My move is getting closer. In less than two months, I’ll be making the big leap. From then on, I’ll be living in the United States. So hang in there, just a few weeks. As my time of departure is getting closer, I get to see differences in culture that I didn’t notice before, or maybe I cared too little to realize how big a difference they actually make. One of those differences concerns housing. As miss Missouri and I are looking for a house, I am getting familiar with all aspects of selecting and buying a house. Also, when I say that we are looking, it means that I’m doing all I can from behind my desk exactly one Atlantic Ocean away.
Someone actually took the time to build a Dutch and American house next to each other.
The differences strike me at a few points. First of all, houses in the Midwest are generally bigger. If you’re Dutch and under thirty, nine out of ten times you live in an apartment. If you’re married, this apartment could have more than a living room, a bathroom and a bedroom; just don’t count on it, though. Although this isn’t the worst adjustment (I can imagine the other way would be worse), I still have to get used to the idea of someone my age actually living in a house that’s big enough to play hide and seek in. Also, I never thought I would ever be worried about something the novelty that is school districts. Not since I was picking one of three high schools on walking distance (that’s also really special over here) did I care about what schools were in the area, but now I find myself ticking of boxes that relate to elementary school, middle school and high school. Aside from other things that are new when buying a house, the school districts are something that are hard for me to wrap my mind around, as I’m used to the idea that you have a choice. You could say I’m actually pro-choice when it comes to schools. I don’t know how these differences will shape my life later on. In the end, I think what makes a home doesn’t really change between cultures, but what it takes to get there certainly does.
Does anyone else feel that middle schools are really the middle child of the school system?
Let me quietly introduce this. I like wordgames, both Dutch and English. I like being bilangual, so I can always play my second-language card. I never lose wordgames, half of the time because of that same card I keep playing. This is way I got pretty excited when I read about Bizarroword on Jenn’s page.
It has a button, too.
Today is the last day to play, so if you’re bored and looking for a way to vamp up your Friday, feel free to click the button above. I hope to win (and if I don’t, it’s because English is my second language), just to see how a box of apple muffins will make it here. Below, you find my entry:
Exodthem
1. Exodus
2. Forcing grammarly handicapped people to leave the building.
3. If them would speak proper English, them could stay a while, but now I’d rather exodthem.
Bettheyen
1. I got nothing
2. Ponder upon what to eat for dinner.
3. How about pasta? That’s okay, we can still bettheyen.
Conclthemion
1. Conclusion
2. Coughing up that green stuff that had been blocking your throat for days.
3. ‘Hold on, I think I may finally have my conclthemion.’
Constitthemion
1. Constitution
2. When a bus or train is so crowded you cannot pass easily.
3. ‘Let’s take the next one, this one is constitthemion.’
Ththem
1. Thus
2. A minor, unplanned surprise.
3. ‘What a ththem, there’s a $10 bill in my pocket!’
Theyre
1. Still not a clue
2. Archaic English for ‘deer’.
3. Shan’t we be humble, lest we stumble; thyself thy heir, evermore thirsty, like a runaway theyre.
Theme (pronounced as something between thumb and tomb; don’t ask why, I didn’t make the rules)
1. Use
2. When your little toe slams the door.
3. I feel a little lame, maybe it’s because of the theme yesterday.
Themurp
1. Usurp
2. In a family with many kids, themurp is almost the youngest.
3. ‘I have one younger sister, that makes me themurp.’
I started English lessons in fifth grade. Nevertheless, I have an accent (even though American politeness sometimes seems to oblige native speakers to pretend they never noticed). As I’ve noted before, the more tired I am, the more Dutch seeps through. This results mostly in severe difficulties in the ‘th’ sound. When I focus, I can pronounce ‘brother’ right, but whenever I say ‘first things first’, I mix up the sounds, creating the even harder to pronounce ‘thirst fings thirst’. Also, don’t give me a Bible with the word ‘brethren’ in it.
Like this one.
