What I Hate About The Netherlands
Now that I’m outta there, I have a better perspective of all the things I dread about living in Holland. It’s more than a decade since I repatriated to the USA. It feels as if I was never in Amsterdam, even though it was twelve years of my life. How is that possible, I wonder? So many struggles in daily life, many frustrations, and deep-felt disappointments. Doing the simplest of chores was an effort. And yet, now, all those thousands of days of loathing are gone. Poof vanished. It’s good riddance, I say.
Drum roll, please. The top ten things I hate about Holland.
- Conformity
Disguised as individuality, the Dutch are the most slavish of people. On a scale of group grope from one to ten, ten being the most conformist, the Dutch win hands down. They are the Borg of Star Trek. Everyone thinks alike, acts alike, and responds alike. Yet on the outside, they appear loutish with an unsolicited opinion for just about anything. This arrogance is what the Dutch confusingly define as individuality.
If you step one tiny inch outside of their preconceived and minutely defined square, you are bashed. Ask any Dutch person to explain the social “rules,” and they will nonchalantly toss their head back with a shrug saying there are no rules because everyone does what they want. You know, they’re individuals. OK. Follow this.
If you stick your neck out too far, you will get bonked, just like those bobbleheads in the arcade game that bop up and down. There’s an expression to confirm this and loosely translated it means: a tall tree catches a lot of wind (flak). If a nail sticks out too far, it gets hammered in. That’s the approach here and on ridiculous levels. Here’s what I mean. If you drink coffee with say, three sugars, a waiter (mind you, a stranger), or your host will raise an eyebrow and, in a word, scoff at your gluttonous ways. If you have a generous bone and wish to share with someone your heartfelt sympathy, please don’t! You will be told off and perceived as weak or worse, opportunistic. As if you were trying to wreak something away from the poor soul. Don’t dare dress individualistically, or you will stand out in a crowd, don’t wear jewelry, or adorn yourself with any outward displays of beauty, and please don’t say what you truly feel. You will be considered weird. Just plain weird.
2. Jealousy, Suspicion, and Envy
Never in my entire life on this planet — in X amount of countries traveled to, worked, and lived in have I met such ungrateful souls, mad with jealousy and envy. The Dutch harbor intense resentments against everyone, especially those who are achievers, positive thinkers, and doers. An outgoing person with a bubbly personality is “too much of a good thing.”
Don’t share your generosity for heaven’s sake. You’ll be taken advantage of in ways that will leave you dumbstruck. Don’t expect anything but jealousy and suspicion if you do any of the following with acquaintances:
1. prepare a lavish dinner
2. throw a party
3. pay for someone at a restaurant
4. buy someone a birthday gift that costs more than twenty-five euro (based on standards and price points considered pretty much normal everywhere else in the world).
The person on the receiving end will doubt your motives and seriously suspect you of “trying to get something” from them. Talk about an upside-down cake!
3. Mistrustful
Point two naturally leads to point three. When people are suspicious, they are busy protecting their territory. When they are concentrating so intensely on guarding themselves against future abuses such as kindness, they erect walls around themselves. As they busily build these emotional fortresses, their envy seeps out which leads to number three in my list, untrustworthiness. How can you trust someone who is closed off and not giving of themselves’ while secretly harboring resentments yet smiling in your face? I’ve had enough of these experiences in my private and business life to last a lifetime. What’s the message, Elise? Duh, I guess, get as far away as possible, say across the ocean.
4. Rudeness
Not EVERYONE, of course. Just most! The Dutch win the contest, the world over of being the rudest people to walk the planet. This is historical. I’ve read accounts of the same dating back to the Dutch Renaissance of the 17th century. Just because they are the tallest doesn’t mean they are the best. In fact, The Netherlands is one of the smallest nations on earth. It’s the size of a postage stamp. If everyone kept their egos in proportion to the land they inhabit, we’d have a bunch of really nice folks. Men smash into women and kids on the street looking straight at you. Cyclists will strike down women with strollers. Men have absolutely no manners towards women and women have less towards each other. The words, “sorry,” “please” and “thank you” are scarcely used, if at all. People put their feet on seats in buses and trains, and in summer, if you’re at a cafe, they’ll put their bare feet on chairs that you might want to sit on. Ick.
They’ll just grab things from your table at a restaurant or your own home for that matter without ever asking first, “may I….?” When you see a cluster of people standing at the entrance or exit of a store or the base of an escalator, it is YOU who has to navigate. They will never move to make way for you. If you’re pregnant, in most other countries, you get to sit down on a subway or move to the head of the restroom line. Not here though. Stand there and sweat it out babe, you’re no better than anyone else. Fainting from exhaustion? How dare you show your anguish!
5. The weather
The climate has to be at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to weather. Dismal most of the year. Cold in summer, if summer ever arrives and tepid in winter. There are no seasons, just schizophrenia every day all day long. In twenty-four hours, you can experience a bit of sun to a downpour, whipping winds, and a cloud burst to nary a speck in the sky. You never know how to dress and the dampness seeps into your bones all year round. Just when you think you’ve got it down, the weather does a double-take, and you are ill-prepared.
