{"id":898,"date":"2008-05-31T20:34:31","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T18:34:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/archives\/898"},"modified":"2010-05-31T23:40:46","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T21:40:46","slug":"stuff-dutchies-like","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/898","title":{"rendered":"Stuff Dutchies Like"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Correr Es Mi Destino<\/a>, fellow expat Zhu wrote about Stuff Canadians Like<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 She is sort of the opposite of me, having gone from Europe to Canada and having to get used to my country’s customs and weird ways.\u00a0\u00a0 I have to admit, I like pretty much everything she listed.<\/p>\n

It made me think of what would be on a list of Stuff Dutchies Like, so here it is…<\/p>\n

1. DROP
\n<\/strong>\"drop\"<\/a> In Canada we know this stuff as Licorice and we usually eat it in the red variety like Twizzlers<\/a>.\u00a0 Here in the Netherlands Drop<\/a> is a favorite among all snacks.\u00a0 Personally I think it tastes like ass.\u00a0\u00a0 Imagine the taste of black jelly beans or the black licorice we get in Canada only twice as rank.\u00a0\u00a0 There are many Dutchies who would argue with me though and swear it’s orgasm in a bag.\u00a0 I think they are clearly mistaken, I mean… there’s not even any chocolate in it!<\/p>\n

2. Football
\n<\/strong>\"feyenoord\"<\/a> Not American football, pretty sure there aren’t a lot of Dutchies into that.\u00a0 I mean Soccer.\u00a0 The Dutch live, sleep, eat and breathe the stuff.\u00a0\u00a0 The locals here in Rotterdam are completely obsessed with Feyenoord<\/a>, which is our local team.\u00a0\u00a0 The football thing is kind of infectious though and even I have found myself watching games and cheering during the World Cup.\u00a0 It’s always short lived though, once I realize I could have been watching Grey’s Anatomy instead.<\/p>\n

3. Bicycles<\/strong>
\n\"omafiets\"<\/a> The people here in the Netherlands love their bicycles so much that often the lock they buy to protect it costs more than the bike itself.\u00a0\u00a0 There is so much bicycle theft here (between 50,000 – 80,000 bicycles per year) that some cities have even set up programs where you can ‘share’ bicycles.\u00a0 You pick a bike up in one location, ride it to where you are going and leave it at another designated location nearby.\u00a0 If you haven’t had at least one bike stolen you just aren’t considered to be Dutch.\u00a0 I’ve never had a bike stolen but that’s probably because mine has only been out of the basement about 2-3 times.\u00a0 The Dutch get a lot of pleasure out of biking, but all I got was a sore ass.\u00a0 That may have something to do with it being twice the size of theirs.<\/p>\n

4. Flowers<\/strong>
\n\"tulips\"<\/a>This is one love that I share with the people here, or rather, one that has rubbed off on me.\u00a0 They LOVE flowers!\u00a0 Everyone has flowers and plants all throughout their homes.\u00a0 Everywhere you look there’s flowers in people’s gardens or growing wild.\u00a0 It’s really beautiful.\u00a0\u00a0 The good thing is that flowers aren’t nearly as expensive here as in Canada.\u00a0\u00a0 So my hubby can pick me up flowers anytime without having to spend a fortune.\u00a0\u00a0 I remember when I lived back home flowers were strictly a special occasion thing, now I get them all the time!<\/p>\n

5. Fierljeppen<\/strong>
\n\"fier\"<\/a>Ok so I’m pretty sure this isn’t a country-wide thing but I had to add it because the Friesians are Dutch and they love it so it still counts!\u00a0 Plus, I saw it on TV once and thought it was wild and wanted to add it.\u00a0\u00a0 Fierljeppen<\/a> is this crazy-ass sport where people shimmy up this long pole while trying to stop it from tipping over.\u00a0 This takes place over a body of water and in the end the pole tips and they land on the other side.\u00a0\u00a0 Obviously, I’m crap at explaining it since I’ve only seen it on TV once but here is a video<\/a> so you can see it for yourself.\u00a0 This is the current record holder, I think.<\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n


\n6. Herring<\/strong>
\n\"haring\"<\/a>Sweet Jesus, the herring stalls.\u00a0 Whenever I see them I cringe because it’s just so incredibly foul.\u00a0 In all honesty I have no idea what they do with this herring, but I believe it’s pickled.\u00a0 Don’t quote me on that though.\u00a0\u00a0 Anyhow, it looks like just a dead fish on a plate covered in onions.\u00a0 The Dutch just pick it up by the tail, tilt their heads back and DOWN THE FRIGGIN HATCH!\u00a0 I’ve never seen anything like it.\u00a0 They look like sea lions or something, it’s gross.\u00a0\u00a0 Some try to do it the human way and put the fish in a bun and then hide it with a mountain of onions, but really, it’s like a wino putting the bottle in a paper bag.\u00a0\u00a0 Everyone still knows what they are eating.<\/p>\n

There’s heaps more things that the Dutch like but I’ll save them for later.\u00a0 I’d hate to let out all their weirdness in one go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Correr Es Mi Destino, fellow expat Zhu wrote about Stuff Canadians Like.\u00a0\u00a0 She is sort of the opposite of me, having gone from Europe to Canada and having to get used to my country’s customs and weird ways.\u00a0\u00a0 I have to admit, I like pretty much everything she listed. It made me think of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[54,87,33,132],"class_list":["post-898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","tag-dutch","tag-food","tag-netherlands","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=898"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5156,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/898\/revisions\/5156"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}