What’s worse than my accent, however, is that sometimes it’s not really English any more. It’s replacing normal Dutch with Dutch with English words. This means a shift from ‘we’ll all pretend he doesn’t have an accent, just smile and nod’ to ‘what did you just say?’ (I found a wikipedia page on Dunglish; I found myself guilty on all of listed symptoms, although not as bad as the most colorful examples). Below is a great video, because of three things: a Dutch man faking a Scottish accent, an American speaking Dutch (two sentences) and then bursting out in a flawless Dutch accent.
Sometimes, it’s a little subtler than downright wrong. When miss Missouri is trying to learn Dutch and getting ‘nice to meet you’ right (‘Aangenaam kennis te maken’), I tell her to ignore the whole sentence. People don’t say that, especially not in the robotic way the cd will teach you. There is a downside to this, though. I must have met quite a few people who now think I did not take any pleasure in meeting them. Also, I must seem rude every now and then, because the Dutch use of the word ‘please’ is for toddlers that wanted to be lifted only. Americans use it for passing salt, ordering coffee and asking for amnesty alike. Maybe this is the reason I get a dirty look along with my salt all the time…
As you may have seen last Friday, I threw a bit of a blog party, calling out three fellow bloggers to join in my happiness. In fact, even those people I didn’t call out were appreciated a lot more than any other day. Some days go by where I really couldn’t care less about my readers. It’s at those days that I refuse to write. Wait, that’s not true. I value the readership on this blog every single day. So why throw a reader appreciation day?
The banner that you can’t read says ‘customer appreciation day (my photo skills are the reason I don’t believe in the idea that a picture can be a thousand words).
Because it’s American, that’s why. The picture above shows a small town in Illinois that my train went through. It announces an upcoming customer appreciation day. I don’t know what they actually did on that day. Probably not aligning cars and trucks, because that’s more of a daily routine job. It’s one of those things that does make you wonder why there’s a special day for that. Like Mother’s Day, it seems just to serve a commercial want. Even worse, somewhere in the back of your head you suddenly feel okay ignoring your mother for the rest of the year. You did bring her breakfast in bed, after all. So, you won’t see me on customer appreciation day. I want to feel special every day.
I just received a blogger award from Jenn. At first, I thought I escaped the compliments that she so rightly gave to others and that I inevitably would have nothing to say on except for a ‘thank you’. I don’t really like getting compliments. I have learned to say ‘thank you’, and appreciate it, but my critical nature keeps me from living them. See? I’m still doing it. But evidently, she would have none of that and gave me my own blog post. Thank you Jenn, I appreciate it.
A great reader will let me know when they enjoyed a blog post, and more importantly, what they liked about it. I really like how I can see the great readers here join me in watching (mostly their own) American culture through the eyes of someone who never had to make it his own, but is now finally trying. They understand that a different culture always comes from your own perspective and provokes amazement, rather than a condescending tone (even when the two can be hard to distinguish or sometimes even come in a hybrid form). If you’re looking for examples, my great readers are to be found in about every comment section.
It’s not the fourth of July, it’s the Wonderful Team Member Readership Award; that other occassion to have fireworks.
I would like to celebrate some sort of ‘reader appreciation day’. Don’t get too excited, this is not going to be an annual thing. I’ll list five people who stand out in appreciation. Actually, make that three. I’d like to give an honorary mention to Jenn, who I can’t give back the award, because that seems kind of rude and non-appreciative (I would). The second honorary mention goes to Orange Spice Drop, who was always a faithful commenter, but seems to have deleted her blog, so I cannot link to her. Finally, I’d like to mention that I appreciate every comment, either on here or informal. But then again, protocal requires me to list five readers. I happily announce the other three mentions:
Maria Thermann, who is without a doubt my most loyal commenter. She knows her cultures, her migration stories and her fantasy writing. Please go and check her out.
This is a funny one, because I don’t know her actual name. I hope she never mentioned it. Let’s CUT the Crap! No, that’s her blogging name. One of the things I really like about blogging is how you come across people from all sorts. She is a very talented writer and funny, too. I love reading about a world that is quite different from my own (yet).
