Oh the bells - they give me a headache

It's Sunday morning. Until about an hour ago, I was trying to have a nice, lazy, lie-in. At 09:27 I got out out of bed for two minutes to make a cup of tea (with milk) and open the window to let in some air. That was my mistake - the open window. It was 09:30 when I opened the window, the exact time when, once a week, on Sunday, a prisoner escapes from the county jail. Or at least, that's what it sounds like to me.

This blog post, and I'm sorry it's a long time coming, is about the difference between Dutch and English church bells.

First, I'll start with a review of English church bells. I'm not anywhere near an expert in English church bells, infact I know almost nothing about them. But, at least, if I start by introducing you to the English bells, you'll be in the same place as me when I hit you with the Dutch ones.

So, here's the English church bells I was used to back home:



Important things to note:

1. More than one bell is ringing, therefore, more than one note being played.
2. People are enjoying themselves - actually bell ringing is a team activity, a fun team activity
3. The bells sound pretty.

Okay, you get the idea I hope. Now imagine that's the sound of church bells you've grown up with, you're used to and then...

...imagine it's Sunday morning in Holland, the window is ajar and you're trying to relax in bed.....:




I don't know about you, but here are some thoughts that run through my mind:

1. Has a prisoner escaped? Are there snipers preparing to shoot from the tower?
2. Should I get quickly dressed up in my Sunday best and leave for church now? Any second, some deathly-ghost may knock on my door rounding up the congregration. They know I'm not there, but sinning by enjoying my Sunday?
3. Has this got anything to do with those monthly sirens (see blog post: "Testing times")? Have all those tests counted for nothing, and now, when we need them most because the sea-level is rising, or mexican flu is taking the Netherlands, the Government is resorting to medieval signaling instead?

You get the idea.

Anyway, my Sunday morning lie-in is ruined once again. I'm now not dozing off with my cup of tea (with milk) by my side, but wide-awake and writing my first blog post for more than a year. So, perhaps, the bells have gone against themselves? Most likely, they were trying to entice me to Sunday service this morning followed by a day of rest. I was resting, but now I'm sinning by "working" on my laptop on the Sabbath.

Dutch advertisements

It's a terrible thing to admit, but one thing I miss about the UK is the consistently high quality of product advertisements. I noticed it again this weekend while listening to Dutch radio. Every other radio advertisement I heard was based on a cringe-worthy rhyme around "punt NL" (the Dutch version of .co.uk / .com), for example:

Kopen makkelijk en snel
op wehkamp.nl

Boek flieggen snel
op fliegticket.nl

Obviously Dutch Radio advertising is suffering from a total lack of creativity.

The same goes for Dutch TV ads. I saw a news item on the BBC UK news this week about a Ryanair campaign which played on the sexual allure of women dressed in school girls uniforms. There had been numerous complaints to the UK Advertising Board and calls for the ad to be banned. This was one bad advert and the industry jumped on it to wipe it out! Well I can tell you that every tenth TV / poster advert in the Netherlands is based on female nudity. One TV station's buffer ads (their own intro slots/5 second slots before/after breaks for adverts) are nothing more than women strutting about in bikinis. For me, it's the worse form of advertising.

The only advert that has ever caught my attention as a high-quality Dutch advert was in the Heineken "Biertje?" series. (Biertje? is the Dutch way of offering a friend a beer). I think this was designed for use in NL, but may well have had a worldwide audience.

Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neoUi4poCXI

My Dutch assessment turns into an assessment of the Dutch

The Dutch course is over now, and I'm please to say I passed. I'm afraid to say however that this blog post is mainly going to be a moan about the way the school grades exam results.

The UvA grades Dutch language course exam results on the following scale:

• good
• satisfactory
• weak
• very poor

This seems very strange to me. All the grades are on the bad side of good, there's no "excellent" grade achievable, the best you can achieve regardless of your performance is "good". Personally I'd rather ditch this assessment scheme and use numbers instead, at least you know where you are with numbers. These terms are so open to interpretation and cultural differences. One American peer of mine at school really found the lack of an "excellent" mark unbelievable, and I am always very disappointed to get a "satisfactory" grade. Satisfactory for me is "only just enough to pass, but a close call", but this is the second best mark you can get at UvA.

