This all started with a campaign from environmental group milieudefensie. They aimed to reduce the environmental burden associated with junk mail and introduced the NEE NEE sticker. It came in two variants:

NEE / JA

This means you don’t want to receive junk mail, but you do want to receive the local free paper.

NEE / NEE

This means you want neither junk mail nor local papers. In fact you don’t want any bulk mailings in your letterbox.

Over the years this sticker became so widely used that government endorsed it. It is pretty well honored too, but it’s not the law. They can stick junk mail into your letterbox even if you have a NEE/NEE. And when the mailing people know you address, all bets are off. Addressed mail will always be delivered, even if it is addressed to ‘the occupants of this house’.

A true hate it or love it dish, nieuwe haring is not for everyone. This Dutch sashimi is a staple of our diet, and has been for many centuries. Nieuwe haring, also called maatjesharing and Hollandse Nieuwe, is herring from the Skagerrak (or thereabouts), conserved with salt and eaten with pickles.

That description alone can be quite enough for some viewers. Yep, raw fish indeed although the nastiest bits are removed on the fishing boat. Hollandse Nieuwe is then stored in small containers (vaatjes) and brought to shore. The first vaatje to land, some time in July, is traditionally auctioned off somewhere and it makes headline news.

Hollandse Nieuwe (herring) with pickles

The concoction has quite an -eh, shall I say intriguing, yes intriguing- aroma. Some folk like to top it off with raw onion, as if the scent isn’t overwhelming enough. Truth be told, haring tastes excellent, especially when enjoyed fresh from a stall (viskraam). It’s chock full of healthy omegas, too. Most often you would purchase them from the stall and eat the herring on the spot. You can either grab that sucker by the tail and lower it into your throat. Don’t worry, the head is chopped off. Usually though the vendor will dice the herring and give you a prikker (fork) to consume it.

Where fresh flowers are a luxury in most parts of the world, they are on every street corner in Amsterdam. Literally. And cheap too: a nice bouquet will set only you back around 7 euros. This ties nicely into the fact that we like things to be cheap.

Tulips

Jokes aside, the quality of flowers in .nl is awesome and we are lucky because of it. The florists have been very succesful at marketing the message that you “say it with flowers” (zeg het met bloemen, since replaced by the current slogan gek op bloemen – crazy about flowers). Hordes of tourists come to our Keukenhof, which really is quite spectacular to see. Every other year an event called the Floriade is held, showcasing old and current flowers in a big way.

Marketplace

The biggest marketplace for flowers is called Flora Holland. This is an auction where grower meets wholesale. The scale of this operation is immense: every day at 5 AM or so a fleet of trucks comes in and unloads the flowers, the same day a different fleet leaves the terrain and ships the flowers worldwide. The fact that they are immediate neighbours of our largest airport Schiphol helps, too. On a smaller scale, flowers can be purchased on regular markets, in supermarkets, gas stations and on just about every streetcorner in large city centers. Amsterdam even has it’s own flower market (Google Image Search) where you can buy either fresh cut flowers or bulbs, ready to be taken on your airplane home.

Pink Gerbera

So where do all these flowers grow? During spring and summer, huge polders near Aalsmeer and Lisse are dedicated to flowers. Funny thing though. The flowers themselves are cut and discarded. It’s the bulbs they are after. This is the reason this part of Holland is called “bulb area” (bollenstreek). The flowers you can buy are also grown in the bollenstreek, but not on such a massive scale. You can buy flowers throughout the year in Netherlands, and this means in winter they are grown in greenhouses.

The character is so recognizable that she is a true global brand, much like Hello Kitty. Not bad for Dick Bruna, Nijntje’s father, who invented her for his then one-year old son. Or should I say, invented him? There is some confusion as to whether Nijntje is a boy or a girl. Dick himself stated that Nijntje is a boy in his own biography, but the official website says Nijntje is a girl. In the animated series, her voice is female as well. It doesn’t matter a whole lot anyway. S/he is just Nijntje.

Nijntje aka Miffy

Nijntjes first book was named simply Nijntje, and many more have been published since. Every Nijntje book is the same: 24 pages, a verse on the left-hand pages and an illustration on the right-hand page. Dick Bruna deserves a huge amount of credit for his work. The character has been simplified as much as possible, but not too much. She is always in two colours (black and white) and only a handful other colours are used on the pages. The stories are simple, yet powerful. Babies have no trouble recognizing her from a distance.

Commercial success

Author Dick Bruna has been lucky to retain the copyrights to Nijntje for himself. Everywhere Nijntje appears is officially sanctioned by himself. This ensures the Nijntje brand is globally uniform, and this in turn allows one illustrator to market and sell his character all over the world. It will be no surprise the Japanse adore Nijntje. Over the last decades Nijntje has appeared in booklets, posters, toys, mugs, well practically every child-related item you can think of. Dick Bruna is still alive today and still produces Nijntje books.

