Impressions from The Netherlands

I've never been to the Netherlands before ... at least not as far as I can remember, maybe I've been here with my mother in my early childhood. Of course I do have some stereotypical ideas on how the Netherlands should be like, and how the Dutch people should be like ... but how does it fit with reality?

I believe we spent a full 24 hours in Dutch waters before seing anything except for the light from lighthouses, fishing boats, dutch cellphone signals on our phones and buildings apparently rising up from the sea. There was really a lot of fishing boats, and not so many other boats - the shipping lanes were quite much further out in the sea. We went the North Sea route to Amsterdam, on the outside of all the islands.

Getting into the North Sea Channel was like an explosion of impressions - lots of ferries, ships, harbours and industry everywhere ... as well as channels, locks and opening bridges. From my impression the vast majority of Dutch people are living in walking distance from the nearest channel, can theoretically use a small boat for moving around. Most of the channels and locks are also generally in use. Fixed bridges only on the smallest channels. So far I haven't seen any high fixed bridge (designed so even the tallest ship traffic can pass 24/7). The Netherlands is well-known for being a great maritime nation - no doubt about that.

There are lots of birds to be seen here. Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph the biggest ones.

Mosquitoes ... no photos taken, but the buzzing sound of a mosquito right by my ear in the middle of the night can really keep me awake.

As for prices ... it's hard to compare, but it seems relatively expensive, compared with Germany? At least dining out - though, perhaps we've just been to the wrong places.

Even though there are channels everywhere, the bike seems to be by far the most popular means of transportation ... and even though bikes takes a lot less space than cars, in too big amounts parked bikes also takes a lot of area. There were both free and paid bike parkings in the area around the Amsterdam train station. I took quite some photos of bike parking in Amsterdam, but I'm planning on a follow-up post with photos from Amsterdam. This is just a random shot from the Café ‘t Sluisje nearby our boat harbour.

The traditional dutch toilet ... unfortunately I "forgot" to take a photo when seeing it myself, but here is a random photo from the Internet:

Image source - the backpacker report blog

Actually, the same design was used in the Soviet Union, so I'm a bit familiar with it - but from my single point of experience, I can tell that the Dutch toilet did it's job when pressing the flush button (except, it looked very clean before I used it and horribly dirty after I had flushed), while the Soviet toilets often lack the oomph to get things properly down.

One impression I have is that the dutch people are very clever with languages, and that everyone in The Netherlands can communicate in English. Perhaps this impression is biased based on the Dutch people I've met abroad, perhaps there exists a lot of Dutch people that never travels abroad and don't know any English? Not so, after staying here for some few days, it has been very easy to communicate in The Netherlands. However, there is quite much information written in Dutch everywhere without any translation ... this is forbidden, this is allowed, do this, do that, this way to find ... something. In general it's relatively easy for me to guess the meaning of most signs as Dutch has many similarities to Norwegian and German. Guessing correctly is slightly harder.

The people we met, they were generally very friendly and helpful ... but sometimes a bit cheap or stingy, which is another stereotypical trait of the Dutch people.

We eventually left our sailing boat behind at a yacht in the suburbs of Amsterdam, there were two elder men operating the marina, and they were super-friendly when we came there. They were also bragging about all the services they had and that 19 EUR was indeed rather cheap for a harbour fee to be, considered all the offers. Yes, I tend to agree with that, everything considered. But then again, after doing big things in the land toilet and then washing our hands ... there were no soap to be found. Not in the mens toilet and not in the ladies toilet. Why on earth ... do they consider it to be a too big cost to provide people with soap in the toilet? Do they consider it to be sufficiently hygienic to rinse hands in luke-warm water after a proper toilet visit? Do they consider it to be normal that people visiting the toilet are carrying their own soap with them? (yes - for taking a shower or doing laundry, it is indeed a rather common assumption - but toilet visits? Possibly in the Soviet, but I didn't quite expect that in the Netherlands). At least they had toilet paper (I have experienced having to buy toilet paper prior to a toilet visit ... but never in "western" countries) and hot water. Next thing, they provided drinking water (unlike in Cuxhaven, where we had to fill our water tanks previous time - it clearly said on the sign that the water was not potable). They didn't have water taps out on the piers, but they had a big water hose drum allowing a water hose to be rolled out anywhere in the harbour. So I took it and rolled out the water hose. When I got to the boat, we agreed it was best to tap out the rest of the old Cuxhaven water before filling the tanks with potable water. We didn't have much water left, but it's a very slow operation - it took perhaps ten minutes from we rolled out the water hose until we started filling our water tank. Some few minutes after we had started filling the tank one of the habour masters came and was already complaining that he wanted to use the water hose roll. Now the water came rather slowly through the hose, our tanks are big, it takes a lot of time filling the tanks. The tanks were less than half fulll when the harbour master came again, turned off the water and took the whole roll. The worst thing is that he deliberately removed one part from the system to prevent us from filling more water! When my wife asked, the man said we had spent our quota, both on the amount of water and the time for using the drum.

Another experience was when we decided to eat in a restaurant. It wasn't that expensive, but it also wasn't cheap. When we got the bill the waiter informed us that service charge was not included and had to be added, basically meaning that the staff didn't get any salary except tip provided. That's probably common in the US - but not in Europe. I also can't say we got a very good service. The custom is often to give a tip based on the total price of the bill, say like 10% - but for me it feels rather opposite, if the meal is cheap and I feel I got quite much quality for the money, I would happily give some extra tip - if I feel that I'm already bleeding money if paying the bill as it is, I'm less likely to give a tip in addition. I think I gave a relatively generous tip, but I also remind myself to try to avoid more restaurant visits in the Netherlands.

The stereotypical Dutch person wears wooden crocks. I remember my mother was very found of this dutch-style crocks and would often wear this kind of shoes. I didn't pay much attention, but I believe I've seen at least one pair of feet wearing such shoes here in the Netherlands.

It is also common knowledge that the dutch landmass has been growing over the years - they've traditionally been building dykes as a protection against flooding, but eventually they also started pumping out water from behind the dykes, turning seabeds and lake bottoms into new landmass. As I'm writing this I'm actually sitting on dry land but lower than the sea level (Almere Buiten - but that's yet another post to come). It's hard to phantom - and I'm also worried that this "man over nature"-approach may be slightly hubris, is it sustainable in the long run to be dependent on dykes and water pumps to keep the land dry?

This lock is located by the marina we were staying at in the Amsterdam area. The higher water body is on level with the North Sea Channel, which is already 12 cm below the mean sea level if I understand it right. It's hard to estimate the water level of the lower water body, but it's perhaps a metre or two lower - meaning that most of the hinterland is below sea level. It would be interessting to see maps of this area as it was 300 years ago compared with how it is today.

Quite many people also live in boats or floating houses. Some of them even have floating gardens on separate floats outside their house. Unfortunately I didn't get to photograph any of those.

Selected photos available in original quality on IPFS QmTb7BS7R2NXm9DQDcWkQoKCJuVJs31nEeyQtaviwBqMB8. All photos taken available in original quality on IPFS QmSc6CmsaqEVkidbkFvGGZz2Xm8ZNafSXfvknp4WXi5qnB. License: CC BY-SA 4.0