A journalist from the New York Times attributed the friendliness of the Icelandic people to the harshness of their climate. That just doesn’t cut it in Holland. The brutality of the wind, the torrential and never-ending rainfall, the clouds, and perpetual grayness didn’t make the Dutch friendly.
6. The Smallness of Everything
I can’t recall when quaint became stifling, but it did. After some years the crushing miniature-sized streets, buildings, tram seats, roads, parking spots, restaurants, supermarket items just about drove me crazy. I couldn’t wait to cross a border, any border. Belgian highways elicited in me a feeling of throwing caution to the wind, in their width. German hills adorned with pat houses or industrial sites allowed me some breathing room. American skies and landscaped vistas embraced the soulfulness of the abstract meaning of freedom. The worst was the smallness of the mind of Holland’s inhabitants.
7. Calvinism
That ball wrecker has created a nation of stingy scrooges who do not know how to enjoy anything! Guilt, guilt and a double dose of more of the same have resulted in a people sorely lacking imagination, spontaneity, and joy in everyday living. Calvin was a brutal realist of the kind that takes each page of the Christian bible literally. He was a dogged pragmatist whose rigid teachings not only created the basis for hypocritical moralism, but it also left a deep-seated superiority complex amongst the populace resulting in finger-pointing and knowing better than everyone else. Even adults like to play child schoolyard games that devolve intNahah Nah Nah Nah Nah. Calvinism has penetrated the heart of the nation so thoroughly that even the Catholics who believe they have avoided Calvin’s wrath and influence have to head south of the border to Belgium for a little more hedonistic fun. Now that’s saying a mouthful, isn’t it?
8. Lack of Safety Measures for Children and just about Everyone Else
I never understood the purpose of the governing bodies that enacted safety laws because, frankly, none re-enforced. For example, you can take your toddler to an amusement park and he/she would be allowed to go on the adult bumper cars, albeit with an adult. Still, a four-year-old can have their heads knocked off or severely damaged if they fell out of the vehicle. I guess it’s because there’s no one to sue? Crazy cyclists and moped drivers have the right of way vis-a-vis pedestrians. If a mother is walking her kids or pushing a stroller with a babe, those on wheels wholly run them over without blinking an eye or batting an eyelash. What’s that about?
9. The Food
While vastly improving its image and quality (due to the internationalization of cities like Amsterdam), Dutch food can still be referred to as slop on a plate. On the other hand, if you think that a sandwich means two slices of spongy Wonder-like bread dipped in brown color and called “whole wheat,” I suggest you go back to the future of the 1950s. Now add just one, not two, of the thinnest, falling apart slices of cold cut to the two slices of bread with nothing on it except an almost invisible smear of industrial margarine and viola! You’ve got yourself a Dutch sandwich. The weight of the meat (or cheese for that matter) is less than 0.02 ounces. Catch my drift? Then again why would the populace know about cuisine when what they call supermarkets are merely glorified grocery stores.
10. Customer Service
It’s an anomaly. There isn’t any. It doesn’t exist. Just like in the former Communist block, service workers have an attitude so lame and entitled. Because labor laws protect the inept, people cannot be fired without penalties to the employer. Tips are not given as service workers earn monthly salaries and a sense of urgency is non-existent. Most stores do not even take credit cards, nor do they accept returns or pay you back cash. You are hijacked to purchase something at the shop. Retailers have shown total disinterest when a customer complains. One even physically threw me out of his shop because he was through listening to my woes.
“What I felt when I lived in Holland” by Slauerhoff, (1898–1936)
In Holland
I don’t want to live in Holland,
Where one’s passions need to be constrained,
because of the neighbors,
luscious peeping.
I prefer living in the steppes,
where nobody bothers me,
No bird minds,
No fox rushes away,
Because of my passionate screaming
I don’t want to die in Holland,
and rot in the damp soil,
That was never lived on.
No, I prefer longingly roaming,
ending up with nomads.
The Dutch say ‘he is doomed’
Yes, not being able to damage them,
after I was free, saddened me!
I can’t live in Holland,
They’re always striving,
thinking about the others
Opinionate in silence,
But never hit someone in the face
Only thinking I don’t like your smirk.
Hitting without reason,
Is a sign of bad morals.
I don’t want to live in small houses,
thousands of them creating,
The ugliness of cities and villages.
The stiff boarded live there,
not because of style, just to show,
that they know how it’s supposed to be.
Greeting each other on Sundays,
going through the streets in black parades.
I don’t want to stay in Holland,
I would grow closed and stifled,
It’s too calm, too uptight,
People speak slow, never emoting,
Never dance the slack rope (?),
We’ll torture the innocent,
But never a fat farmers head a cutoff,
And never, ever a crime of passion is committed!
