Published by Xenophobe’s® Guides. Web site: www.xenophobes.com E-mail: info@xenophobes.com Copyright © Xenophobe’s® Guides Ltd., 2013 and all other editions. All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Xenophobe’s® is a Registered Trademark. Printed 2018 Editor – Catriona Tulloch Scott Series Editor – Anne Tauté Cover designer – Vicki Towers Map – Jim Wire Printer – CPI Antony Rowe, Wiltshire Illustrations – Gunda Urban & Franziska Feldmann, courtesy of the German edition of this book, So sind sie, die Niederländer, published by Reise Know How Verlag. Cover – Dancer in traditional Dutch dress; Tulips ©Maren Winter/Shutterstock.com
ePub ISBN: 9781908120274 Mobi ISBN: 9781908120281 Print ISBN: 9781906042288
Contents Nationalism & Identity
1
Character
9
Beliefs & Values
17
Obsessions
24
Behaviour
30
Manners & Etiquette
35
Culture
39
Leisure & Pleasure
44
Sense of Humour
51
Eating & Drinking
54
Health & Hygiene
59
Custom & Tradition
62
Systems
68
Crime & Punishment
73
Business
76
Government & Bureaucracy
82
Language
85
below sea level
The Dutch population is nearly 17 million – compared with 5.5 million Danes, 5 million Scots, 11 million Belgians, 49 million Spanish, 55 million English, 65 million French, 81 million Germans and 325 million Americans. The Netherlands is half the size of Scotland, not quite as large as Denmark, and could fit into Spain 12 times.
Nationalism & Identity Forewarned The Dutch character is inextricably bound up with the Dutch landscape. The Netherlands is so flat that even the black and white cows stand silhouetted against the skyline. Consequently the Dutch are used to distant horizons and lots of light. Openness, freedom and vision are fundamental. Few Dutch people could be happy living in a forest. When one of the Netherlands’ most famous novelists sent his parents on their first trip to Switzerland as a present for their 50th wedding anniversary, he was disconcerted to discover that they had returned home after only a day or two. His mother had been bitterly disappointed. She had no view from her hotel window, she explained, The Dutch are used there were mountains in the way. to distant horizons and The Dutch landscape is mild lots of light. Openness, and uneventful. Intrusions, such as freedom and vision are trees, occur in orderly lines and fundamental. patterns. Water, which threatens to overrun the whole country, is neatly channelled into straight canals. Control and moderation are important in behaviour too. ‘High trees catch a lot of wind,’ the Dutch warn. They describe excess in terms of overvloed, a ‘flooding over’ – as if the waters had burst the dykes. In the Netherlands, extravagant people don’t waste money, they ‘spill’ it.
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The Netherlands is light, but not bright – a world of greens, greys and browns. This colour scheme is repeated in the cities, where buildings are mainly of brown brick, and local byeThe Dutch pride laws often state that resithemselves on their dents must paint their front tolerance and flexibility: doors in the same shade of qualities which, in addition green. When Van Gogh forto carrying moral kudos, sook his native country for are good for business. the brighter, bumpier regions of the south of France, he left off painting in the cosy, gravy browns of ‘The Potato Eaters’, took to gaudier hues, and went mad.
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How they see themselves From the comfort of their immaculate sitting rooms the Dutch may acknowledge that they are the cleanest people on earth, are thrifty, have a canny head for business, an unparalleled facility with languages, an unequalled ability to get along with one another and an inimitable charm. But they will be far too modest, unless pushed, to admit publicly that all this makes them somewhat superior to other nations. Above all, the Dutch pride themselves on their tolerance and flexibility: qualities which, in addition to carrying moral kudos, are good for business. The blanket of benevolence is not a woolly liberal one, but is 2
Nationalism & Identity
woven from the sound stuff of commerce. It is quite thick enough to cover niggling inconsistencies, such as a secret mistrust of Moroccans, distaste at alien cooking smells from the apartment downstairs, or fury at foreigners who wobble inexpertly on bicycles, blocking the way for others.
