I already said I was coming – in the comment section of the first post you made about it. And, yes, yes, I will make a punch, a punch so good you’ll have no control over how much you consume of it.
Next – I don’t understand why, Mike, that you’d want to make Insult visible on Facebook. If you wanted everyone on Facebook to see an Insult post, wouldn’t you just post on Facebook? Eh, I just need to make all of my posts private.
I am sitting in Schiphol, waiting to get on a flight to come home. As I was sitting on a tall stool in a horrible, fluorescent-lighted airport cafe, listening to Michael Buble covers of recent pop songs, and considering the food and drink choices available (hot cheese roll…or hot sausage roll? Shitty coffee or Heineken?), I thought this would be an appropriate time to list a handful of things I have come to dislike about the Netherlands.
1.) The buildings are ugly and full of bright, fluorescent lights.
2.) The whole country is essentially a massive, drained swamp. I like rain, and I like fog, but it’s when it’s mixed with fresh, maybe salty sea air – that makes it refreshing. The Netherlands gets a sort of thick, fetid foggy wetness which I find irritating.
3.) The Dutch really don’t care about what they eat or drink food. They just don’t.
3a.) Lunch, for them, is slices of supermarket bread with stuff on it. The stuff might be salami, it might be egg salad, it might be chocolate sprinkles or crushed up licorice candies, it doesn’t really matter – they just butter a slice of bread, grab whatever they have on hand, put it on the bread, and shove it into their mouths. Maybe, if they’re feeling fancy, they’ll make a Toastie by putting two slices of bread together with stuff in between, and shoving that in a panini press.
3b.) They don’t really care about beer, either. They just want to drink Heineken. If they want something different, they will drink Heineken Extra Cold, which is Heineken, but served slightly colder than regular Heineken.
3c.) They drink milk with every meal. This may be a reason for #8.
3d.) Summing up, the place is a torture chamber for my digestive tract.
4.) The accent.
5.) No one uses napkins at meals. They don’t even put them out, unless you ask for them. They aren’t visibly dirty and covered in grease stains, though – I can’t really figure out why, because they eat frequently with their hands.
6.) I’d rather walk or drive than bike – bicycling hurts my balls. The Dutch love biking.
7.) What the fuck is the point of a comforter? Why do people prefer a single comforter over an array of sheets and blankets? Sheets and blankets provide you with the ability to control the temperature in the bed, by stripping something off if you’re too hot. Why limit yourself to a single piece of covering that is likely to be either too hot or too cold? This is more of complaint about Europe, than specifically about the Dutch, but, still.
8.) They’re all too fucking tall. I’m not tall, but I’m above average height in the US. In the Netherlands, I’ve been in rooms with 6 other people where I’m the shortest person there, and everyone else is like 6’6. I don’t like it.
9.) I’ve heard the same 15 damn Michael Buble covers of Coldplay and Pharrell’s Frontin’ in every single building I’ve walked into in the Netherlands since last Saturday.
St00n