After 72 hours of Dutch practice in only 6 weeks, this scheme seems a little unfair but this scoring scheme turns out to be typically Dutch.

To be "excellent" in the Netherlands is to be "uitstekend", literally translated into "sticking out", or in other words "freakish". To be different from everyone else, surprisingly, is frowned upon here. I'm amazed by the contradiction in Dutch society which is supposedly one of the most liberal and open-minded in the world, but yet hates to see people achieving above the norm. Doing just enough to pass has become the accepted way to be in the Netherlands. And I worry for the nation I really do. Don't they realise that the rest of the world, especially the developing world, is trying very hard to be outstanding (a.k.a competitive). I can see the Netherlands slipping down a well greased slope unless they pull their socks up, try harder and forget their inhibitions about being uitstekend.

Learning Dutch

I’ve been learning Dutch (properly putting in big effort) for nearly a year now. But it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I’ve mainly been learning at the INTT at the University of Amsterdam, which I highly recommend. They have really good courses, but they are really very intense. The evening courses consist of 3 hours of classes, two nights a week (Monday and Thursday) and then at least 6 hours homework every week for six weeks. I’ve just entered the next level, I started an Intermediate course on Monday, and I’m already exhausted. Last night I was doing homework until 9:30pm about the exciting and upbeat subject of uitvaart / begraven (basically funerals, cremation and death).

I much prefer to learn Dutch in upbeat fun ways, my teacher that gave me private lessons over the summer managed to do this by helping me to learn by listening to good Dutch music (yes, I too was amazed that it actually exists, but my teacher have managed to find some nice tunes). My favourites so far are:

Acda & de munnik - Groeten uit maaiveld
Wim Sonneveld - Aan De Amsterdamse Grachten

The book that we used this summer, and in the classes at the INTT in general is also really good, but it’s also incredibly expensive at about 70 Euros. It’s called CODE. For the absolute beginner and beginner courses we used CODE 1, for pre-intermediate course and the course I’m on now, Intermediate, we are using CODE 2. It’s a good book because it covers some many different subject areas and it comes with a CD-ROM which is really interactive. It has, per chapter, at least two videos or sound tracks, which help me to listen and understand different Dutch voices. The only area I think the book lacks in sophistication is its explanation of Dutch grammar, which is very complex compared to English.

For instance, here’s a crazy grammatical rule if ever I heard one….there are two words for “because” in Dutch, these are “want” and “omdat”. Your selection of one of these two words has a huge impact on the sentence structure and the position of the words in the sentence. Here’s an example:

Ik neem paracetamol, want ik heb hoofdpijn
I take paracetamol, because I have a headache

Ik neem paracetamol, omdat ik hoofdpijn heb
I take paracetamol, because I a headache have.

No-one, Dutch or otherwise, can explain why this is so or why if you use the two words incorrectly you are speaking complete gobble-de-gook. It’s just the way it is. And there are about 7 different words (that I have learnt so far) that have this effect.

One really nice thing about learning Dutch, however, is the simplicity of some of the words. If you have a basic vocabulary, like me, you can often guess at the meaning of other words, for example:

If you know the word god = god, and dienst= service, then you can guest godsdienst = religion
If you know the word ver = far, and kijk = look, then you can guess that verrekijkers = binoculars (far lookers!!)

Anyway, all the effort I’m making is helping with life here in general. I can mostly understand the announcements at train platforms (even if they are lacking any useful information on why the trains are delayed) and the news headlines are not as totally baffling as they once were. But still, I have a long, long way to go and it’s still exhausting trying to learn.