How others see them Most nations regard the Dutch as organized and efficient – rather like the Germans, but not as awesome. One can hardly be frightened, the reasoning goes, of a nation of rosy-cheeked farmers who live in windmills and have clogs at the bottom of the wardrobe, tulips in the garden and piles of round cheese in the larder. But the Dutch also have a reputation for being opinionated, stubborn, and incorrigibly mean. The Belgians go even further, and complain that their neighbours are downright devious in business affairs. Generally, though, other nations see them as dauntingly forthright. Dutch frankness completely overwhelms more reticent peoples such as the Japanese who, unnerved by Dutch directness, find them the rudest of the Europeans they do business with – though they are impressed by Dutch acumen as traders. ‘Where a Dutchman has 3
Nationalism & Identity
passed, not even the grass grows any more,’ say the Japanese admiringly. The English survey the Dutch with guarded approval, as the closest any Continentals come to the sacrosanct state of being English. Such chumminess has not always prevailed. In the The Dutch would like 17th century these two seafarto be held up as The ing nations were at each other’s Ultimate Europeans. throats. An English pamphlet raged: ‘A Dutchman is a Lusty, Fat, Two-legged Cheeseworm. A Creature that is so addicted to eating Butter, Drinking Fat and Sliding [skating] that all the world knows him for a slippery fellow.’ The English language gained a whole new list of pejoratives, including ‘Dutch courage’ (booze-induced bravery), ‘Dutch comfort’ (‘things could be worse’) and ‘Dutch gold’ (fake). Nowadays the Dutch score top marks for speaking English without flinching, and for innovative ideas such as the one to reduce the cleaning bills at the male loos in Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, by the simply expedient of stencilling the picture of a fly in the bowl.
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How they would like others to see them The Dutch would like to be held up as The Ultimate Europeans. To this end they have assiduously assimilated so much from the nations around them that they 4
Nationalism & Identity
have almost done away with their own cultural identity. This means that most people find something familiar about the Dutch, which guarantees that everybody likes them. Most people find That the Netherlands is the something familiar small boy in the class of Europe about the Dutch, which doesn’t unduly bother either its guarantees that residents or its politicians. By everybody likes them. making enough noise and having an opinion about everything, even a small boy can be noticed. With luck he might even become class captain – a job that, with his insider’s knowledge of unfairness and oppression, he knows he can do more justly than some other class members he might care to mention. Especially those with a history of bullying.
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How they see others Despite the fact that they have for centuries been (via land reclamation) edging their country towards the British Isles, the Dutch feel ambivalent about the British. They are surprised that these rather puny islanders manage somehow to write such good books. They see the English as cottagey and a bit twee, but, in some circles, English style is viewed as the ultimate chic. Perennial fashion items such as tweed, waxed jackets and pinstripes are sported by the discreetly rich, and those who aspire to that status. 5
Nationalism & Identity
Like most of their European neighbours, the Dutch lap up the trappings of American culture, while dismissing its perpetrators as being empty-headed and loud. Road movies, especially, appeal to the Dutch sense of freedom and openness. The lost hitchhiker look is a popular Dutch fashion. France and Italy may be suitable places to holiday, but the Dutch view their inhabitants with a twinge of disapproval. The French are Forthrightness too frivolous to win the lasting may be a virtue, but admiration of a nation that has extravagantly flaunting Calvin in its bones, and your emotions smacks besides, say the Dutch, they are of lack of control. obstructionists with no skill at negotiation. A nation that allows its farmers to pile turnips on the motorway must be viewed with some scepticism. Forthrightness may be a virtue, but extravagantly flaunting your emotions smacks of lack of control – and so the Italians (and most other Mediterraneans) join the ranks of the ‘tolerated-but-not-quite-as-goodas-us’. A notch below these come the nationalities whose religious or political customs are seen as intolerant. Such peoples are most emphatically not tolerated – intolerance of intolerance being quite permissible. Using this argument, an anti-Islamist party made massive gains in the 2010 general elections and has since become the second largest party in
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parliament. Of all the European nations, the Dutch admire the Swiss. Their country is spotless, their banks unassailable and their personal bank accounts are secret.