Daniel Mitchell. It seems I’m steeling ideas and mojo here, but he actually contributes a lot to this blog and is not afraid to call me out when my ideas have gone too far. His sharp insights and witty nature are evident on his blog, too. He’s a good one to have around, even if just virtual.
Let’s face it: America is basically an independent woman having divorced Europe. One day, America couldn’t take it anymore – all the feudalism, monarchies and free spirits – and moved away. Now, she keeps telling herself she’s better off. At least she’s independent and doing things on her own terms. In this light, it’s a little weird how European traditions seem to be a big marketing asset. Walking through the aisles of any grocery store will have you pondering on how things would be in the old continent. For instance, a can of hot cocoa promised to give you that feeling from a ‘European tradition of drinking hot cocoa on the promenades of Rome and Barcelona’.
All the while being topless, another great European tradition.
There’s a lot wrong with that. As I am an expert on American-European cross culture, I can explain why. There is no such thing as a European culture. Europe is actually a continent, containing many different countries and just as much cultures. There is a Dutch culture, a German culture and, please pay attention all of you in marketing, an Italian and Spanish culture (Rome and Barcelona). It could very well be an Italian tradition to drink hot cocoa on the promenade, but the chance of that also being a tradition in Spain is about as high as the chance of a Mexican family baking an all-American apple pie for their church pot luck next Sunday. Overmore, as far as I know, drinking hot cocoa is not really a tradition on any promenade.
‘And after our pot luck, we’ll watch some football and hunt some deer.’
It’s not all bad news though. We actually do have a few traditions in Europe. Through the ages, a bond has been formed and an identity can be seen. As any culture, Europeans see how certain events bind them together. It is in those events that we remember what Europe stands for, how we set ourselves apart from the rest of the world and how to take pride in that. Still, the number of traditions is very limited and it has occured to us how other continents want to take part in this as well. To conclude, I give you the European traditions:
Having wars between the French, Germans and British (nowadays revolving around a monetary currency, but war it is).
Feeling superior over any other country for being French/German/British.
Mocking the French/German/British for their arrogance.
Mocking the United States for their lack of social security, while also envying their lack of high taxes.
Bonus: This is a somewhat less traditional way of drinking cocoa in the Netherlands.
Watching a lot of television makes you less capable in a lot of things among a wide spectrum of intelligence. Even worse, I can’t talk to people when there’s a television in the background. Combine that with the intake of alcohol and you may have found out why going to an American bar is mentally challenging for me. It’s pretty easy to measure, too. My mental capacities are strongly related with my accent. By the time I start talking Dutch, it’s time to go home.
Sometimes, television fills the gap between two activities. There’s nothing worse than waiting for a doctor’s appointment or running on a treadmill without a television. Before you know it, your mind wonders off and you’re thinking for no reason. We wouldn’t want that. That’s why it’s a good thing we now have television even in the smallest gaps of life.
The Dutch have two things to gasp about: low gas prices and the mini tv.
That’s right. If you were ever afraid how to bridge the time gap that you use to fill up your tank, don’t despair. NFL highlights, a short weather overview and news flashes are at your service. Now you’ll never have to be bored the whole forty to sixty seconds you stand outside your car. And even better yet, if you never watch a game outside a bar or airport (like yours truly), you can still participate in coffee conversations about the three most spectacular catches, runs and touchdowns that were evidently made last weekend.
What’s your favorite magazine/tv channel/phone app for the doctor’s waiting room?
As I am preparing for a wedding, I’m calling a lot of people. In the Netherlands, phone calls follow a script that would make telemarketers feel controlled. Because the Dutch are apparently afraid of the novelty that is communication on a distance, they pick up shouting their own name, just to establish who is being called before the conversation has properly started. Then, in an immediate response, the caller will pronounce his name and purpose for calling. The first part may seem a little odd, since the caller dialed a number and knows who is calling, but before you giggle too loud, remember the last time you dialed the wrong number and took about a minute to find out. In case you’re ashamed, let me sympathize. When I started calling miss Missouri (which I do at 5am central time), I mixed up the last four digits of her number and got a Spanish talking lady four mornings in a row. Imagine being waked up by a Dutchman at 5am who takes a solid minute to figure out you are not his girlfriend. Four days in a row.