More Nijntje

By the way, Nijntje has a family name too. Her full name is Nijntje Pluis, which translates to Miffy Fluffy, but I am not sure she has a family name in English.

The quitessential cow – the one in the photo below – is named after Friesland, one of Netherland’s most northern provinces. This breed was born here, then developed in the USA by Dutch farmers, and after a century or so returned to Netherlands. Friesland cows are the most productive cows in the world. They can produce up to 25 liters per day, which is about 6.5 gallons.

Moooh.

A big discussion in Netherlands right now is milk from cows that are outside, as opposed to cows who stay indoor all the time. Milk from “buitenkoeien” (ouside cows) is deemed more nutricious by some. As such, we now have a special brand of milk from outside cows. I am not so sure this milk is more nutricious, but who am I. In line with the outside-cow-movement is the organic movement. Like in many Western cultures, organic food is very modern. Our organic milk is certicified by an independent organisation, but overall organic milk is still a tiny part of all milk sold.

Cow’s names

A name like Bettie 23 is a typical cow’s name. They are named after their mother: Bettie 1 will have been the first female cow the farmer has bought, their first daughter will have been Bettie 2, and so on. Even their grand children will all be named Bettie. This way, the farmer can keep track of the best-performing breeds. As you would expect, the male cows are sold when they are still young, because they do not produce milk.

After a milk cow has lived her useful life, she is sold to the butcher and turned into minced beef. As far as the environment goes, Dutch minced beef (from old milk cows) is a very sane choice. More so since our cows are not fed pulverized meat.

Fun cows facts

Do cows sleep standing up?

No, they don’t. They sleep lying down. But when a cow is lying down she might be digesting her food. Cows only really sleep deeply for half an hour per day. At other times she is just dozing and producing milk.

Do cows bite?

They only chew grass, so they don’t “bite” in the way you and I do. In fact they have no front teeth in their upper jaw. They only have big molars for grinding the grass, and do not use their teeth to fend off predators.

Do the yellow ear marks hurt?

No, not at all. Even setting them does not hurt, it’s just like an earring.

What does a cow weigh?

A regular milk-giving cow weighs about 650 kilograms. An adult bull can weig up to 1000 kg (a metric ton).

Sailing boats come in all sizes. The smallest ones like these in the picture can be sailed alone. You can rent them quite cheaply and they are not at all hard to sail. If you have ever surfed, you’re home free. If you haven’t, it takes a couple of hours practice but you’ll quickly get the hang of it. So how does that work in .nl? Easy. First you decide where you want to sail. Open inland waters are best: these can be found in Friesland, Noord-Holland, Brabant or Zeeland.

Friesland

This province in the north has an awesome network of lakes. These Frisian Lakes (duh) are scattered across the province. Many of them are connected, meaning you can be out in the water for weeks on end. And sure enough that is what some people actually do: board in one lake and spend days sailing various other lakes. Some even sleep in the boat. All the while you can enjoy the landscape and coleur locale in the form of quaint houses, wooden shoes and cheese-making factories. Excellent destinations in Friesland are the towns of Sneek, Drachten and Joure. In summer these are very geared towards tourists; just do a Google search and you’ll quickly find a place to stay. These people can, and will, tell you where to rent a boat.

Noord-Holland

This provice has the North Sea at it’s western shore and is also home to Amsterdam. Sailing here happens on a smaller scale, mostly concentrated around the Loosdrechtse Plassen (link in Dutch). Like Friesland, this part of the country has lakes where you can easily rent boats. You can actually sail from these lakes to Amsterdam. Sailing here is more expensive and is most often done with a bigger city as a starting point. From Amsterdam you can also sail truly big sailing ships like klippers with a crew of ten; more about those in an upcoming post.

Brabant

This relatively big province is not only home to the country’s largest livestock population, but also has a great water recreation area called De Biesbosch.

The Biesbosch National Park is a green maze of several rivers, islands and a vast network of narrow and wide creeks. The area is one of the largest, valuable natural areas in the Netherlands. What’s more, it is one of the few remaining fresh-water tidal areas in Europe.

Sailing here is great fun because the waters are not open; they are enclosed by forests and small creeks run throughout the area. You won’t go particularly fast, but the scenery is amazing. If you’re into nature, this is one of the few areas where there is lots of it. De Biesbosch is not very touristy, but there are a few websites with information about rental places. You would usually stay in Dordrecht or Rotterdam and travel 60km south from there.