Top 10 things to see in Amsterdam

I’ve had quite a few friends and family visits now and I’m starting to realize that I have a few favourite places to take these tourists when they are here in Amsterdam. I thought I’d share these, in my blog, for anyone thinking of visiting soon. I’m not going to pretend to know any important dates, designers, architects or historical facts, but I can tell you what I know without ripping-off a rough guide. If you are in Amsterdam and you want these details you’ll just need to buy a proper guidebook.

So here is Sarah de Mul’s Top 10 places to see in Amsterdam (shown in an exciting top 10 count down type way):

10. Bicycles at Centraal Station
If you are arriving in the Netherlands for the first time, and you haven’t yet realized how much the Dutch rely on this cheap, environmentally-sound mode of transport, you’ll be shocked, amazed and astonished to see the multi-storey bike park located next door to Amsterdam’s central station. For many people, the Centraal Station is the starting point to their weekend in the city, so it’s a quick and easy little side-trip to go and marvel at this really very Dutch sight. Central station would itself be interesting if it wasn’t in a constant state of repair. I first came to Amsterdam nearly 5 years ago, and I’ve never been to the station at a time when at least one quarter of the station hasn’t been covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting.

9. Tuschinski Theater
This is the cinema where all the big premieres open in Amsterdam (I’m very excited to write that I saw Rowan Atkinson outside there when Mr Bean the movie opened last year). Anyway, the cinema is amazing, it’s a frighteningly extreme example of 1920s art-deco Amsterdam with twin, evil-looking, towers on the outside, and opulent red carpets and brightly painted ceilings inside. The best way to see the theater is of course to see a film, but if there isn’t anything on that you want to see, don’t be afraid to poke your head inside the foyer to see the ceiling which magically changes colour every 20 seconds.

8. The van Gogh museum I like this museum because it is not a gigantic maze of artists you’ve never heard of or art you’ve never seen before and will never see again. This is a small, single artist gallery, nicely designed, and packed with famous paintings I just wish I could take home with me. The van Gogh museum is in the middle of the Museumplein, a vast, flat grassy area, surrounded by museums (such as the Rijksmuseum), the classical music hall, and one of the only Albert Heijns open on Sundays!

7. Rembrandtplein
I guess this is the equivalent of Leicester Square in London, although the cinemas are not on the square but on a street that runs of the square (Reguliersbreestraat). The most interesting parts of Rembrandtplein are the 3D version of Rembrant’s “Nightwatch” which was created by a couple of Russian artists and placed here about 2 years ago, the large light screen (think Piccadilly Circus) and a couple of nice restaurants/bars: De Kroon (funked-up gentleman’s club) and Café Schiller, an art-deco bar next to the Hotel of the same name.

6. Flower Market The flower market is quiet small, but you will never see so many bulbs in your life again. It floats along the bank of the Singel (canal), and consists of about 20 flower stalls in a row. The prices are reasonable as compared to the UK, but obviously rather more expensive than the rest of Holland as this is catering for the tourist trade. I have bought an Amaryllis from here and it was beautiful. The market runs parallel with Amsterdam gayest street, Reguliers Dwarsstraat, which has one of my favourite restaurants on it: Rosie’s Cantina (a Mexican restaurant).




5. Dam Square
Dam square isn’t really that exciting, but it’s the closest thing to Trafalgar Square in Amsterdam. To me it feels like the heart of Amsterdam, as it lies relatively centrally between Centraal station, the red light district, Joordan and Spui. The main attractions on the square are the Koninklijk Paleis (Royal Palace) where Queen Beatrix receives foreign dignitaries, the war memorial, and a tiny plaque dedicated to Saint Nicholaas (SintaKlaas) on the North side next between the Nieuwe Kerk (new church) and Nieuwendijk. Dam square plays host to concerts on New Years and other special days, but it more often than not is smothered with rather rubbish street performers (see "Invading Holland", Invader Stu’s blog, for more info on these guys).

