What do you think the dutch people are?

Yes, but with underlying story.... somewhere in my pile of half read stuff is a book about coffee history in, I think it was, Amsterdam. Hero was a jewish man trying to survive. I still have it, it didn't make my chuck it pile, but never found out what happened.
Anyway, that book described the situation at whatever time re how Jews had to arrange their lives.

(My friend here made it through the war years in Amsterdam as, perhaps luckily, his father died soon after they got there from Vienna, in, I think, '39, thus he was just the son of his catholic mother.)

So, I thought his writing was great, not sure if it was written by him in English or in translation but in any case I got right into it, but I am interested in the more that the website indicated.

back about the view of `The Dutch`
It is interesting to see all the comment about the dutch people. never thought the topic updates so quickly. Well...more views from me with now have a dutch bf for more than 3 months : People differs from cities to cities. People are more direct and sharp ( other word: rude) in A`dam than the rest of the cities. If you are a just a tourist , most of them treat you quite friendly since there is no reason to treat you bad. They like to make jokes with people from other countries, say, german, belgium. Most of them dont like states so much since they are proud of their history. They are thrifty and that is the reason they get rich (joke from a dutch girl). They like to keeps dogs and I love to see them from this point. The life pace is not so quick and people like to enjoy their life. Some guys talk sex and love always, some guys not.
Peronally I like Den Haag, Utrecht, Rotterdam and Masstricht more than adam ...... lekker

Re: what do u think of the dutch


People are different you know, it's not like all dutch people are that mean. I am a sixteen year old dutch girl, and I'm nothing like that! :wink: I guess in every country live some people who are acting like that. So I think you can't blame the entire country for being arogant en unfriendly.

Sorry if my english is a little bad!

Andrea

Hi, got to this topic by incident but as a Dutchman I found it really interesting! And no, of course I couldn't resist to address some postings.

Look, the country's called Holland, but they call it the 'Netherlands' and then they speak 'Dutch'. What is it that they're hiding? That's what I want to know....

This was answered by another Dutchie, but still: Holland is an unofficial name for the Netherlands and many Dutchmen call their own country Holland as well. Holland was the dominant province of the early Dutch Republic. Today, North-Holland (Amsterdam) and South-Holland (The Hague and Rotterdam) are two of the in total twelve provinces.

Every province had a distinctive own identity at the time seven of them got unified in the 16th century. The provinces were then called "Netherlands", therefore the new state was called "Republic of the Seven United Netherlands". Since 1813 the Netherlands is a Kingdom, called the "Kingdom of the Netherlands".

Dutch is derived from "Deutsch", which is a German word for people. Anyway, Dutch is an English word. No Dutchie would say that he speaks Dutch, he speaks either "Nederlands" or, (here we go again) "Hollands".

Exhibit 1. When those same folk went to southern Africa, they called themselves 'Boers' and now speak 'Afrikaans'.

Afrikaans is ancient Dutch(17th-18th century mostly). The Netherlands colonised South Africa and many Dutchmen emigrated to South Africa. In the 19th century we lost a war to GB, losing power over South Africa

Cape the Good Hope was a port to resupply Dutch ships on their way to the Indies. The Netherlands didn't really colonise South Africa, but some people settled there and developed their own small states. Among these settlers were many Germans too. If South Africa had been a Dutch colony, then the Boer War had been between the Netherlands and Great Britain.

Exhibit 3. No place called 'Holland'! Ha! The first name for this country was 'New Holland', had to be an 'Old Holland' first, didn't there?.

Old Holland is The Netherlands and Belgium

New Holland was the name of the colonies of the Dutch West India Company. This company, the same is true about the Dutch East India Company, was mainly financed by the province of Holland. Belgium has got nothing to do with this issue. Between 1815 and 1830 Belgium was part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, but they seceded.

The Netherlands still hold the Dutch Antilles as a colony

The Netherlands Antilles aren't a colony. They are autonomous parts of the Kingdom and free to leave it if they please.

