I studied German first, and encountered this there. found this same phenomenon in Dutch. The easiest way to remember was to think of the "half" as being "to the hour", instead of "past the hour". It's just a matter of mentally moving the border between "to" and "past", so it's twenty-nine past nine, thirty to ten (or as the Dutch say, half ten/halb tien), twenty-nine to ten, twenty-eight to ten, etc. And then translate that to Dutch. :)

It's not only in Dutch! :) I think the reality is that our English way of using "half past" is unusual.

If it helps, you can practice by thinking of Dutch time as "half (to) two" or "half (an hour until) two".

Part of language learning includes turning your comfortable thoughts inside out and adapting to a different perspective. For example, if I want to say "I've got a..." in Turkish or Russian, I have to literally say "My... exists" or "By me, there's a..."  I can't use a literal translation from English. :)

The big difference is that in most(?) english spoken countries 'half' is used to indicate 'past the hour' whereas in Belgium & the Netherlands we use it to indicate 'towards the hour'. I think the most useful tip is to see time/hour as a pie chart that fills up as time goes along. So 'half twee' would represent half a cake, and 'twee uur' a full cake. That is  the analogy I always use when argueing about this topic with my wife :-)

And another tip: when making appointments in Dutch: use military times. That way you can never fail to show up too late or too early.

You know this is one of those annoying things that'll keep bugging you no matter what. Mentally I just can't accept the idea of "half two" meaning 2:30. It just...it doesn't compute. But I suppose going from Dutch to English we're kinda lucky since "half past two" or "two thirty" are used more often. The other way round...we only use "half drie" to mean "half past two". Now that I think about it, I don't think we ever say the minutes just as they are. "Twee uur dertig" sounds plain weird to me. But even stuff like "two twenty-eight" (2:28) I would probably say as "twee minuten voor half drie." and never as "twee uur en 28 minuten" because that sounds more like a duration than a specific time. As in: "This movie is two hours and 28 minutes long." --> "Deze film duurt twee uur en 28 minuten." "The movie starts at 4:50."--> "De film begint om tien voor vijf." --> "We'll first meet around 3:00 and the three of us will eat something." --> "We gaan eerst rond drieën (threes) met z'n drieën (threes) wat eten."

:P