THE DUTCH PARADOXE

In the UK, I often hear cliché and nasty comments about the French, the German or the Spanish.

Maybe we think  we are perfect  and it is part of our culture to constantly insisting about the arrogance of the French,  the discipline of the German, often this  behaviour means in reality we feel a little bit jealous of their sunshine, organisation, their technology,  their modern high speed trains and because we know  that theirs works better than ours , the defence is to criticise using a cliché as we don’t have a valid argument to justify the ignorance and the mono cultural way of living putting boundaries around us, especially with the rest of Europe.

Strangely, big countries are always under attack and what about small countries?  The Netherlands for example has a better cliché from the Brits, each time I meet friends or close relatives, the first reaction is to say, the Dutch are very friendly and they all speak English, almost as if this was the requirement  to be friendly.

Having living in this country for a while now, I must admit I don’t agree with this point of view. Yes in the Netherlands, foreigners if they don’t speak Dutch, they can express themselves in English or French or German, but often we are talking here about Amsterdam and the Randstad (The Costal strip stretching from Amsterdam, south to Rotterdam), where well over half of the population is lives, and is exposed to international trade and commerce, once you leave this area and get into the real country, the reality is completely different.

Almere is a new city in the county of Flevoland, about 30 minutes from Amsterdam and this city if you can’t manage with your Dutch, they will ask you, why you don’t speak Dutch? And they will refuse to speak in English regardless of it they have some knowledge of the language.

It has happened to me often, at the hospital, at the post office, in the street.

There is a kind of resistance as more and more foreigners are moving to and working in the Netherlands, the extreme far right party is the second largest in the country and maybe there is a new pride to use only Dutch as a mean of communication.

If you live in the country for a while, people will not hesitate to tell you off because you don’t speak Dutch and not always in a friendly manner.

When we talk about Paris in France we say: it is dirty all this dog shit around, well I was there last week and I couldn’t see any as you get 50 euro penalty fee if you don’t collect your dog needs.

Come to the Netherlands and you will see dog shit all over, at your front door as well, it is impossible to walk in a park as the Dutch like to go there with their pets and leave everything behind, the Netherlands is really the worst for this problem.

These examples to highlight the main point of this article, the cliché about a country or people can be wrong and to know it better you need to try to understand their ways and to get exposed to something different and you will often find this better and less boring than ignorance or cliché.

Erick Munnings