Also factor in the time you're going to be spending learning Dutch. You'll probably get by with English alone since everyone will speak it with you, but it's certainly less than optimal.
It will be hard to fully integrate into Dutch social life without learning proper Dutch of course, but professionally it will not be much of a problem and the expat community is so large that it is fairly easy to build a decent social life within it.
You can get by perfectly speaking only English in most of Northern Europe.
Southern Europe is a different story.
Here it feels very thriving, lively and well-functioning, but quite insular because on the one hand we make it so easy to get by with English alone but on the other hand we don't truly accept people into our social circles unless they speak Dutch.
Can you relate to that?
Once again I'm forgetting Denmark as 'the other country that is so much like ours.'
But good catch... I meant countries where English is not already the native language.
The Northern Ireland (its capital Belfast) is part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, alongside with England, Scotland, and Wales.
Dublin is a capital of the Republic of Ireland, which is on the south, and is a separate country (TLD .ie :) which uses euro as the currency, contrary to the UK's pound.
I am being a bit pedantic with since the whole UK/Ireland story is still a pretty fresh wound and making such a mistake might get one some negative brownie points in the conversation :-)
In Northern Ireland at least, you had state-sponsored terrorism by the police, IRA blowing up civilians, thousands killed - the very worst sectarianism imaginable. Some of this continued into the 90s so yes, the wounds are still fresh.
That doesn't even delve into the long, brutal history between Ireland and England spanning centuries, a relationship that's only healing today.
The overall feeling was quite cautious and tense, and people looked at us as we walked around and sat in the bar.
Less than a week after we came back, there were "issues" - aka some confrontation between the opposing sides.
It felt really strange. You do not expect this in the north of Europe.
I hope it gets better and calmer and the common sense prevails. Belfast is a beautiful place to visit.
(+1 for enriching my vocabulary with a new word :)
English isn't the native language in the Scandinavian countries or Finland, and yet most of us speak English fluently :)
Take Norway for instance, everybody loves to speak English but you'd really need to learn Norwegian to fully enjoy living there for years on end.