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

maakbaarheid, the capacity to remake and control the world around you.

solvitur ambulando – ‘it is solved by walking’ –

Bicycles also proved particularly tempting: over the course of the war, roughly half of the Netherlands’ around four million bicycles were either destroyed or confiscated; a war crime many Dutch would never forgive.

One Dutch MEP even once proposed that the government introduce a ban on banning things.