Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

by Ben Coates

In the 1860s, steam pumps helped drain a huge lake south of Amsterdam, including a certain part known, on account of its many shipwrecks, as the ‘ship-hole’. The name survived at the airport built on the new polder – Schiphol – where planes could land and take off from an area that used to be several metres under water.