For some reason, searching for ‘angry Spanish woman’ got me a few angry naked latino men, so I went for J-LO with a shotgun.
For some reason, calling English-speaking people at more decent times does not go over much better. I am still used to the idea that a conversation starts with a proper name, so that I can go from there. Let me picture you the first twenty seconds of my phone call yesterday:
Callee: ‘Hello?’
Me: ‘…’
Crickets: ‘Chirp chirp chirp’
Okay, maybe the crickets weren’t there, but it sure felt that awkward. Don’t worry, after I said my name and had him try to pronounce it (he failed, it’s okay), our conversation was perfectly okay. I’ll be better prepared for any calls from now on and make sure our wedding has the appropriate people.
Ever talked to someone who you didn’t know was the wrong person?
Walmart is fascinating. Shopping after ten is an experience that you both can’t miss and never want to happen again. The opposite can also be interesting. Mom and pop stores do exist in the Netherlands, but in a different form. My favorite encounter with an American mom and pop store was last summer. During our car rides I had seen a small book store a few blocks from miss Missouri’s apartment. I had determined it was at most a fifteen-minute walk, so I decided to check it out. After a solid forty minutes of walking in the intense Missouri heat, I arrived at the book store. It was at a small store strip, one of those places where several smaller stores and a ridiculous amount of parking spots are placed alongside the road. The book store is cramped in between a Subway sandwich shop and a shady nail salon. Note that book stores for me are like malls to a stereotypical teenage girl. Sometimes, my neck hurts on Sunday just because I’ve been reading book titles in a 90 degree angle all Saturday.
The best thing about American book stores might just be the chairs. They also prevent a pain in the neck afterwards.
The store was small, to any standard. It didn’t help that too many book cases were actively occupying too many square inches. While I spent hours browsing the books, I started wondering how the guy that owned the store could ever pay his rent. I walked around for a long time and nothing else happened in the store. Nobody walked in, nobody called on the phone and the owner was not actively selling books on the internet, but rather getting high on his own supply. I decided on three books and wanted to pay. The well-read man got up from his chair, strolled to the register and added up the prices for the books. In the middle of this process, the phone rang. He looked at me as if he wanted me to tell him what to do. He answered the phone, looked up a book in his system and then told the tele-client that he did not have the book he was looking for. When he had hung up, he looked at me again and shook his head in disbelief. ‘What do you know’, he said, ‘it always gets busy when I’m just having a customer.’
Whenever you dive into a new culture, you start noticing differences. Visiting Missouri might thus be described as the attempt to be a cannonball in American culture. To understand a country and its culture, history is all important. Whereas American culture so often seems rooted in a struggle for freedom and the idea to start from scratch; Dutch history, too, could bring forth a view on the culture of The Netherlands. Describing important historical events from my home country can perhaps clarify the culture differences this blog revolves around. Of course, I’m no historian, so this short history is not pretending to be complete, even though the entertaining goal is attained through facts, rather than my own opinion. Where further information could be interesting, I have provided links to wikipedia pages. The one on the bottom is not to be skipped, though. This is the story about a people that are known for their tolerance, their cooperative and exploring nature and the fact that they liked their country so much, they made more of it. As the saying goes: God created the world, but the Dutch created Holland.
Even though archeological findings indicate human activities emerged around 2,500 B.C., the interesting part of history starts with the Roman Empire – as always. Even though The Netherlands were seen as a useless swamp, some cities still show remains from Caesar’s friends (my university uses ‘Lugduno Batava’ in its seal; the Latin description of the city of Leiden). After the Romans left, small communities start to develop and stay quiet for over a thousand years. Around the 12th century, these communities start coordinating the maintenance of the dams and dikes they had built to keep their feet dry. Some scholars still believe this necessity-based regulation still shapes today’s cooperating-government model (I just forgot which ones, so there’s no reference here). What is sure, however, is how this local coordinating can be seen as typically Dutch. As a Belgian girl once told me, the Dutch ‘have quite a fetish to regulate everything and then talk about it for hours, until everyone will agree’.