4. The Red Light District Day or night, Amsterdam’s red light district is fascinating. The first time you see the ladies in the window’s you can’t quite believe it and everyone I’ve shown around this area of town has been totally intrigued, despite themselves. The most interesting parts of the Red Light District to me are: the areas around the Oude Kerk, which is the weirdest contradiction I’ve ever seen (prostitutes flaunting their wares right opposite a huge church), and the narrowest lanes which are wide enough to fit only one person, but still have windows on both sides.

3. Anne Frank’s House

This museum shook me up; I felt really melancholy for a whole week afterwards, and still feel differently about the city where I now live. I read Anne’s diary at school and this house brings all that to life in a very simple, respectful way. Inside the house you learn about the Frank’s lives before the war, the business they ran and the friends they had. Then you are taken behind the bookcase into the secret Annexe and you see the tiny rooms and space they occupied for two years during WWII, before they were found.

The area where I live in Amsterdam is the neighbourhood where Anne lived before she went into hiding. Her school is in the street parallel to mine, and she bought the books in which she wrote her diaries from the book shop on the corner, which I can see from my living room window. After the tour of the Annexe it took me days to stop picturing my street as it would have been during the war, with Nazi soldiers and tanks roaming where the cyclists, trams and cars roam freely today.

2. The Begijnhof
This is an amazing, secret, world hidden right in the shopping centre of Amsterdam. Behind Spui there are beautiful old house around a very well kept “village green” that are lived in by single women. The square was once a sanctuary for Catholic nuns, and it still has a very calm atmosphere, cut off from the hustle and bustle of city life. There are two churches within the square, one is a catholic chapel, the other an English Church. The square also protects Amsterdam oldest surviving wooden house. Tours are not allowed into the Begijnhof, and it feels like a privilege to be allowed to enter there at all, so if you do go, please treat the area and its occupants with respect and minimize the photos and noise you make.

1. Canal Boat Tour.
To round it all off, or better, as a starting point for a trip to Amsterdam you must take a Amsterdam canal boat tour. One of the best boat tours leaves from the Rokin (take Tram 4 to Spui or Tram 12 to Muntplein) and is called Rondvaart. This tour takes you all around Amsterdam, the Keizergracht, Prisengracht and Herengracht, you see the 7 bridges, the blue bridge, the Ijselmeer, and lots more. It lasts about one hour and I've taken this tour about 5 times now.

It’s best not to take a tour when it’s raining as the boat windows steam up, but if you don’t have any option and you’re in Amsterdam when it’s raining, bring lots of tissues with you to wipe the windows!

After the tour follow the small street behind the Rondvaart hut passed the Diamond shops and on the right there’s a really cute little pancake house, which you need to reach buy a near vertical staircase. There’s enough seating room for about 12 people inside and each pancake is made individually by a very interesting (very Dutch) old couple. The restaurant is called “Upstairs”.


For anyone looking for a good (and cheap) weekend guide book, this is one of the best available right now:

Dutch celebrities - who are they?

I just found a Dutch Celebrity Internet Quiz and I don't know anyone on the list: http://ifarm.nl/quiz/dutch.en.html

I don't watch much Dutch TV, just a little bit, the language practice exhausts me. The only Dutch celebs I know are:

• Robert Jensen
• Ruud van Nistelrooy (Footballer, in England)
• John de Mol
• Queen Beatrix and family
• Famke Janssen (from X-Men)

Who else should I know?

As far as I can tell Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey are the most famous Celebrity Chefs here, except that bald fat guy, and I have no idea what his name is....

Things that don’t exist in Holland

This week I discovered two things, two totally different things, that just don’t exist in the Netherlands. They are:

Wedding anniversary cards to be sent within the married couple
It was my husband and my 1st wedding anniversary on Monday and I was devastated that I couldn’t buy him a “happy anniversary” card. In Holland you can only buy cards to send to the couple. To take this a few years into the future too, it seems that the Dutch don’t hold any significance for 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 year anniversaries but choose to celebrate the all too metric 12.5 years (!), 25 year and 50 year anniversaries only!!

“Cat eyes” on roads
I hadn’t noticed this before Monday when we were driving to the airport to return a hire-car in the torrential rain and thunder-storm and we could not see any of the road markings. It was then I realised that Dutch roads are all the more smoother because they don’t have cat eyes here. Someone needs to add cat-eyes to the parts-list of model building company in charge of Dutch roads.

Things that are typically Dutch

I was thinking this week about all the things, good and bad, that I’ve seen/found/used in the Netherlands and would never be able to see/find/use back home. Although you’d think that culturally the Netherlands and the UK aren’t that far apart, and that through the process of globalisation, everything is becoming the same anyway, there are still some things that are simply Dutch and you won’t find anywhere else. In my opinion, these are they:

Kaasschaaf (Cheese slice)
This is a really clever device the Dutch use everyday to ensure they get perfectly sliced thin layers of cheese for their lunch-time or breakfast bread rolls or sandwiches. It’s typically Dutch of course because it means that you take only the exact right amount of cheese, there is no room for greedily taking a slightly thicker slice of cheese, the only way to get more is to slice off a whole extra piece, but that is too obvious to people around you.

My only concern about Cheese Schaves (?) is that when you get to the end of a piece of cheese, and you’re working with just a centimetre or two of cheese before the rind, the cheese schaaf does become a bit dangerous. Many a time have I almost cheese schaafed my wrist open while trying to get that last remaining bit of cheese off the rind. This tool is in fact the ultimate suicide device.

Vla

There is no English translation for the word vla, it simply doesn’t exist in England and I have not seen it in any other country than Holland, although I expect the Belgians probably have it too. The only parallel I can draw with English stuff is to compare Vla to a slightly runny low-fat Ambrosia Devonshire custard (don’t tell my husband I said this, but it does actually taste exactly the same and I’ve just found a recipe for making it which uses custard powder as the base – he’ll be devastated http://www.typicaldutchstuff.com/vla.shtml ).

So vla has a “vague resemblance” to custard, but you can get away with eating a whole bowl of vla, by itself, for pudding and no-body will blink an eye-lid. Magic.

White Asparagus
This is another thing that I had never seen or heard of before I came to Holland (in fact everything in this list falls into that category). White asparagus is a delicacy in the Netherlands and Belgium, and when they are in season you can’t escape them in supermarkets and restaurants. They look similar to their green relatives but they are longer, much fatter and totally anaemic looking. They are white because they are deprived of sunlight when they are growing up, and from what I can tell are basically nurtured in the same way as mushrooms.

I have cooked them a couple of times and the hassle factor, compared to green asparagus, is considerable. First of all you have to peel them (I’ve actually used my cheese schaaf to do this), then you have to steam them on a bed made of their own peeled-off skins for about 15 minutes. All the recipes I’ve ever seen for these ghostly vegetables are based on, or totally limited to, butter and cheese. I still prefer the green ones.

Milk at lunch-time
This is less of a “thing” than a massive cultural difference between NL and, let’s face it, the rest of the world. In the UK you are given milk at lunch time as a child at primary school. You wouldn’t be seen dead drinking it at lunch time at secondary school. And, as an adult, milk simply isn’t available to you at a work canteen or in a restaurant. But in Holland, you are a weirdo if you don’t drink milk at lunch time, no matter what your age. My husband and his family always have a glass or mug of milk with their lunch time bread and cheese.

Even more amazing to me, however, was my first few experiences of lunch in an office canteen. The canteen sold 300ml plastic cups of milk (with foil caps) and these were the hottest selling items going. Every single (Dutch) person in the canteen bought a plastic cup of milk and it was so strange to me to see fully-grown men, often senior managers in smart suits, drinking milk in a way I had not seen since I was 11 years old. Every day I would buy a can of diet coke and for the first three weeks or so I was ridiculed for being “so American” and totally unhealthy, or asked “Don’t you drink milk? Don’t you like it?” To answer that question again: yes I do drink milk, but through eating my breakfast cereals every morning. It seems Dutch people don’t eat breakfast cereals, they normally eat bread so the first milk they get in a day is at lunch.

Hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles)
For all the English-speakers reading this blog, the next few lines are basically referring to the chocolate sprinkles, or hundreds-and-thousands, that are, in most countries, the reserve of cakes, pastries or donuts.

Who in their right mind would also sprinkle hundreds-and-thousands onto buttered bread?

…the Dutch that’s who.

Extraordinarily, there’s a whole food industry built up around these polished up little mouse poops. Unilever makes them, there’s a premium brand “De Ruijter” and all the supermarkets sell their own brands too. Unlike buying breakfast cereals, you can buy family-sized boxes of hagelslag, which last my two-person household at least six months. And you can even buy mini-boxes of De Ruijter hagelslag, which are just the right size to sprinkle on one slice of bread. These mini-versions are available in multi-packs in supermarkets and sold separately in work canteens and hotels.

But hagelslagen(/s) aren’t limited only to the chocolate, shiny mouse poo shaped variety. There must be getting on for about thirty variations on the theme, including:

• Bigger, flat, chocolate flakes
• Dark chocolate sprinkles (and flakes)
• Fruit sprinkles (pictured right - not sure how much actual fruit they contain)
• Aniseed sprinkles (which are white with little tails and called mice)
• Powered aniseed sprinkles (which are the mice, but ground and called stamped on mice)
• Pink mice (which are a special treat reserved only for the birth of a baby girl)
• Blue mice (reserved for the birth of a baby boy)
• Easter sprinkles (in spring-like colours)
• Etc, etc

Brand new motorways, major roads and sign posts
This is, again, less of a thing, than an observation and something I wondering whether any other expat in Holland has noticed too. All the motorways and major roads here look like they are no older than 10 years old. All the road surfaces are immaculate, all the paintwork is perfectly neat and still bright white. All the road signs are hung above the motorways in exactly the same way, throughout the entire country (the metal construction on which they are placed is identical where-ever you go). The road signs within cities, and those for bicyclists, are also placed on posts that are exactly the same where-ever you are in Holland. The signs for cars are hung on blue and white painted posts (immaculate as if they were painted yesterday) and for cyclist these post are red and white.

It is as if one single company has spent the last decade building all the roads, using an unlimited supply of exactly the same parts. The roads are built as if they were made by some model-building enthusiast playing with an entire country.

If you are an expat like me, look out for this and marvel at how it’s possible and the huge amount of money it must have taken. If you’re Dutch, open your eyes to this rather unique phenomenon and let me know if you think there is any other evidence that you have been living in a model country all your life (it reminds me of that film “the Truman show”). The only problem I can see it that in the next 10 years or so every major road in Holland is going need replacing. What a job. I’m not sure I want to be here then.

……………

There are other things that to me are “typically” Dutch, but I’ve been writing this post for about an hour and it’s getting too long. The other things include: Beschuit (cheapo breakfast biscuits used to celebrate birthdays), Slingers (cheapo party decorations, used on birthdays), front door signs (everyone has their name on their front door), clogs (need I go on)…

Top 10 things I love about living in Amsterdam

I realise that my last two posts about my life in Amsterdam were a bit on the negative side. I feel bad about that as generally I'm really enjoying living in Holland, and this captial city is beautiful. So, to even things out a bit, here is a Top 10 list of list that I love about living in Amsterdam.

1. The Olde Worlde Architecture - Canal Houses
Amsterdam has the most beautiful lines of canal houses. To me they all look like dolls houses, with lots of big windows, different coloured brickwork, and beautiful gables. Because all these building are built on swamp they have long wooden stakes as foundations which are supposed to hold them upright. But given centuries of earth settlement many of the houses now lean incredibly, either against each other, or more startlingly into the street.

2. Terrace Culture
Dutch bars and cafes, much like those in Italy, love making the most of their wide streets and squares by casting their outdoor furniture into the sun. In Amsterdam this appears to happen in March, as soon as the first glimmer of sunshine pokes through the clouds. Once it's warm enough to sit there without your winter coat on it's one of the most relaxing ways to enjoy an evening, glass of Rose or Biertje in hand.

3. Florists on every street corner
This is no exaggeration. The Dutch grow flowers for export, but they must sell almost as many at home. Every single street will have at least one florist, bloemenwinkel or bloemenkunst. One single 100m stretch of street around the corner from where I live has 3 huge florists, and a flower stall. Then of course there's the actual flower market in town, which is a line of about 20 big stalls along a canal. All this flower trading makes for even prettier streets, and means that both my husband and I are more likely to buy flowers for the house.

4. It stays lighter later
Tonight I will get nearly an hour of extra sunshine because I live in Amsterdam rather than London. The sun sets at 21:43 local time in Amsterdam, and 20:53 local time in London. This is because The Netherlands is almost as west as you can get within the Central European Time zone, and then if you cross a few kilometres into England you're in the Greenwich zone.

5. Italian Ice Cream Bars
Not only do the Dutch have the Italian-style terrace culture, they have also taken up their love for icecream. There are two ice-cream bars close to where I live, and they both sell delicious home-made icecream. I recommend you try them both:

• Pisa Ijs - Scheldeplein
• IJssalon Venetië - Scheldestraat

6. Canals
There are more canals in Amsterdam than in the whole of Venice, and in my opinion the Dutch ones are much prettier. I'd love to buy a little canal boat for put-putting away sunny afternoons with a picnick and drinks. For the moment though, I love just being able to walk over the pretty bridges and take in deep breathes of that great canal water air. It's almost as good as being by the sea. Seriously!

7. Cycling is so easy
The Dutch don't realise how lucky they are with this one. I think, in a way, they look down on the rest of the world for not cycling. But, the fact that the country is completely and utterly flat makes for the easiest cycling tracks in the world. There's almost no need for gears here. My "Omafiets" (see picture) has three gears, but I rarely use them, except if I'm trying to conquer a big canal bridge! Cycling here is not challenging, it's relaxing, cheap and quick. It's the best way of getting across Amsterdam, that is if it's not raining.

8. Koekje Erbij?
It's incredibly offensive to serve coffee or tea in Holland without a "koekje erbij". This means that every warm drink you receive comes with some sort of small biscuit or cookie (the word cookie actually comes from the Dutch koekje, meaning "little cake"). Usually the biscuits are based on Speculaas (ginger biscuit) but once in a while you'll get a mini-stroopwafel. Stroopwafels can be found in Starbucks in other countries, but they come from Holland. The full-sized version is designed to fit over the top of your coffee cup so that the caramel inside melts. I actually hate caramel, except for in Stroopwafels. You can buy freshly made stroopwafels from a stall in the middle of the Albert Cuypmarkt (market) in Amsterdam.

9. Car sharing schemes
This is a brilliant invention and should be replicated in all large cities around the world. My husband and I are subscribed to Greenwheels. We pay a flat subscription fee of about 12 euros a month and then we pay per hour and kilometre that we use the car. There are greenwheels cars all around our neighbourhood in Amsterdam, the closest is about 80 metres away. All the cars are brand new - the company just replaced the fleet with the car that generates the least CO2 emissions, the Peugeot 107. Not only does this scheme save the environment, but it saves us a fortune too. We don't own a car now, so we don't have to pay for car insurance, parking permits, petrol, MOTs or any of those things which back in England were a real drain on cash.

10. Writing out addresses
Okay, this one may seem to be really silly, but it's so simple that I had to mention it. This may only apply to the difference between Dutch and English addresses, but it could be the case elsewhere too. Or maybe it's just England that is completely inefficient in creating postal addresses. Here's an example:

An address in England (6 lines):
12 The High Street
Part of the city
The city
The county
The postcode
England

An address in the Netherlands (3 lines):
Hogestraat 12
The Postcode, The City
The Netherlands

See what I mean?