A to Z: Holland, a Boutique Country

Tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens
Spring 2009

When you think "Holland", what's the first thing that comes to mind?

Tulips? Windmills? Marijuana everywhere? Van Gogh? Gay Pride? The Red Light District? Dikes and water engineering?


The first time I was there, I was around eight and on a three-month Europe tour with my parents. The second time was over twenty years later, with my Dutch boyfriend.

The experiences were completely different.

Tulips at the Keukenhof Gardens
Spring 2009

On my first visit, we stayed in Amsterdam and drove to nearby places like Rotterdam, Madurodam, Volendam... The mandatory tourist traps plus a few quainter (gezelliger?) places like Alkmaar and Haarlem that my dad knew of because he'd spent his army years in Germany. Two decades later, we took a day trip into Amsterdam, and that was all I saw of the "big" capital (forgive me for the quotes; Amsterdam's population is at max one million. That doesn't qualify as "big" for a girl who hails from a 20-million-plus city).

My boyfriend's family lives in a town northwest of Amsterdam called Schagen (you might have heard of an Ark replica built there a few years ago), and that's where we stayed. Thus my introduction to the real Holland.

Would you be surprised to learn that, in a country of around 17 million people--yeah, total--and with an area of sixteen thousand square miles (around 42,000 km2) very few people speak English? Many speak a dialect of Dutch (incomprehensible outside of their immediate environs), or even a wholly different language, like the Fries (pronounced frees) of Friesland at the north, a closer cousin of Scandinavian languages than of Dutch.

Many of the people outside the metropolitan areas of Holland (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, etc.) have never traveled outside of Europe, and some haven't even left their borders. Some of them don't even own a passport.

The Dutch East India Trading Company
(Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie)

And yet the Dutch are famous for their seafaring escapades, their trade settlements all over the world, from the Caribbean to Indonesia. Dutch people can be found everywhere, perfectly assimilated, perfectly happy with a completely novel way of life.

Michiel de Ruyter,
Dutch Admiral famous for victories
against the Spanish

This contradiction--the Dutch farmer who's never left his village and doesn't even want to, and the Dutch traveler who immerses without a second thought into a different culture--is the main reason I love Dutch culture. For me, this contradiction embodies the Dutch spirit.

There are others, certainly: the marijuana myth, for example. The stereotype says all Dutch are regular marijuana users. In reality, less Dutch people use marijuana than Americans (I'm talking per capita here, so don't give me the population disparity argument).

Keukenhof Gardens, Spring 2009

The tolerance thing: stereotypical Dutch are tolerant of anything and everything, right? Witness the gay marriage thing, euthanasia, drugs, prostitution. Right?

Wrong.

Holland has a historic tradition for tolerance. Back at the end of the Middle Ages, when Spain was persecuting its Jews like mad, huge groups of Spanish and Portuguese Jews made their way to "neutral"--although technically Catholic--Holland. Reformists of either Calvinistic or Lutheran beliefs also found safe haven there. Belief systems don't seem to have been all that important to the Dutch, at least not in the degree that they defined whether you lived or died in so many other countries back then (and even today--shame on us).

Keukenhof Gardens, Spring 2009

The Dutch are the most practical of Europeans. Trade, business, economic development, general well-being and stability--those are the values they have the most consideration for. So, as long as these immigrant Jews and Reformists came in peace, the Dutch had absolutely no ax to grind.


But times have changed. The Dutch penchant for live and let live has been ground down to dust by too much abuse, and modern immigrants--Latin Americans, Eastern Europeans, Turkish, Moroccans--aren't so warmly welcomed.

Source: shariafreeusa.com
Original caption: "Moroccans in
The Netherlands don't want to
assimilate;
they want to dominate."

Amsterdam is still the capital for global tolerance in terms of drugs and sexual orientation, but outside its borders, tolerance dissipates like so much chalk dust in the wind.

Dutch people don't live in windmills, wear wooden shoes, or grow tulips for a living anymore, either.