Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands

by Ben Coates

liability laws meant that if an accident occurred, car drivers almost always took the blame. In the 1960s and 1970s Dutch bicycle use dipped somewhat, but it then recovered. By the time I moved to the Netherlands, more than a third of all short journeys in the country were made by bicycle. From my own house I could easily cycle thirty or forty miles without ever having to share space with cars, sticking to the red fietssnelweg (cycle highway) connecting Rotterdam with other cities. According to the Dutch government, by 2009 the Netherlands was the only European nation with more bicycles than people.

The ‘Dutch Famine Birth Cohort’ was one of the first studies to prove that malnutrition during pregnancy could be seriously harmful to babies. In other pioneering research, a doctor in Den Haag, Willem-Karel Dicke, noticed that children on his wards who

were suffering from coeliac disease appeared to have recovered more quickly during the wartime shortage of bread and cereals. Dicke wrote his findings in a series of influential academic papers, and the gluten-free diet was born. Elsewhere in the country, a doctor called Willem Kolff tried to get around shortages of medical equipment and save the lives of his patients by experimenting with two new tools he had invented: the blood bank and the blood-filtering dialysis machine. The first fifteen patients to use the equipment died, perhaps because it was made from sausage skins and old washing machine parts. But the sixteenth, a woman in her sixties who had fallen into a coma after suffering kidney failure, lived – the first person ever saved by a dialysis machine. Her first words on waking up were: ‘I’m going to divorce my husband.’

As Hannah Arendt noted in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, relatively low levels of anti-Semitism among the Dutch were firmly counterbalanced by a strong pro-Nazi movement that could be trusted to do the Nazis’ bidding.

Danish authorities largely cooperated with the Nazis – but only on the condition that Jews in the country were not treated too harshly. In one famous incident, the King of Denmark told his prime minister that if the Nazis made Jews wear yellow stars then he would wear one too, forcing the occupiers to scrap the plan. The Danish police refused to assist in rounding up Jews and when the Nazis announced plans for mass deportations, the entire Danish government resigned. Partly as a result of such actions, around 1 per cent of Jews in Denmark fell victim to the Nazis, compared to around 75 per cent in the Netherlands.

‘The best kind of recycling?’ an old Dutchman once asked me on a train to Dusseldorf. ‘A German eating pork!’

Tipping in restaurants was viewed as unspeakably decadent; there were strict limits on daily withdrawals from cash machines; and the Dutch word for ‘debt’ (schuld) was the same as the word for ‘guilt’.

the curious Dutch habit of using medical terms as swear words, whereby ‘kanker!’ (‘cancer!’) and ‘tyfus!’ (‘typhus!’) were common responses to a fluffed goal or clumsy foul.

the Dutch can be almost American in their belief that they live in the greatest country on earth.

When I moved to Rotterdam, an astonishing 46 per cent of residents were from an immigrant background. Ethnic minorities were on the verge of becoming a majority.

Fortuyn was, newspapers said, the first Dutch politician to be assassinated since William of Orange had been shot more than three centuries previously. The killing was not merely a tragedy, but ‘un-Dutch’.

there was nothing the Dutch liked better than chatting with strangers.

a population density roughly fourteen times that of the US,

On average, the Dutch work fewer than 27 hours per week – by far the lowest rate among all developed countries, and more than an hour a day less than the Brits. No fewer than half the adult population work part-time, and I knew several people who were paid a full salary for working a 32-hour week.

Tax rates were very high – 52 per cent on earnings higher than about €55,000 a year

name of one establishment I passed on my walk to work each morning: ‘Grey Area’.

By 2014, the Netherlands was one of only a handful of countries worldwide where government spending represented more than half of GDP.

At one point, US authorities claimed that 80 per cent of all the world’s ecstasy supply was manufactured in the Netherlands.

the number of coffee shops in Amsterdam fell steadily, from roughly 1200 in 1995 to around half that number by 2009.

A landmark moment came in late 2013 when, a few months after taking the throne, King Willem-Alexander used his first annual appearance before parliament to make a speech – written for him by the government – that was widely interpreted as confirming the demise of the generous Dutch welfare state.

Coming less than six months after his joyous inauguration in Dam Square, the King’s downbeat message was a shock. Dutch austerity, it seemed, would not be a case of temporary belt-tightening but something more permanent, shifting the country away from the Scandinavian model towards something rather more British or American.

The Netherlands, for all its faults, was happier than Britain, more efficient than France, more tolerant than America, more worldly than Norway, more modern than Belgium and more fun than Germany.