Drempels:
citycat:
Citycat, your mistake (understandably ) is that you approached this with a British attitude. The Dutch do not do subtle, apologetic or kind. You should have walked up to however is on the goods in desk, and stated in a no nonsense manner that there are a number of cars parked in the wrong place, and that they are in your way, and that untill they get moved, you can’t. Make it clear that the cars are where they should not be, and make it clear that this is not your fault, or problem to solve. The Dutch are a very direct people. Sorry is a word not often used in the Dutch vocabulary.Yes, I get where you’re coming from. I was trying the polite but ‘direct’ approach but instead of taking the easy option of moving the car maybe to the next bay along just so it didn’t infringe on my maneuvre and we could both get on with our day, he just seemed intent on winding me up to the point where my tongue is only just starting to heal up from the biting I had to do. He even made hard work for himself by spending several minutes moving plastic bollards about instead of just shifting the car a few feet.
In the first week of my arrival into the Netherlands, I was handed this book by my wife and told to read it from cover to cover. I’m still having to refer to it from time to time.
Today was a big day in the Netherlands calander with the arrival of Sinterklaas and his Black Pete helpers, who are white people who have blacked up their faces like the Black & White Minstrels. If anybody has seen this event, you’ll know that the celebration of black slavery is the first thing that comes to mind. Yet the Dutch can’t understand why we should think this. They are just his xmas helpers.
Leave your British sensibilities at home then. If you want to live in NL, live there, don’t be like you walked from Calais. I spent a lot of my childhood there, I’m half Dutch, and we always had a moaner who hated NL in every class. They drove me crazy, always crying about something or other.
Holland isn’t Paradise, get over it.
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Blimey, who shook your tree? I never said I hate NL or that I am moaning about it. I enjoy life here. I just implied that the culture is a bit different and I’m still getting used to it.
Talk about touchy !
If it makes you feel better, we also have this book. We are just as strange too 