Say all you want, Belgians, but it keeps our feet dry.
Things get really interesting around the 1550’s. Protestantism catches on in Europe and the local communities have developed into several provinces (Holland being the most important one), who work together as a republic. When the Spanish king wants to raise taxes and force Catholicism through the rebellious Dutch throats, they pull off a classic puberty move: they shut the door, mock in their room and do exactly the opposite of what they were told. In practice, they rise up against the Spanish, even when their cities are besieged for months, and announce Protestantism to be the official religion, while allowing other religions to quietly exist. This draws the attention of the Pilgrim Fathers and other groups in search of freedom.
They called it freedom, but this is clearly a picture of the siege of Leiden.
While William of Orange (and his offspring, after he’s murdered) fights off the Spanish, the rest of the country starts developing rapidly. As they are acquainted with water, the Dutch have a superior fleet that swiftly discovers the whole world. The Dutch East India Company and the Dutch East India Company introduce new trading mechanisms throughout the world, including globalization and stock exchange. Their trade and colonial business expand the economical range of the republic to the east coast of North and South America, Australia, India, Japan, Indonesia and South Africa, some of which are official colonies, up until WWII. At the homeland, cultural live really flourishes, resulting in memorable names such as painters Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and early scientists Huygens and Leeuwenhoek.
An overview of the Dutch Empire, as provided by wikipedia
By the time the United States had announced its independence, difficulties arose among the Dutch. Internal quarrels combined with the imperial forces of Napoleon lead to both occupation by the French and later the start of Dutch monarchy when sovereignty is gained back. Being occupied is never fun, but at least the French gave us the metrical system; a blessing that’s hard to measure, even with those wonderful standardized indicators. After 15 years of renewed independence, the Belgians decided to go their own way and should still regret that decision. The last constitutional change occurs in 1848, when the current Dutch constitution is written. Even with all its colonies, the superiority that was evident in earlier ages never comes back.
While WWI skips The Netherlands, Germany doesn’t care much for its neutrality when May 1940 comes around. The barely equipped Dutch soldiers fight for all their worth, but nostalgic defense tactics like flooding the battlefield prove useless against paratroopers and the rigorous bombing of Rotterdam. German occupation lasts from 1940 to 1945. After WWII, the world as we know it takes shape. In the Dutch case, you can take this quite literally, as a new province is added after drying the land in the middle. Alongside with increasingly rapid economical growth, the sexual and social revolutions take place. This, again, is where Dutch tolerance regains its name and its current reputation. In hindsight, the years 1970-2000 are years without major problems and of flourishing. The murder of an upcoming populist politician in May 2002, even when just an incident in the bigger picture, is generally marked as the moment where the country lost its innocence and joins the Western world in all its problems and new millennium struggles.
This is nowaday’s shape of The Netherlands. The highlighted area is our newest province.
As I said, Dutch history could perhaps provide a deeper view on culture. I think this is still the case. Some of the characteristics I have highlighted above match cultural expressions. There is a pride amongst Dutch, comparing the relative small size of the country with the big role it has played in the Western world. Between people, businesses and all sorts of stakeholders, there is a constant need to cooperate, compromise and talk things out. Labor strikes are very rare, as are huge demonstrations. Trade and globalization are still ever present in Dutch thinking and economy, as is their stubbornness demonstrated in the straight-forward way they communicate. More on Dutch culture can be found here in bullet points on wikipedia (while reading it, I agreed with all points, all the while finding it hard to believe these points are that noteworthy).
Drawing from personal experience or the bullet point list, what strikes you most about Dutch culture?
Extra:
A video clip that recently became popular and explains both the difference between Holland and The Netherlands and today’s constitutional organization:
