The cheese slicer is here, but do you want to be recognized as a Dutch person? Better not.

Princess Máxima said in 2007 that “the Dutch do not exist.” It was a statement that was hard to disagree with, but which nevertheless led to heavy criticism, perhaps because it was made by someone who was not born in the Netherlands. After all, a Dutch person decides for himself whether he exists or not.

I also don’t know who or what a Dutch person is. What I do know is this: after almost forty years of holiday experience, with Dutch and non-Dutch people, with loved ones, friends and families: the Dutch are the most Dutch holidaymakers. The conflicting desires that we usually ignore or suppress – especially the need for comfort versus our adventurous spirit – are revealed during the holiday.

Holidays are of vital importance to us. Figures from the Central Bureau of Statistics show that 80% of Dutch people over the age of 15 went on holiday 2.5 times last year, that is 37.6 million holidays. Some additional facts: We prefer to travel abroad rather than in the Netherlands, and summer holidays are particularly popular. We prefer to travel by car, because travelling with the whole family is expensive. France and Germany are the most popular destinations, but every year there is also a dark horse, such as Albania, which has become a favourite destination after being there in 2022. Who is the mole? It has been recorded.

We want to go somewhere where it's “different,” but it shouldn't be so different that we get confused or overeat.

The fact that vacation is a paradoxical phenomenon for us is evident from the fact that we like to take a little bit of “home” with us: we want to go somewhere where it is “different”, but it should not be so different that we become confused or overfed. As far as I know, the Dutch are quite unique in this. My grandfather had a box full of potatoes in the summer, because he could not do without his trusty potatoes.

Nowadays we take other products and things with us. Like a cheese slicer. (Can't we rely on foreign cheese slicers?) We also like to bring cheese, Gouda or Edam. We have board games with us, don't bother man, Rummikop, settlers of Catan. Liquorice is also a must, and hard to get from abroad, just like chocolate sprinkles. It's hard to find exact numbers on these customs, but I've never seen a non-Dutch do it, except for my Italian aunt who always travels with sea salt in her bag, and an Italian friend who never leaves her homeland without her flask.

weather scolding

How attached we are to our habits becomes most apparent when we try to break free from them—it is precisely this half-hearted attempt at breaking free that characterizes us. We release the umbilical cord that endlessly connects us to our homeland, but we dare not sever it.

Once we cross national borders, a complex game begins. A game between the feeling of solidarity and the spirit of competition. Between the desire to be Dutch among the Dutch on the one hand, and the desire to be a unique adventurer on the other. And of course this otherness can only be fought for if it is set against the rest of the “normal” Dutch people.

This impulse is strongly reflected in our relationship to the weather at a holiday destination. A few years ago I was sitting on the balcony, and a couple was sitting nearby. Their pale legs and wide khaki trousers left four options open: Germany, the USA, England, and the Netherlands. They said nothing to each other. The USA had withdrawn. He had a map of the city in his back pocket: no Britons, either, who groped their way (and got lost). They were sitting outside the umbrella canopy, a few feet away from me. It is very important for a Dutch tourist to return home with a “tan” to prove that he has traveled and knows what fun is. She showed him her phone. She recognized the outline of the Netherlands on her phone. A weather app. “What great weather there,” the man said excitedly.

Of all the characteristics of a Dutchman on vacation, perhaps the most remarkable is the joy he feels when he discovers that the weather is bad in his home country. The man is sitting on a balcony in Florence with his wife, the weather is beautiful, he has ordered what he wanted to order – why wasn’t that enough? Why do we need this competitive element?

I think this has historical roots: the traditional way the Dutch have acquired wealth is by trading with their peers. It is a small country. Consultation has always been necessary. Wealth has been built in the eyes of others, and therefore measured in the eyes of others. This is different in large, sprawling countries; in China or the United States, great wealth is often a solitary triumph, a solitary destiny. JP Morgan, Ford, Elon Musk – satellites adrift, out of touch with the world they were once born into. The Dutch fight each other and emerge victorious. This Dutchman has emerged victorious in this Italian square (by himself): he made a good choice to leave now, his investment was the right one. He bought the sun, and it did not turn out to be a bad purchase.

We know we will be serving you again soon.

