Stuff Dutch People Like

Have seen my friend?

For a nation which often insists on “normal” behaviour and the following of rules, Queen’s Day is truly nothing of the sort. It’s one day of the year where the Dutch break all their self-imposed rules and let loose in a way that puts all other nations to shame. To say that Queen’s Day is the world’s greatest party is nothing short of an understatement. Put concisely as possible: Queen’s Day is epic.

If you haven’t experience the pure joviality and joy of a city flooded in Orange, I dare say you haven’t truly lived. Trying to explain Queen’s Day to someone who hasn’t experienced it is like trying to explain where babies are from to a 4-year-old. Bells sound, bands play, children perform, deals are made, bargains are found, drinks are consumed, and above all, love, laughter and smiles abound.

For a nation often divided, Queen’s Day is the great equalizer. Unlike other countries’ national day’s, April 30th is not about in-your-face patriotism or royal worshipping, it’s about oneness. Everyone can participate, everyone can partake, everyone can carve out their own way to celebrate, and everyone can do so with the simple act of throwing on an orange t-shirt and joining the gezellig crowds.

Long live the Queen!

This year, the party will kick it up a notch as over 1 million visitors will join the 1 million residents to celebrate and mark the end of Queen Beatrix’s 33 year reign and the investiture of the new King Willem-Alexander. For ever more “Queen’s Day” will be a thing of the past and Koningsdag or King’s Day will be celebrated henceforth on the 27th of April (Willem’s birthday).

Is it just me that thinks it is suspiciously convenient that the King’s birthday happens to fall only 3 days away from the beloved April 30th? I don’t want to invoke a national “birther” incident here, but has someone done the research? The only logical explanation is that having a birthday at the end of April must have been a key requirement for King-dom. What would have happened if poor Willy had been a dreamy Pisces born in the gloom and doom of a cold Dutch February? Would we have been forever resigned to celebrate while shivering in the streets?

Luckily for us, April 26th will do the trick, however the transfer from Queen’s to King’s Day does lay ground for 3 pressing points which simply cannot be ignored:

1) How on earth are the drag queen’s going to celebrate King’s Day!? It must be said that dressing up as King Willem just won’t be as fun! (Unless he decides to get into big hats in a big way!) The spectacle on the streets will never be the same.

2) Koningsdags doesn’t quite roll off the tongue as nicely as Koninginnedag does. Those extra sneaky vowels make all the difference! How else can we foreigners impress you Dutchies with our skillful pronunciations? I suppose its back to Scheveningen as the shibboleth of choice.

3. The new song for the King is, well, a total farce! It’s just so hard to choose the best part of the song. The Disney-ish melody? The random mention of stamppot?? Or perhaps the various rap interludes?

Does it pain me that I will not be in town to celebrate this year’s festivities? Immensely! After celebrating seven successive Queen’s Days in my adoptive country I can tell you that on the 30th of April my blood runs as Orange as the next Dutchie’s does. But the beauty of Queen’s Day is that it as cliché as it sounds, it is a day you never forget. This Tuesday I promise to raise a bubbly orange Fanta to you my oranjegekte friends and toast to all the QD’s of the past and our KD’s of the future!

Queen’s Day: often a blur. Can you spot me?

There is no denying that Dutch people like to do things the natural way, the “real way” and the “normal” way. In fact, I would say the majority of them are downright obsessed with making sure their behavior (oh and the behavior of others) follows some unwritten rules of normalcy and realness. So it should come as no surprise that this preoccupation with “keeping it real” extends to all acts – birth being no exception!

“Welcome to the world!”

Now readers, I can see you scratching your heads and asking aloud how am I qualified to make such remarks about birth in the lowlands? Well, you may have noticed my absence the last few months and I am proud to say that although I haven’t been busy writing, I have been busy making and birthing a beautiful being – which I might add is no small feat . Yes, for you readers who affectionately refer to me as “dude” or “that funny guy from SDPL” I hate to disappoint, but I suspect my intimate knowledge of birthing will finally convince you of my femininity.

The good news is that I am back and my 3-month bundle of joy (milk, spit, gas and poop included) is only slightly annoyed that I am ignoring her “Where are you momma?” grunts and squeals as I type this. 2013 is going to be a very, very exciting year for SDPL – we have some BIG exciting plans, and I must say I’ve never been more excited to rag on about the Dutch. But, back to the subject at hand, natural births…

8 years ago I looked across a plate of bitterballen in a smokey Dutch brown cafe and I told my then-boyfriend that “Yes, I’d be happy to live here” but that “No, I would never EVER (repeat EVER EVER) give birth in this country”. I suppose the expression “never, say never” has its merits.

“Should we keep her?”

I just couldn’t get by head around the Dutch you-must-birth- in-your-bathtub-at-home-while-burning-sage attitude. My first huisarts (GP) seems to be obsessed with the notion; babbling on about her upcoming delivery and how she would be in her own home, with candles, and her favourite music and just couldn’t wait to be able to be all drug-free, naked and gezellig. My early-twenty-slightly-judgmental-north-american-self could only muster the thought “Oh Christ, is she part of some Dutch hippy commune?! Time for a new doctor!”

After moving neighbourhoods (and doctors) I realized that she was (most likely) not part of a commune but just shared the average Dutch opinion, and that of my new doctor, that birth “was not a medical condition” and as such, did not require medical interventions (or facilities).

Dutchies are pioneers of the modern-day home birth. Although numbers have decreased over time (and continue to) a hefty 25% of all births in the Netherlands are done at home (with another sizable percentage attempting to do so). Compare this to the less than 2% in France, Belgium, Germany and the UK and you can see why this is indeed a very Dutch thing.

“Don’t do drugs”

Of course doing so in the comforts (hah!) of home also implies doing so sans body-numbing and mind-altering substances. Is that a gasp I hear from my American readers? Yes sir – Dutch woman, and their child-bearing hips are notorious for drug-free births. Even in hospital, only 6% of Dutch women have an epidural. Across the Atlantic things seem to be precisely the opposite – a recent study in the journal Anesthesiology, states that only 6 percent of women in large hospitals in the US opted for drug-free births.

While pregnant I had a lot of time to ponder the “why” of this situation: Were Dutch women genetically superior? Did they just not feel the pain like the rest of of us? Had all that bread and cheese and drop gone to their heads? Were they seriously just tougher? Was it all their free time to prepare? And what precisely were they trying to prove anyways? After speaking to a fair many, I realized the truth was they just weren’t all that scared or bothered by it (the pain that is), and rationally accepted it to be a natural part of the package. The very direct Dutch folder given to me by my midwife summed up the attitude best “Giving birth hurts. Pain is a normal part of birth, so expect it”.

Flash forward 8 years and you will find me (equipped with a fabulous doula, super competent midwives, and a supportive hubby) sitting in a hypno-birthing class in the middle of Amsterdam determined to have a natural, drug-free birth à la Dutch (but also realizing that sheer determination sometimes isn’t enough). Of course, even for the sake of this blog post, I couldn’t quite follow through all the way and give birth at home (sorry folks, I suppose I’ll never be that Dutch). But I did follow through on the natural part and I will say it was one of my proudest moments and biggest accomplishments*, and one I don’t think I would have come by if it weren’t for YOU…the Dutchies and your obsession with the normal.

*(Pregnancy and birth in any shape, size or form is a kick-ass accomplishment – no matter how or where you birth!)

Living in a postcard is swell

After 2 years of living in the lowlands our expat-provided accommodation ran out, so we naively embarked on a Amsterdam house-hunting mission. Even though it was a good 6 years ago, I remember it well, as we visited not 5 or 6 potential apartments – but a whopping 35 in total! The whole process felt a bit like the story of “The Three Bears”: too small, too big, too hard, too soft – you get the idea.

Potential apartment #34 was one of my favourites, located on a picturesque Amsterdam canal it was like stepping into a postcard. True it was cozy (read: incredibly small), slightly damp (read: major water leakage throughout the house) and inconveniently spread out across 3 tiny levels, but it fit my new-in-Amsterdam romanticism and home-finding desperation well.

What, no harness?!

I could deal with the neighbour’s lack of curtains and the stinky herring stall below. The only downfall that I couldn’t quite come to terms with was the stairs, which could perhaps be better referred to as “the near-vertical-mountain-requiring-daily-scaling“. They resembled a treacherous ladder of sorts that required the use of all fours and the maintenance of ninja-like precision balance. Was this some sort of circus-performers house? Were mere mortals suppose to make this daily climb? 

Better yet, these terrifying stairs are often accompanied by a ceiling  full of precariously dangling bicycles and strollers roped up on some hand-made elaborate rigging system. A great example once again of Dutch ingenuity, but not such a comforting sight if you start to contemplate the impeding snap of one single rope.

The trek upwards on these Dutch stairs is no doubt a mission, but the trek downwards is where things start to get really interesting. Not only are you dealing with an impossibly steep descent, but the teeny-tiny stairs don’t even allow for a full footstep (huh, but what about the Dutch’s massive feet??), and thus must be maneuvered in an awkward sidewise motion. Sometimes, for fun, these sneaky Dutch architects decided to throw in a curve, adding yet another element of danger.  It is no wonder the Dutch word for stairs is trap! How aptly named, for they are a trap indeed, of the death-trap variety!!

Look Mom, no hands!

Of course, I later found out that such staircases were not so unusual in the Netherlands and were characteristic of the 17th-century canal houses. However, you may have also asked yourself at some point, why oh why did such awkward stairwells exist?? Well, the answer is painfully simple and again (surprise, surprise can be rooted in Dutch people’s constant quest for saving a buck. Back in the day, canal houses were taxed on their width, meaning that the wider your house, the more taxes you paid. How could a clever Dutchie circumvent such an issue? Easy, simply build yourself a very tall, very skinny house which requires a crazy-ass set of stairs.

Needless to say, we didn’t end up of taking the canal view apartment. I figured I just didn’t have the Dutch-bike-balancing-circus-act qualities required for such a daily feat. We luckily settled on apartment #35 – where we’ve happily resided (with the Dutch luxury of an elevator) the last 6 years!