exists.

Registering your address with the city, legally within five days of arrival. In Den Bosch this happens at the gemeente; the IND desk in the same city is a separate organisation with a separate appointment.

The national digital login. Tax, allowances, health insurers, pension and the municipality all sit behind it. The activation code arrives by post, so your name has to be on the letterbox.

A housing permit. Three Den Bosch neighbourhoods are designated under the Rotterdamwet, so moving into a corporation home there requires one — and it is granted on income and background criteria, not first come first served.

The floodplain immediately south of the city walls, deliberately kept empty as water storage. It is why you get an unbroken view of the cathedral across open meadow from a hundred metres outside the centre.

The compulsory own-risk excess on your health insurance, which you pay out of pocket before the insurer pays for anything other than GP visits.

What the city renames itself for carnival, complete with its own peasant-republic mythology, flag and prince. For a few days in February the mayor hands over the keys and everybody wears a red-white-yellow smock. Take part or leave town; there is no third option.

The medieval river network that runs under the old city — built over as the town grew, restored from the 1970s, and now navigable by low flat boats through cellars and tunnels. There is nothing else like it in the Netherlands.

A cricket-ball-sized profiterole filled with unsweetened cream and coated in dark chocolate. The city's edible signature, eaten with a fork by tourists and by hand by everyone else.

Goodbye, in Brabant rather than in Dutch. It is warmer than 'doei' and standard here. The reply is 'houdoe' back, or 'hoi'.

An IND-recognised sponsor. Only an employer on that register can file the highly skilled migrant permit — a distinction you will hear a lot in a city that hosts one of the country's four IND desks.

One number for police, fire and ambulance, free from any phone. Operators speak English. 0900-8844 is the non-urgent police line.