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

‘The Netherlands isn’t below sea level,’ a Dutchman on a ferry once told me. ‘The sea is above Netherlands level.’

A succession of small towns with names that could choke a child were

‘the buttock of the world, full of veines and bloud, but no bones.’

hoses. I often got the impression that many Dutch people would find it perfectly acceptable for their children to be gay, divorced, unemployed or transsexual, but to have dirty windows or an untidy living room would bring great shame on the family.

day. Unilever, founded in the 1850s by a pair of Dutch brothers seeking to export the butter produced in their dairy,

NOT true - poor research. Margarine Uni was formed by two Dutch men (not brothers) and Unilever was the joining of Margarine Uni and Lever Brothers (British, founded by Lord Leverhulme).

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.’

Her main conclusion was that the Dutch were almost uniquely convinced of being in the right.

Probably true!

far. To speak honestly was Dutch, but to deliberately provoke and upset others was not.

Insightful.

There was, as far as I could tell, no such thing as a shy or introspective Dutchman.

To the Dutch, there were no secrets. Even baked beans were sold not in metal cans but in transparent glass jars.