Zeeland

This quintessential water provice, namegiver of New Zealand, should be any water fan’s favourite destination. And indeed, anywhere you go you will be greeted by H2O. Point your navigation device towards the (small) city of Veere and sail away. There is both a big lake (Het Veerse Meer) but also rougher sea at the other side of the dijken. Zeeland boasts a combination of salt and fresh water. Many parts are fresh these days, since after a huge storm (“the” storm of ‘53) the open sea is being kept out by a series of dams. This has turned the Grevelingen in one huge fresh water fest where it’s great sailing but also good diving. Other parts of Zeeland are semi-open to sea like the Oosterschelde. Google for Delta Works to see what a massive undertaking it’s been to accomplish safety for inhabitants but also salt water for plants and animals. Then there is also true open sea, along the coast. Zeeland has golden beaches there; and every summer sees massive numbers of (mostly German) tourists.

Netherlands is called that way for a reason. The country is very, very, very flat (i.e.; nether). In fact, about half of it is below sea level. And big parts of it used to be sea, but we drained the sea out. What you’re left with is polders. We would like to think of them as a typically .nl invention.

A polder is a Dutch piece of land that used to be sea. There is really no translation for it; a polder is a Dutch invention and very few other countries have a use for polders. A polder is surrounded by dijken and the soil is clay. As always, Wikipedia has an complete description about this phenomenon.

Polder south of Wilnis

In the olden days, we used windmills to drain the sea out of the polder. These are the iconic devices all tourist love. They are so typically Dutch I can feel a new blog post coming up even. In the mean time, if you are visiting Netherlands and would like to see some bona fide windmills, go to Kinderdijk. This is a tiny village in Noord Holland (one of our provinces) and it has the most photogenic windmills on the planet. But really, windmills are everywhere in our country.

Another polder, this one on the island of Terschelling

Back to polders. Well there really isn’t much to say about them. It’s just a flat piece of land almost always used to grow grain or potatoes. There is one notable exception. The polder called Haarlemmermeer (yes, Harlem Lake) was drained of sea to eventually fill up with airplanes. This polder is now home to our national airport Schiphol.

Ice skating is one of the great national sports in .nl, but only when it freezes. You see, all the water we have then turns to ice. And when all around you are great frozen lakes, beckoning for you to conquer them on ice skates, when the roads turn to a grey slosh, the call is irresistible. So when it freezes, seriously freezes, we ice skate. And we do it properly.

Ice skaters plus windmill

Ice craze

During those freezing times – last seen in January 2009 – a strange virus takes hold of .nl folk. It seems everyone has a pair of ice skates laying around, and time to go out and get on the ice. There are a few distinct classes of ice skaters. Everyday folk with everyday skates. Kids with hockey skates. And older people with long-distance skates (noren). All go outside at the crack of dawn and stumble across the frozen tundra.

The ‘official’ depth of the ice is 10 centimeters, at which point it is considered thick enough to hold the onslaught of Dutchies and assorted parafernalia such as chairs and food stands. But the official depth is pretty hard to reach: it has to freeze for over a week for the ice to grow that thick. So invariably after just a few days the first dare-devils will go out on the ice. Strangely enough, the older someone is, the more likely he/she will take the risk of early ice-capade. Presumably this is because older people long for the olden days when every winter used to be icy from November till March. So invariably the first accounts of natuurijs (natual ice) are accompanied with reports of people slipping into a hole in the ice (a wak) and the freezing of assorted body parts.

Serious sport

Then after a few days, when the freezing continues and the country is covered in a white blanket, the first cries for an “Elfstedentocht” are voiced. This long-distance ice skating marathon runs over eleven Frisian villages, hence its name, Eleven cities trip. Or quest rather, because it is a very strenuous and difficult trip. It requires very low temperatures for two weeks for all the ice surrounding these eleven cities to grow thick enough to support the contestants. But when it happens, oh boy the country is filled with joy. For a brief period, all is good, Netherlands is Nederland again, ice skate sales go through the roof and we all sit behind the tube, since the trip is broadcast verbatim across the country. Sadly, the last edition was in 1997. Thank you global warming.

Common scene across entire .nl in Winter

Of course, there are other sporting events besides the mother of all trips. The Dutch Championships run every year, since we have a plethora of indoor skating rings all over the country. But fairly soon after the first natural frost, the first outdoor national championships are held in shallow waters. We had the last one in January 2009. The best contestants of the national championships compete in Europe, and people from this pool compete in the Olympics as well. Tiny as .nl is, we have a fair number of world-class athletes who have won some serious medals. Innovations such as the klapschaats (clapping skate) are Dutch, too.

Food and beverages

Where there’s hoards of people, there’s others catering food and beverages. Outdoors ice skating is no exception and it will not be long before you see your first koek en zopie. Koek means cake or cookies and zopie means beverage, usually alcoholic. The term koek en zopie applies to every catering outfit on the ice and it is one of those strange Dutch words that every native seems to  understand without ever being explained. 

