Our regular columnist Molly Quell marvels at the amount of patience it takes to befriend a Dutch person. 

One evening, I suggest to my Dutch husband that we invite the “new” neighbours around for drinks sometime. I’ve used scare quotes around “new” intentionally. The couple moved into a flat in the apartment building behind our house two years ago.

“It’s a bit soon, isn’t it?” he says.

Any international who has moved to the Netherlands has lamented, at some point, it’s difficult to make friends with the locals. Lack of opportunity is one barrier. If you work for an international company and your kids go to an international school, you might not encounter any Dutchies in your day to day life.

Another is the language. Sure, the Dutch speak English but it’s tiring conversing in another language and limits how much you can participate in a social situation.

Even without those structural issues, there is the very real problem that the Dutch seem to have all made their friends in creche and see no reasons to acquire new ones. The country is tiny. You can move to the other side and still make it back for every friend group get together.

Add in the closeness of family life — yes you really have to go to the birthday party for your spouse’s uncle’s wife every year — and the Dutch aren’t left with a lot of gaps in their social calendars.

When I first met him, every single friend my husband had was a person acquired before he turned the ripe old age of 20. Until I turned up with my cadre of international misfits and ruined his peaceful existence.

Having witnessed the reluctance to add a new friend to the roster from the other side, I can confidently say “It’s not you, the Dutch really are booked up with birthday parties and get togethers with their large and entrenched existing social circles.”

Sometimes, however, you can break through. To do so, you must channel your inner tasselled wobbegong.

The carpet shark, which lives off the coast of Australia and New Guinea, lays in wait for hours for unsuspecting prey to pass by and then it attacks.

For legal reasons, I am not suggesting that you ambush the Dutch and murder them, regardless of how aggressively they cycle.

If you want to make Dutch friends, you have to blend into the background and wait.

All of my close Dutch friends have been acquired slowly, over time, and via a regular connection. I picked up one from a cafe I frequented. Another from the neighbourhood. One more is a colleague.

Don’t immediately invite them round for dinner. Don’t ask them to join your pub quiz team. Don’t offer to lend a hand with their housework. You can’t come on too strong.

Instead, politely engage with them with increasing intimacy. Ask about their job, their siblings, what hobbies they engage with. If you’re really desperate, you might decide to take up diamond painting or road cycling to give you more conversation topics.

And then you wait.

We’ve bumped into the neighbours a few times at our local bar. We chat when they are out in their garden.

A few months ago, my husband was taking our dog out for an evening walk when he saw someone climb over their back gate. Alarmed, he went over to investigate. A man stood at their back door, wiggling the handle. My husband shouted, the noise woke the neighbours, who came running to see what was happening.

My husband, the husband of the couple and our ferociously friendly pitbull chased the intruder down an alley while the wife called the police, who turned up a few minutes later.

I slept through the incident and when my husband told me about it the next day, I asked if we should take them something, homemade cookies, a bottle of wine, as a “I’m sorry your house nearly got broken into” present.

“I don’t think we need to do that,” my husband said.

“We could invite them around for a drink,” I suggested again.

“It’s a bit soon, I think,” he replied.

Like the tasselled wobbegong I will keep waiting.