Royal seal of approval

That's very good, Col!

O, I'm the sort who whisks, rather than is whisked ;D. I am romantic, but modern love is at odds with this.... so I am solitary.

You should try 'sin embargo' with me .

The people, I mean: I always get the idea people are losing respect for each other here, people are indifferent.


They are always friendly when they are in foreign countries :wink: Of course not every single Dutch person is as I said above (far from that), but I do get the feeling it's getting more and more <sigh>


Do you know for sure they are Dutch, and not Belgian? :wink:

ahhhh rick rick rick
my friend my friend
you see the pattern that is going on everywhere...
people are becoming more and more indifferent and they are truly losing respect for each other...
i see it all over europe and the US.....
its all this materialist ego thing going on...
once upon a time we were held together by our religion, our nation, our love for each other in the struggle to survive...sure there were wars but people were different, they were more simple, but they (on the most) cared and felt for their fellow humans, well at least the ones from their area/country...
i blame all this on modern living : capitalism TV drugs and computers to some degree... also all this division in society betweem rich and poor and young and old....no one understand or tolerates each other anymore eveyone is full of envy and jealousy
they are mostly out for themselves and this breeds contempt and greed and division and indifference...
its the attitude if there is a pound/dollar/euro to be made then they must make it and not someone else....who gives a **** about the others who cares if they live or die...
its them or me they say...
they believe that having a flash car or a big house makes them something
they all desire to be better than the next person.....
they think they are something special while they look down on others like they are worthless scum....
thats the attitude i see and people like me who give their money away and who sacrifice what is theirs to help others are seen as weak and foolish...
here in the uk people are in general very cold, not everyone, there are still some good souls around, but in general our wonbderful capitalist society that everyone wants a bit of, is a cold and heartless place, where nobody respects each other or cares anymore...

the love of money is the root of all evil...

hell is coming..when the last people dont give a **** about each other anymore then that opens the gates to global destruction...

is funny cos i saw a poll on sky news yesterday and the poll question was 'would you leave england for another country?' and 78% of people who answered said yes..78%! so its just shows you...

id agree that if a person is travelling no matter what nationalitiy they are then this brings out a higher and more human part of them...they are more open to meeting people ...they meet people from all over the world..they are in a position where they are in a new place and full of the wonder and newness they felt as a child...
tis why i recommend you travel...

hmmm i had some cool quotes i thought of about loving one another but i forget them now..... damn it



thanks 2u drom i find you a very interesting person, there seems something about you like an extra dimension, i dont see in others much. (apart from you rick... and cav too )
the 'sin embargo' with you had crossed my mind
i quite like to be whisked and i dont find modern 'love' like love at all actually...
but as for romance..hmm... im not into this idea of romance with candle lit dinners and all that...in fact i really dont like modern society at all...i find that all too contrived... but i like the idea of wandering through beautiful scenery, mountains and hills and green feilds with sheep and cows and rivers,under the blazing sun with fluffy clouds ..you know sitting on a mountain/hill top looking at the beauty of the earth...
stuff like that...
thats where i find my romance, in life, in nature, in the creation...

I hear you brother! :wink:

Yes, Rick. They tell me. Most come from Haarlem, weirdly, especially ones going to the Basque country ;D.

I agree with you totally about lack of love for one another, etc, Col. Society is really depressingly Thatcherite; getting ahead by pushing people on top of you up the ladder instead of helping them up. I, personally, can't see the point in living for posessions; we all die, and it's better to die having become a better, more experienced human being, than to buy a lot of things that one can't take with one anyway.

England is awful; I found no place there, and because I shunned the society running, I was always made quite an outsider. Most of our business concentrates on making people feel that they are anywhere BUT England.

I find the same about you, and many A2Kers. I wonder what makes people here different in that impalpable way?

And I so agree about modern love! Lust is being marketted as love, and that can never be anything but awful. (And that is my thought of romance exactly too! Candlelit dinners are staid... romance comes with being part of the good world together.)

Haarlem? Hmmm. I personally don't know people from Haarlem. Could it be there is a big French minority in Haarlem It's nice to hear I'm not the only one who has this view on the modern Western society.

Yay, I'm glad that you think (nearly) the same about this one...

I'm guessing that they learnt French at school, but they're not Francophone properly; they don't speak it as well as they do English.

(By the way, there was something on a while ago saying that the majority from the Netherlands, including you Eindhovenese, go on caravan holidays in Holland... isn't this an exaggeration?)

hmm and i thought harlem was in new york...

huh ? and i thought the nederlands were holland ?

(Well, Holland is part of the Netherlands, like England is part of the UK..)

wow... you know i never knew that...

Yea, everyone in England seems to call the Netherlands 'Holland,' even though that applies to only.. four provinces, I think... I wonder why?

(why we call it that, not why it's not all Holland.)

hehe maybe is cos we is uneducated in dat way like

http://www.amsterdam-holland-travel.com/holland-townbytown/holland-provinces.html

And often, people in American will not know the difference between England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom, and very few here know the difference between Holland and the Netherlands (although, I would bet that most Americans think that Holland and the Netherlands are different, not because Americans know the subtleties of the geography of the Netherlands, but rather because most think that the two are entirely different countries occupying entire different regions altogether). It's just something that arises from exposure, convenience, and tradition, I suppose.

heh nice one smog i like it

Well I do have to say there are A LOT of Dutch who go on a caravan holiday - it could even be the majority yes. We used to travel with our caravan too, but after we had an accident my mother refused to travel with a caravan anymore.

The thing with Holland and the Netherlands is that Holland was indeed the name of the first republic after 7 provinces were able to achieve independence from Spain (with that, we were the oldest republic in the Western world; now, we are the youngest monarchy of the Western world :wink: ). At that time, my ancestors - who lived in the south of what we now call the Netherlands - would still be under Spanish rule for some considerable time. This is also the reason why the northern part of the Netherlands - which gained independence - is predominantly Protestant, and the southern part of the Netherlands - which remained under (Catholic) Spanish rule - is predominantly Catholic.

I personally don't like it when people call the Netherlands Holland, cuz it is a sort of synonym for the Protestant Dutch in the north, and not for the Catholic Dutch in the south. We Catholics have - sadly enough - a history of inequality behind us, cuz for a long time the Catholic Dutch were seen as people favoring Spanish rule (cuz they were Catholic too). Did you know that at one point, Jews were allowed to build synagogues in Amsterdam, while Catholics were not allowed to build their churches in Amsterdam? :wink: