I was in the Netherlands recently (you didn’t really think the Real Ale Festival lasted that long, did you?) and I loved the country. An undeniable positive is that as the population is so tall, the busses and trains have been designed with seats with enough legroom for me. I also managed to be in a university town during the week before studies commence and various societies were trying to get new students to join them. Their method for doing so seemed to involve parading trucks through the streets of the town with scantily-clad young ladies dancing on top of them. Despite the fact that they were almost exclusively blonde, many of them were actually attractive. Then, of course, there was the famed tolerance and equality and the fact that everyone seemed to take the needs of others into account, the recycling, the lack of litter, the cycling everywhere, the picturesque landscape, the ability of everyone to speak multiple languages and heaven knows what else.
There are just so many positive things the Netherlands, but it doesn’t half make the inhabitants unbearably smug gits.
(Except you of course, dear Dutch reader).
Song playing as this was published: The Flaming Lips - “The Spark That Bled”
Not all that tolerant. Lots of mutterings about failed immigration and integration policies and many people being heckled in the street for not learning dutch or wearing headscarves.
INOAP: “Not all that tolerant.” See sentence involving the words “university town”.
Tall and blonde? I do hope that there are several tall and blonde men present as welll, because if so, I’m SO heading over there.
You came to Holland and you didn’t contact me????
How could you?
You nasty nasty nasty English man.
sulking me.