Petra Hogendoorn is Dutch but grew up in South Africa and later worked as an international seafarer. After spending most of her life away from the Netherlands, she moved to Zeeland after Googling ‘Cheapest House in the Netherlands’ and finding the perfect home.

How did you end up in the Netherlands?
I was born in Den Helder but I have bad asthma, so my family emigrated to South Africa for the warmer climate when I was quite young. I was there for 27 years. Toward the end, I was all alone, just a girl living on her own. It was during the end of apartheid and things there were so scary. Then along came a sailor sailing into Durban, where I was living at the time, and I jumped on his boat.

We sailed to Saint Martin where I stayed for 21 years. It was where I brought up my kids as well. Living in Saint Martin though, everything was very far away and I’m a traveller. Once the kids were out of the house, I decided to finally go back to Holland. If you think about it, this is practically the centre of the universe. Where I’m situated now is two hours away from Schiphol, two hours from Brussels, and you’ve got the whole world at your feet. You can get so many places and at reasonable prices, too. It’s just logical.

How do you describe yourself – an expat, lovepat, immigrant, international?This is difficult, because I don’t feel like I fit in anywhere. I guess I’m an international expat, because I was raised in South Africa and it was a British upbringing. It was really, really British. I went to a British school and everyone spoke English, but I’m not British and I’m not Dutch. Okay, in some ways I’m extremely Dutch, but how do I fit in?

I’m sort of like a homing pigeon since I’ve come back to the Netherlands. So international expat is the best way to describe myself. Internationals and expats are also the people I mix easiest with.

How long do you plan to stay?
This is it. I’ve bought my ‘forever home.’ When I got back to the Netherlands, I’d just moved from Malta. I was working on a research project on an ex Russian tug that was being converted into an ice breaking mega yacht. It was ported in Harlingen and my partner’s mom lived in Liege. We were driving back and I was putzing on my iPad when I decided to type in ‘Cheapest House in the Netherlands’ because we needed to find a new home. A little house popped up and I got goosebumps.

‘It’s on the way,’ I said. ‘We’ve got to stop and have a look at it.’ Within 30 days, it was my house. I’m very happy here. I’ve had so many travels. I’ve just retired and I plan on doing more travelling, but a lot of it will be home travelling. The Netherlands is full of old castles and the history is buzzing. There’s no way I would ever get bored here in this little country.

Do you speak Dutch and how did you learn?
When we emigrated to South Africa, I was five. My parents put us in very British schools and banned us from speaking Dutch in the home so we could focus on learning English. They spoke Dutch to us and we had to speak back to them in English. This switch has never left me. My mum is 94 and she’s still speaking to me in Dutch and I answer back in English.

Because I know Dutch, I understand everything that’s going on around me here, but what comes out of my mouth is English. It’s an actual struggle. I do know the words in Dutch, but I think in English. My mind wants to put my words into English sentences, so everything I try to say in Dutch comes out as rubbish.

So I constantly battle against English. Of course, as a seafarer, the international language is English and my last job was in English. Everyone here speaks English. With my friends, we have a two language deal. They understand English and I understand Dutch, so we each speak the language we’re most comfortable with. It was complicated in the beginning, but my broken Dutch was having an impact on our friendships so we do this now. It’s a radical and different way of dealing with languages.

What’s your favourite Dutch thing?
I love flowers. In the Caribbean, you can’t have flowers because they wilt within half a day. Here, it is my biggest joy. I can walk into any supermarket, buy a bunch of really cheap flowers, and put them all over my house. It really lifts me up in the morning. It’s such a big thing for me. The other Dutch things are bitterballen and standards like that, but flowers are my favourite thing.

How Dutch have you become?
That’s a tough one, because I don’t really fit in anywhere, but there is still a lot of Dutch in me. I’m extremely frugal. It’s something I’ve done since I was very young. There is this deeply installed carefulness with money and it’s very Dutch of me, but it’s a very brilliant trait as far as I’m concerned.

That’s one of the biggest Dutch ones I have, but I still prefer to take my car everywhere instead of riding a bike, even if I’m just going around the corner. Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but if I’m going to a place six kilometres away, I take my car. I’ve got an e-bike, but I’m a fair weather kind of person. I mean, I lived in the Caribbean for 21 years, so I’m still too soft for going outside on a bicycle when the weather is cold.

Which three Dutch people (dead or alive) would you most like to meet?
Jan van Riebeeck. Having been brought up as a small child in South Africa, I was taught the history of South Africa over and over and over. He was very big because he founded the first halfway point for the VOC in the 1650s in Cape Town. There was a port there and it was used for the provisioning of ships. I’m a seafarer, so I’m naturally going to gravitate toward seafarers like him.

My partner was a captain and I was always crew on the ships. We worked as a team. I would want to talk with Van Riebeeck and ask him about things like how he found his crews. Did he pick them up or did he actually interview them? What kind of provisions did they buy? Basically, I would want to put myself in a position on his ship and learn more. I think we could gab on for over an hour.

Willem Barents. It’s exactly the same story. I’m an adventurer at heart and I absolutely love travelling. He was convinced there was a quick path to China. He made three Arctic expeditions. How did he provision for those? On his charts, how did he figure out where he would go? If you put yourself in his position, he was living in such a primitive time with all these unknowns. It’s amazing how brave guys like him were. I’d rabbit on to him for ages as well.

André Kuipers. It was a long ago that he went up into space and it was on Russian vessels. How would that have worked now? Things were so much calmer in those years. My daughter is a tree-hugger and still lives in Saint Martin. She’s a policy adviser to the ministers there about environmental issues. Environmentalism is something that’s very strong in our family.

Kuipers did experiments on seeds. If you plant them in space, where do the roots go? Do they go up or down? I think he’s still doing them. He goes to schools, talks with the kids, and teaches them they don’t always have to go to the supermarkets to buy stuff. You can plant fruit and vegetable seeds. They’re real. You can watch them and raise them. I think that’s cool and I would want to talk to him about that.

What’s your top tourist tip?
If they’re going to be here for a while, I’d advise them to get a pass for the Hop-On Hop-Off buses. They tell you all the stories. Don’t get off the bus, stay on it, listen to all the stories and then when you’ve completed the whole tour you can plan where you want to go.

But if someone is here for a short stay, they should go on one of the little historic city trains. They might seem a little naff, but they can go through places where cars can’t go and they tell you amazing stories about each area. If you’ve only got a few hours, that’s the best way to see as much as you can.

Here in Zeeland, we’ve also got the Zeelandbrug, which is really, really amazing. There’s also the seals. You can go on boat trips to see them and that’s for people of absolutely every age. It’s very cool to see them. They’re great big teddy bears just lying on the sands. It’s just beautiful here, especially during the summer. We’ve got these huge, long beaches with so much kite and wind surfing. There’s so many opportunities for walks and bike rides on the trails, too.

Tell us something surprising you’ve found out about the Netherlands
I’ve known this one for a long time, but Aubrey Hepburn, the actress, spent much of her childhood in Arnhem and Amsterdam. She also helped the resistance. She was doing ballet in Amsterdam and with her ballet performances she helped raise money for them. I think that’s so cool.

Another one is orange carrots. Normal carrots are purple, but in the 17th century the Dutch spotted a genetic mutation that turned some orange. The royal family was so enchanted with these orange carrots that they had them cultivated. Who knew that? The Dutch also created the microscope, the telescope, DVDs, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, the stock market, they’re just amazing.

If you had just 24 hours left in the Netherlands, what would you do?
If it’s in the winter, there’s nothing nicer than to cosy up under a heater at a terrace cafe in a city square and have either a Chocomel or a glass of red wine with bitterballen. If it’s the summer, I’d be sitting in a beach tent sipping rosé wine and having bitterballen. Those are my go-to things.

Petra Hogendoorn was talking to Brandon Hartley