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. Knowledge workers do it at the International Welcome Center North on Kreupelstraat rather than a normal counter.

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.

Earthquake damage. Decades of gas extraction caused induced tremors across the province, and a state institute still assesses and pays claims for cracked walls and lost property value. The word carries a great deal of political weight here — do not use it lightly.

The loss of property value in the earthquake area, compensated by the IMG as a one-off percentage of the WOZ value to owners. It varies sharply by postcode and it is a question you ask before buying, not after.

The structural reinforcement programme run by the Nationaal Coördinator Groningen. A home in the programme may face years of works or a demolition and rebuild — which is a very different proposition from a crack in the plaster.

Auditioning for a room in front of the people who already live there. It is a house dinner disguised as a viewing, and they are choosing a housemate, not a tenant.

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.

Hello, in Gronings — the Low Saxon regional language still widely spoken here. It works at any hour and for any degree of formality, and using it is the single cheapest way to sound less like a visitor.

The eleven-day performing arts festival that takes over the Noorderplantsoen every August, and the clearest annual demonstration that this is a city of 240,000 that behaves like one of a million.

A hard-boiled egg wrapped in ragout, breaded and deep-fried. A northern Dutch institution, sold in every snackbar here and almost nowhere south of Zwolle.

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