Special relationships Even the accommodating Dutch have their limits. The first barrier that Dutch tolerance comes up against is the German border. There is no-one more likely to rouse the Dutch from their customary cheerfully benign state than a German. The Dutch see the Germans as arrogant, noisy, rigid and intolerant – everything in fact that the Dutch The first barrier are not. They are wary of a that Dutch tolerance nation that shows such a passion comes up against is for living in forests. But usually the German border. they don’t even bother to try and explain. Telling a Dutch person that their language seems very similar to German is unlikely to benefit your relationship. Remarking that the two nations seem rather alike in many ways will probably get you thrown out of the house. Should a German asks for directions in a Dutch city, a Dutch person may well point to the border or the nearest international railway station. Or perhaps retort ‘First give my bike back!’, and burst into gales of laughter. This is an in-joke referring to the fact that
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the Germans confiscated all bicycles during the Second World War. The implication is: first return the cycle you stole from my family, and only then might I feel obliged to help you. Dutch people of all ages make this joke. They do it even if their parents are not old enough to have experienced the Occupation. Anything to knock the Germans down a notch or two. The Netherlands’ southern border also presents a bit of a stumbling block. Apart from the Afrikaners in South Africa and the inhabitants of a few scattered ex-colonies, the Belgians Though they really are the only people in the world admire the way they who speak a language anything enjoy life, the Dutch like Dutch. One might think that regard the Belgians this would endear their southern as laughably dim. cousins to the Netherlanders, but (though they really admire the way they enjoy life) the Dutch regard the Belgians as laughably dim, and fit only for derision:
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‘What’s written on the bottom of a Belgian milk bottle?’ ‘Open other end.’ ‘What’s written on the bottom of a Belgian swimming pool?’ ‘No Smoking.’ ‘Why are Belgian glasses square?’ ‘So they don’t leave a round mark on the table.’ In the Netherlands itself, it is the inhabitants of the most southerly province of Limburg (whose capital is 8
Character
Maastricht) who are saddled with the reputation of being stupid, hence: ‘What happens when a person from Maastricht goes to live in Belgium?’ ‘The average IQ of both nations rises.’
Character Open minds One of the most original of Dutch traits is the national tendency to let in a little evil in order to keep the big evil out. This admirable and astute approach is visible, for example, in the way they manage waterlocks: when tidal pressure builds up One of the most on the dykes, a controlled original of Dutch traits is amount of water is allowed the tendency to let in a through so as to relieve the little evil in order to keep greater water pressure which the big evil out. might otherwise cause havoc. Drugs and various other sins are treated in exactly the same way: let a manageable amount in, so as to prevent wholesale degeneracy or wanton excess. This explains the distribution of free needles to heroin addicts, prisoners’ conjugal rights, teenage abortion on request, and coffee shops that sell marijuana over the counter. The Dutch even tolerate people’s insistence on calling their country ‘Holland’,
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9
Character
when Holland is in fact a province of the Netherlands. (Or to be precise North Holland and South Holland are two provinces of the Netherlands, so Holland on its own doesn’t exist at all.)* Visitors may gape at a roller-blader wearing nothing but a silver G-string as he glides through the Saturday morning shoppers, but the Dutch will walk by unruffled – even if, secretly, they are as shocked as everyone else. Tolerance is not simply a virtue, it is a national duty. With 394 people for every square kilometre, the Netherlands is Europe’s most densely populated country (after teeny, crowded Tolerance is not Malta). If the Dutch didn’t forgive – simply a virtue, it is or at least ignore – each other’s a national duty. foibles and peculiar inclinations, life itself would become intolerable. Tolerance is really pragmatism in disguise, and so counts as a good, solid Protestant value. But there is a hitch. The Dutch will tolerate anything – provided it does not infringe upon their own freedom – unless it smacks a little too much of dangerous abandon or lack of control. A deep respect for people’s freedom to live their own lives, in their own way, is as Dutch as dykes and windmills. The Dutch place the bounds to behaviour along lines that
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*However, even the Dutch seem to have abandoned the struggle – their football call is ‘Hup, Holland!’. 10
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reflect a tacit understanding of just how far you can go before knocking down the invisible walls of privacy and personal liberty. Life A deep respect behind these walls is at the same for people’s freedom time public, yet nobody else’s to live their own lives, business. Dutch Tolerance does in their own way, is not mean acceptance. Beneath the as Dutch as dykes surface of dutiful tolerance may and windmills. well lurk a deep antagonism – to men who hold hands, perhaps, or women who wear veils. Whether it is acted on depends on whether transgressors are seen to be stepping over the wall and disrupting a Dutch way of life. Judging where the boundaries lie is never easy. In the Netherlands on Remembrance Day, the twominute silence for the dead of the two World Wars is generally and movingly observed. Trams, cars and people come to a halt. A visitor was struck by the expressions around him when an immigrant family, unaware of the reverence of the occasion, continued on their way talking noisily amidst the stillness and the sea of solemn faces. It was clear that the Dutch were in a quandary: to scold the foreign refugees would seem intolerant; they had broken the unwritten rules, but then how were they to know? Should they be told? But to intervene would
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infringe their own cultural freedom. And so the reasoning tumbled on, leading to somersaults of moral confusion – though to a growing segment of the Dutch population the dilemma is not so much about telling the foreigners to shush, as about whether they should be there in the first place.