Netherlands ruled the waves from the 16th untill the 19th century

Well, let's be honest. Britain ruled the waves in that period, but in the first three of in total four Anglo-Dutch naval wars (17th, 18th century) the Dutch were their equals. After the fourth, it was all over for the Dutch.

From what I've heard the Dutch are similar to the Germans (in terms of ethnic back round, language, culture, etc.) but they are a lot friendlier

The Dutch have more in common with the Germans then with, say, the Greek. But I wouldn't dare to say they're similar. Dutch and Germans are from Germanic origin, but not entirely from the same people if you want to take the ethnic background a bit far. Also, understand the big difference in history between the two countries. Germany got unified in 1871, the Netherlands in 1568. That is three centuries of warfare, maritime trade, exploration and imperialism. As a result of nationalism, an emphasize on so-called typically Dutch phenomena (and on German in Germany) has resulted in a real difference between the Dutch and the Germans. You could say that difference is artifically created, but I believe there are many profound differences.

duffman : welcome to able2know !
we came to canada (from germany) in 1956 with the dutch ship "prins willem II " (oranje line). we have many dutch friends here and while we usually speak english with each other, every now and then we use dutch and (platt-)deutsch to help us along.
matter of fact, tomorrow morning i'll meet our dutch friends at the swimming pool trying to cool of. hamburger

Welkom op A2K, Duffman

Charlie's Angels anyone?


Radio Netherlands Press Review Service

It's better in France, we are not beaten to death.

Meanwhile we have to endure them women till our death 'cause they live longer than us.

The difference between the Germans and the Dutch...

was never as clearly showcased as two weeks ago when I went back to Holland by train for a long weekend.

I travelled by Vienna, taking the EC from there up past Nurnberg to Frankfurt. Near the Austrian border, there was some delay: we stood in a field for 20 mins.

Unbelievable but true: from the border all the way up to Wuerzburg, a good coupla hours later, the stern German voice on the intercom would announce each new station again with a formal introduction. Ladies and gentlemen, we will soon be arriving at ... Unfortunately, due to the transfer of this train by the Austrian Federal Railway with a delay of twenty minutes, we will be arriving x minutes late. We apologize to the travellers for the inconvenience.

The two talkative Austrian ladies next to me were giggling themselves to death come the fourth station in a row. Yes, it was us, the Austrians did it! God forbid that anyone should think a German train would be late all by itself ...

When arriving at a German train station, the announcer will also list all the possible connections there that may be of interest to the traveller getting off. In contrast, once in The Netherlands, the announcer casually informed those getting off at Arnhem that the trains to Nijmegen, Tiel etc were not riding today; "there will be buses". And good luck finding 'em.

Holland is Holland: on an intercity from Utrecht to Rotterdam the next day, we were once again stuck in some field. Here there was a message too. After some five or ten minutes, a lazy Dutch voice with a nonchalant Surinamese accent came crackling through the intercom. "Ladies and gentlemen, we are waiting in front of a red sign ... why, we don't know either ..."



Gotta love the Dutch, sometimes.

Our subway system must be run by Germans.

There is about a two minute ride between subway stations. In between, the drivers have to say what the next station is - and that we're now arriving at that station - and if it's a major transfer point, what the transfer is to. A lot to get through in less than two minutes. For entertainment, some of them make the announcements in different dialects.

Also, on my way back from Holland, I made a list ... or two.