The Dutch also need a weather app to see for themselves that they are really far away. The idea of ​​complete freedom – that we can stop working and settle permanently in Italy – is too big for us. We fail to see that, by comparing our stay here specifically to life in the Netherlands, we are still almost at home.

in phenomenology of mind (1807) The German philosopher Hegel describes the servant’s desire as always stronger than his master’s satisfaction. On holiday, we flirt with the master’s attitude towards life: we sit contentedly in the sun, order drinks and food and do as little as possible. But we dare not surrender completely to this feeling of life. We know that we will soon be servants again. So we keep looking around to make sure that we will always be at least less servants than our neighbors. We enjoy our holiday, through our neighbor in the rain. So it is of utmost importance that he sits in the rain. Of course, other nationalities also suffer from the feeling of being enslaved by everyday life, but in my experience, it is the Dutch who turn it into mutual competition.

Cookies…

We prefer not to be immediately recognized as Dutch abroad. No matter what company I traveled with, the reaction was always the same when a Dutch conversation was intercepted, which can always happen, because the Dutch go on holiday everywhere. We nudged each other and said: “Shhh… Dutch people.” Such an unplanned encounter is an unwelcome encounter with Dutch nationality, which for some reason seems very awkward as a random part of the conversation you overhear.

There are great threads on Reddit chronicling such excerpts. Some examples: “When my husband and I went on our honeymoon to Iceland a few years ago, the first Dutch thing we heard was ‘6 eggs for 4 euros??!!’” or: “In a small square in Xi’an.” China: “Nice guy, those fried noodles.” The confrontation is painful because it triggers the fear that you too will say such stupid things, and that you are completely Dutch.

The Dutch person you meet abroad is a mirror. If we are recognised as Dutch, it often feels like a deception, a failure, a defeat.

the magazine research Posted tips to prevent others from reading that you are a Dutch person on holiday. Tip 1: “Don’t sit in a restaurant at six o’clock.” 2: “Don’t ride the big tour bus.” 3: “Put aside your cheap mood and leave a tip.” 4: “Don’t eat a homemade sandwich on your day trip.” What do these four tips have in common? They all revolve around behaviors related to comfort. We go on holiday to “escape” our daily lives and all the predictability that comes with it, but we can’t or don’t want to completely get away from the benefits of that predictability, the fun habits, and the sense of order when we are abroad.

On an adventure with like-minded people

By name, the Dutch go on holiday on an adventure and want to discover new things. This is also reflected in their choice of destination. “The Dutch want to feel like they are discovering something for themselves, so they look for new sights,” said Tessa Anne de Steeg, a tourism orientation researcher, in an interview with NOS. That’s why the Dutch like to go to popular holiday destinations, but they don’t visit the most popular city or region within those national borders. This phenomenon is called “the detour”: tourism, but in a roundabout way. Anne de Steeg discovered a typical Dutch contradiction in her research: “We want to avoid the crowds, but on the other hand, we also enjoy visiting the Dutch.” Many families travel with other families, friends travel with friends, and acquaintances with acquaintances, “as long as they are like-minded people.” In short, we want to go on adventures with others, provided that the others are like us.

Once we find these like-minded people, we are more than happy to join the Dutch group. The result is a cluster. Groups of Dutch people living abroad who stick together and form increasingly larger groups. This is usually a loud event. Our loudness was cited as one of the most negative traits of Dutch people in the international image survey of the Netherlands conducted by the Dutch Tourism and Convention Bureau (NBTC) in 2012, in which 11,000 people were surveyed. “A rather loud group dynamic arises as soon as the Dutch cross the border,” Marinel Gerritsen, professor emeritus of intercultural business communication at Radboud University, told The Local in an interview. research“Then we will act more Dutch than we do when we are at home.”

The Dutchman may not be there, but the Dutchman on holiday might be. Millions of Dutch people return from abroad every year, bringing with them stories and memories. But when you zoom them out, patterns emerge that reveal something about who we hope to be, who we are when no one is looking – especially abroad, surrounded by strangers, clinging to “home”. We leave but take things from home with us. We want to go on an adventure, but with like-minded people. We hope for silence, but we start to speak louder. We want to remain invisible, so we pay more attention to whether we will meet other Dutch people. And when we return from holiday, we all make the same joke: that we are already ready to go on holiday again.

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