Open curtains The Dutch are open about everything. Preserved vegetables come in glass jars rather than in tins. Lavatories have a shelf in the bowl, ensuring that even your internal workings are open to daily inspection (the one German invention the Dutch have taken to with relish). To assure their neighbours, and themselves, that they have nothing to hide, the Dutch build houses with big windows and do not The Dutch are draw their curtains at night. You open about everything. can watch your neighbours’ teleThey build houses vision, see what they are having with big windows for dinner, note whether they and do not draw their shout at their children and fercurtains at night. vently exercise your powers of tolerance if you notice anything untoward. Clean windows are the primary concern of any householder, and rooms are lit with a subtle chiaroscuro that presents a cosy picture to the street
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at night. Rather than draw the blinds, people whose houses open directly on to the street hang little screens made out of wooden-framed doilies in the windows, or stick narrow strips of clouded plastic to the glass. These are positioned to avoid tiresome eye-contact with passers-by, while still leaving the room open to public view. When openness People keep their curtains spreads to personal open to reassure the world that relationships, it leads to they are not doing anything a perfect frankness. shameful – or that they are completely unashamed of anything that they might be getting up to. But no Dutch person would dream of staring in at the windows. That would be an invasion of privacy. Curiously, it was a Dutch television company that first came up with the idea for Big Brother, the show that allows millions to be Peeping Toms, ogling at the intimacies of a group of people made to live together in a single house. This is the ultimate expression of Open Curtains, while spicing things up by breaking the paramount social taboo. When this openness spreads to personal relationships, it leads to a perfect frankness that other nations may find disarming. If you are suffering from a particularly unfortunate haircut, an English friend might tactfully suggest that you wear that nice hat you bought last week. A Dutch person will ask you what on earth has happened to your hair.
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13
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Gezelligheid Gezelligheid is the Dutch nirvana. Dictionaries ineptly translate gezelligheid as ‘cosiness’. The German Gemütlichkeit comes a little nearer the mark, but that nation has order rather than conviviality as its ultimate goal. A Dutch historian has described gezelligheid as ‘partly a sort of cosiness and partly a living togetherness’. The mood in a neighbourhood café on a cold winter’s afternoon is gezellig; a mother will call ‘Keep it gezellig!’ if she hears Life runs according to her offspring becoming dangera subtle decorum. The ously boisterous; a popular Dutch don’t say ‘What Dutch beer is advertised as will the neighbours ‘guaranteed gezellig’. Rather think?’, but ‘Think of than switch on the lights at the neighbours!’ twilight, a family will light a few candles, make a pot of coffee and sit looking out of their large clean window, suffusing themselves in gezelligheid. Living on top of each other as they do, the Dutch have discovered that the best way to get on is by making sure that everything is always gezellig. Life runs according to a subtle decorum. The Dutch don’t say ‘What will the neighbours think?’, but ‘Think of the neighbours!’ If you drive in the wrong direction up a quiet oneway street at two o’clock in the morning and meet the police head-on, they will probably pull over and let
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you pass. There are more important things to do than arresting someone who is doing so little harm. Besides, it would not be gezellig. Dutch tolerance is the moral face of gezelligheid.
Going Dutch This is the nation that sells scrapers for getting the last remnants of the film of buttermilk from the inside of the bottle. The Dutch ‘think with their pockets’. Parsimony is not an embarrassment, but a virtue. On trains you will see people encouraging their dogs to sit in their holdalls. This is because the dog then qualifies as ‘hand baggage’ rather than ‘Going Dutch’ was ‘accompanying pet’, and so is invented so that the Dutch not eligible for a ticket. could sit back and enjoy Rather than objecting, ticket their coffee in peace inspectors regard this as without worrying about admirable ingenuity. who was going to Expenditure is acceptable pick up the bill. only when there is hope of realising a profit. The Dutch have a saying that ‘the cost comes before the benefit’. Otherwise it’s a case of elk dubbeltje omdraaien – turning over each coin twice before even thinking of spending it. ‘Going Dutch’ was invented so that the Dutch could sit back and enjoy their coffee in peace, without worrying about who was going to pick up the bill.
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Yes, but... For the Dutch, the other side of the question is as important as the question itself. Dialogue is the lubricant of tolerance, and the essential ingredient of dialogue is ‘Yes, but…’ Squatters enter into dialogue with landlords and the city council, and drug dealers sit down to cosy chats with the police. Opposition is by negotiation rather than confrontation. It’s more gezellig.
Having an opinion Discourse on death or sexual deviance may cause other nations to squirm, euphemize or change the topic, but will have the Dutch frankly and happily airing an opinion. When they find themselves somewhat shocked by a theme, then ..............................
End of sample text. To read more, please buy the book.
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