Hot chocolate is a favorite on the ice, with added rhum optional. All kinds of cookies and granola bars can be had as well, plus chocolate bars such as Mars and Snickers (insert local brand name chocolate bar here). On the hearty side, snert (thick pea soup) is abundant, as is the rookworst (smoked sausage), with a thick slice of bacon optional. As you’d have guessed, winter in .nl means serious calorie intake and huge amounts of animal fat. Just go along and worry about your diet when the temperature rises again.

A very current discussion in .nl is the so-called ‘Balkenende norm’ or Balkenende income cap. Named after our current prime minister, this income level is deemed a reasonable maximum for anyone working in the public sector. Go over it and you are sure to be chastised. The media first, but the people quickly following.

People from the USA might find it disturbing: this income cap is a very real thing in our country. Set currently at about 160.000 euros (230k US$) this is inevitably your maximum wage if you work in the public sector. It doesn’t matter if your (privatised) company makes billions and/or if you take huge risks. ‘We’ are paying you so ‘we’ feel to have a right to maximise your salary.

It’s a sentiment most citizens across the world feel at some point, but we have managed to make it a norm.

The current discussion in .nl rages about salaries paid to CEOs in the health sector. In the last years, small parts of healthcare have been privatised and deregulated. This has brought with it all the nasty bits of capitalism: bean counters, middle management, time sheets and directors with huge salaries. In the past years some CEOs have managed to earn millions off semi-public services like home care.

I have to admit, it’s a little exorbitant.

Sorry about this picture of prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende, but he is name saint of this norm after all

The Balkenende norm is not law. Directors, even of public services, cannot be held to adhere it (only ministers of parliament and such, since they earn less than the prime minister by default). But the public outrage simply forces these people to yield to it eventually. (Or leave for the private sector, which many do.)

Private sector

There even exists a comparable norm for the private sector called the ‘Code Tabaksblat’. Named after a boardmember of Unilever, this code does not maximise salaries to that of Balkenende, but it does set rules for corporate governance, including salary. Invariably, media like de Volkskrant (people’s paper) will cry outrage when some CEO has managed to rake in millions while the stock of his company is tanking. In contrast to public sector workers though, this seldom affects salary levels. Most recent example of this is the paycheck of Anders Moberg, temporary CEO of Ahold, who had to give up a large percentage of his salary. Which still left him with many millions, of course.

This level of education is called basisonderwijs (i.e. basic education). The term makes sense don’tcha think? Actually, in my days (early to mid eighties) it was still often called lagere school (i.e. lower school). We had classes 1 through 6, but kindergarten was separate. At some point a reform was done to combine lower school and kindergarten into basisonderwijs. I still remember we received a yellow suitcase to celebrate this (later turned out to be toxic, har har). In basisonderwijs the classes are named groups and range from 1 through 8.

So basic education it is; mandatory for everyone aged 5 and up. Lessons in language (Dutch and English), calculus, history, caretaking, art and what have you not. More or less the standard package in any modern country. In upper groups kids have homework too.

Cito toets

In group 8 most schools partake in the national Cito Toets which is the de facto national test for secondary education. It is not compulsory however and some schools have their own test. It measures intelligence mostly and skills for various fields. You guessed it: children and parents fear this test as it’s deemed to determine ‘omfg will someone think of the children!’ someone’s future. In reality though the school board has the most influence on the final advice.

Types of schools

You might think of .nl as a secular country, but in reality there is a huge number of religious schools. Protestant in the north and west, catholic in the south. Naturally, there are many Islamic schools in the west as well. Religion is not a huge facet of these schools though. Few lessons deal with it directly; it’s more that a school’s ethics align with its religions.

A school sans religion is called an openbare basisschool or public basic school. Every village, town and city will have at least one of these. Openbare schools take no stance against religion; they are agnostic and will try to merely show the kiddies about what’s going on with this allah/jaweh/god thing.

Very popular as well are Montessori schools, named after the Italian inventor. These are religion-agnostic (by default?) and can be found in bigger cities. We have our share of other educational systems as well such as Dalton. Lastly there is the Vrije School where it is believed kids follow their own path and should be left entirely to their own development. This latter type is often subject of discussion, as their pupils rarely fit in to any type of secondary education.

Freedom of choice

Parents are free to choose a school for their children. Well, almost. Some schools are simply at capacity; these will have a waiting list. Some schools will restrict the children based on proximity (although this is only allowed give enough capacity in the surrounding areas). Public schools must take any child unless they are full; in which case the school must direct a child to a different public school. Schools based on a religion or educational system (so-called ’special schools’) may place restrictions on the faith or lifestyle of their customers also; but only when there are enough alternatives close by.

Special schools make up two thirds of all primary schools in .nl. The generic openbare basisscholen make up the rest. However, the indigenous religions–Catholicism and Protestantism–often have very relaxed special schools, making them suitable for agnostic kids as well.

Primary school is free for parents, i.e. payed for via taxes. For a school to be free, it has to conform to national guidelines which are audited and publicised.