Things I discovered missing about Holland when I returned for a sec:

- Water. Canals, rivers, whatever - there's just so much less water in Budapest. No screeching seagulls, not that smell. No to-and-fro of boats in the grey-blue light of an Ij or Nieuwe Maas, or cranes on the skyline.
- Little houses like in Delft, small cute one-or two-story apartments in a row, with little gardens in the back
- Those tall, gorgeous flowers that just burst from the paving stone seams up those tiny houses, wild street flowers right downtown
- Parents with children in neighbourhood pubs
- Children in the bus or on the train
- Smiling Chinese girls, beautiful black women, proud black men, loudmouthed Moroccan chicks, sweet Hindustani girls, gossiping older Muslims with headscarves - ATTITUDE - diversity
- R&B ringtones
- Dutchmen with a fat Hague/Rotterdam/Amsterdam accent ("Nah they dont do nuthing, otherwise I wouldnt 'ave taken 'em here would I?!" - blond woman with two pitbulls to family with children on the train platform).
- More than one metropolitan city, with each their own character/identity
- The morning-after sordidness of the Zeedijk at 10:30 AM
- Everpresent festivals and open-air events
- Men's fashion stores that cater for men who grew too old for club-, skate- or punk gear, but are still too young for corporate suits or shirts: men who like hip but fancy stuff
- A scope of style/fashion/counterculture mags like at Atheneum on the Spui
- The alternative political scene, squats, a bookshop like Het Fort van Sjakoo
- The kind of proud, rebellious self-consciousness that has the Amsterdam Nieuwmarkt metro station signed "Welcome to the Nieuwmarkt" with wall-height archive pictures of the 1970s Niewmarkt riots
- Amsterdam's weirdness: American preachers screaming at Central Station, painted men on stelts bending balloons into funny shapes, funfair on the Dam
- Crowds like on the Damrak
- Half-litre bottles of smoothies and freshly squeezed juice of all kinds in the supermarket, and Swirls at the train station
- Good-tasting healthy sandwiches like at Dolores
- Self-confident women who dont hesitate going after what they want

Things that made me barf as soon as I came back for a sec:

- The never-ending pissing and moaning about foreigners
- Dutchmen in the train - men and women: how they can talk, loudly, endlessly! What a contrast with the formal, restrained Germans.
- That loose, who-gives-a-**** boorish loudness of Dutch whites: who's to tell us anything, eh?
- Ever babbling sorority student girls who all look, talk and gesture in exactly the same, newly affected ways, and wear t-shirts that all sport the same funny slogan to signal which club they've joined
- Youp van 't Hek-looking, striped sweater-wearing, spoiled middle-aged, middle class men without elegance, who think, no assume this is their world to have
- The total lack of good-tasting buns, cakes and rolls (an issue not to be confused with that of sandwiches, see above), especially at train stations
- Those people who spent too much of their life in offices (or "organisations") and now cant talk normally anymore (the NGO and civil servant folks are even worse than the commercial bank and insurance ones). And who for some reason always end up "catching up" on the "coordination" of "the process" in "intersecting ways" with a colleague right next to you on the train.
- The striking lack of delightfully charming, pleasant girls that seem to work in every Budapest cafe
- Fat-fed, spoiled but intolerant suburbia
- Bitchy, bossy and perennially dissatisfied women who never seem to have had to go through much

Can you tell where my loyalties lie in society?

Ooh, then they cant be German ... Germans dont make jokes over the train intercom ;-)

Dutch tram drivers on the other hand love making quips when announcing this or that stop...

Speaking in various dialects would be regulated here in various federal and state bylaws abd become later part of the labour law.

Heh ;-)

Walter - you just made me laugh again - are you sure you're German?

:wink:

hey nimh, thanks for posting all those things on the Netherlands! very informative--I'd love to see Amsterdam.

[quote]Half-litre bottles of smoothies and freshly squeezed juice of all kinds [/quote] ---now you're making me thirsty!

Just go to the Albert Heijn for those ... and there's always an AH close by.

But the real question is, as ps2huang would say: when will Dutch become the world's most dominant language?

I think thats scheduled for the mid-22nd century in our National Plot for World Domination.

oh walter, walter. i have laughed, too. and once again thought of jerome k. jerome. i think i should start a thread on popular stereotypes in literature - you know, post your favorite passage describing the likes of people and their customs somewhere else. jerome is stellar.