| I don't feel particularly badly treated. Things like the fuck-you are peculiarly Dutch. The 50 euro note incident is comical because there are hundreds of ways to handle large notes, it's a problem the whole world has. It's not unique to the Dutch shop to find it annoying. The Dutch shop response is a bit more unique. The restaurant thing I should have been clearer. It was a repeated experience I and others shared. Not 45min before closing time: 45min before kitchen closing time. If the staff just ignore you, until the kitchen closes they can close up faster. The premis/registration things you also misunderstand me. The problem is that Dutch officialdom is incredibly complex. Many other expats told us of the experience I relate here, you ring to ask a question and get a bad answer, if you ring back 20 minutes later you get a good one. It's a notorious problem many expatriates get: there's one form, it's actually all 26 different forms stapled together and you have to find the one page which applies to you, in the set. The funny thing is that the south Amsterdam registration office even gives you a booklet whose opening phrases are "yes, we do paperwork very differently here. Expect to get a lot of this" All cultures have their quirks. My Dutch friends and longterm resident non Dutch shrug, and accept these things. The childcare thing is worrying. It has huge assumptions, like the premise they will learn bad Dutch. Really? So the Dutch grandma who lived in Jakarta All those years ago being raised by Indonesians... she learned bad Dutch? And, there's a reason immigrants work in childcare which needs to be seen too: if you want echte-dutch language and culture in childcare you have to pay better) Australia is far from perfect. I'm not saying we do it better or the French do it better or anything. I'm just saying the Dutch have their quirks and institutional racism of a kind, is one of them. Along with a very new yorker fuck-you attitude. But maybe you're right, it's an Amsterdam thing. I'm told the south (maastricht) is very different and they certainly dress differently from what I saw. Somebody said it's like catholic protestant a bit too: old Dutch catholic money down south, old Dutch protestant money up north. |