Dutch gin (genever) can blow your head off. Dutch beer (bier; pils) is sweet, tasty and strong. Ordering a beer can be confusing for foreigners who attempt to do so for the first time in Dutch. No matter how you refer to a ‘beer’ in Dutch, the bartender will respond by using a different term. Here, the obsession with diminutives (see Chapter 16) comes into play:
Mag ik een bier? (May I have a beer?)
Een biertje? (A beer?—lit., A little beer? doesn’t refer to size)
Mag ik een pils? (May I have a beer?)
Een pilsje? (A beer?—lit., A little beer? doesn’t refer to size)
For a small glass of beer, use the double diminutive:
Mag ik een kleintje pils? (a small beer—lit., May I have a small little beer?)
Een kleintje? (A small one? does refer to size)
Beer is generally served in small, flower-pot shaped glasses. When poured or pumped into these containers, a considerable amount of froth or ‘head’ develops, which is sliced flush with the rim. The resultant offering often shocks European visitors. Germans laugh at the sawn-off ‘head’ and protest the lack of quantity (as usual) while Brits laugh at the lack of quantity and protest the overabundance of ‘head.’ French and Italians just drink it and think romantic thoughts of home, while Americans eye it with pity, demanding;
I’ll have a low-cal, low-cholesterol, extra oat-bran, sugar -and salt-free beer with a twist of lemon—and gimmie some diet floss and decafeinated ketchup with that!
Dutch Sushi
Long before the western world discovered the intimate luxury of sitting at a low, black, lacquered table to feast on Japanese raw fish, the Dutch were doing it in quite another manner—and continue to do so in no lesser style. Standing in front of an open-air fish stall, ranks of cloggies hold raw, brine-slimed herring (haring) sprinkled with raw, diced onions in the air, and lower the ex-creatures into their gaping gates. Two swallows and a series of lip-smacks later, the onion debris is wiped from their mouths and clothing, and the feast is over.
A similarly repulsive practice exists with eel (paling), the thin variety being smoked and the thick variety being fried or served in butter sauce. Here the vomit-buds are teased by the fact that the eel heads are left on for consumption at the more ethnic establishments.
Dutch Rusk
It’s called beschuit met muisjes. Don’t even try to pronounce it. It means something like DUTCH ENGLISH MUFFIN WITH BABY MICE, the muisjes being pink-and-white aniseed sprinkles. It is highly inadvisable to attempt to prepare and/or consume this traditional snack without proper and thorough demonstration and instruction from a native.
Beschuit are round, extremely dry, light and very fragile biscuits. You cannot cut a beschuit in half; it will merely disintegrate. The mode d’emploi of this delightful snack begins with butter which must be at or above room temperature for any kind of result. Spread the butter on the beschuit, trying not to break the brittle thing. The butter acts as glue for the muisjes which are sprinkled on top.
The next step, and biggest challenge, is to eat this delicacy without making too much mess. This takes quite some skill for the inexperienced. Depending on the angle of entry into your mouth, the mice can roll into your lap and onto the floor if the ratio of mice to glue is not correct. Wherever they land, the piles resemble clumps of mouse shit. With or without mice, avoid eating a beschuit in bed: the crumbs you drop are worse than gritty sand between the sheets.
Beschuit met muisjes is traditionally served on the day the baby is born/comes home from the hospital, so do not be surprised if your grocer wishes you congratulations when you purchase the biscuits and anise sprinkles. Through a stroke of marketing genius, Dutch manufacturers have made muisjes available in pink and blue for obvious reasons. No further comment necessary, except perhaps to advise…
…don’t ever confuse muisjes with meisjes!
Dropjes
The name of the Dutch national nibble is licorice, better known as drop or dropjes. It comes in all sizes, shapes and flavours, and since they are predominantly black, this helps in differentiating the various cultures. They are sold pre-packaged or ‘fresh,’ the latter being a popular purchase at the local street market. Overdosing on dropjes is known to cause high blood pressure.
In 1990, cloggies spent more than HFL 248 million on dropjes. They are consumed at the rate of 75,000 kg (165,000 Ib) per day. Needless to say, the Dutch drop market is stable and healthy. (One producer uses 25 different recipes.) Among the selection to choose from are:
soft, chewy fish • coin-shaped standard
harder-to-chew half moon • English mix
filled baguette • sugar-coated varieties
double-salt parallelogram • traffic signs
single-salt button • witch’s hat design
sweet’n salty farmhouse • cats (in different poses)
bite-sized Twizzler • Flintstones characters
Belgian boy pissing • coloured cubes
heart-shaped honey drop • spaghetti shoe laces
Sex shops (see Chapter 18) may stock other shapes.
If as a visitor you decide to sample some drop, don’t be embarrassed to spit it out after two or three sucks. Most people do.
Once you decide you definitely don’t like the stuff, steer well clear of a favourite fairground fascination whereby contestants scoop up ladles of drop which they estimate to be a certain weight—usually 1/2 ‘Dutch pound’ (pond). If the scooped droppings are exactly the target weight, the lucky contestants are awarded the batch free of charge. If the target weight is missed (even by a few milligrams), the contestants pay for the goodies.
Coveted Cookies
When you are (finally) invited to a Dutch home for a cup of coffee, you will almost certainly be offered a koekje (biscuit, cookie) to go with your coffee (see Chapter 14 for coffee drinking etiquette). Koekje-offering is a memorable event for foreigners. Typically, once the coffee has been served, a metal box is taken out of an impressive wooden cupboard. The mysterious metal box is opened and you are invited to take a koekje -ONE SINGLE koekje- after which the box is slammed shut and put away again. If you decline the coffee, the koekje-tin will be offered to all those who have accepted the koffie, and you will be by-passed.
Visits to a Dutch home have a regular pattern. First you are invited only for koffie and a koekje. If you are liked, you may eventually be invited to stay longer than coffee and be served alcoholic drinks and snacks. You’ve really arrived if you are invited for dinner. Dinners are a special and intimate event for the Dutch. A dinner invitation is not easily given, especially by the older generation.
…and Dirty Dishes
If you do stay for dinner, you might be fortunate enough to observe Dutch dish washing (if you don’t find yourself doing it) since the dining area often affords a view of this activity. Here is the basic procedure:
Force a plastic bowl the size of the sink into the sink. Add environment-friendly washing-up liquid, scalding hot water and a sponge (optional).
Exchanging your sponge for a dish brush (afwas-borsteltje) with handle, fish an item out of the brutally hot water with the stick-end of the brush.
Scrub the item clean with the brush-end of the brush. If the item is very deep, ignore the fact that the brush doesn’t reach the bottom.
Once the item is clean, place it in the dish rack, making certain you do not rinse off the soap.
Let the dish brush sink to the bottom of the basin.
Make several attempts to fish the brush out of the hot water, and once you succeed, juggle the brush back and forth from left hand to right hand until it cools down enough to use it.
Search for another item to wash and repeat the process until the bowl appears to be empty. There will always be one or two teaspoons left at the bottom after the procedure is complete.
If necessary, restock the bowl with dirty dishes and repeat the sequence. If the water is dirty but hot, reuse it. If it is clean but only warm, replace it.
&n
bsp; When all is done, use a towel to rub the soap deposit and any remaining food into the ‘clean’ items.
Finally—and you’re on your own with this one -concoct a method to lift the full, hot, pliant and snugly-fitting bowl from the sink WITHOUT SPILLING THE WATER EVERYWHERE.
Bottom of the Bottle
Cloggy kitchens are also a treasure chest of gadgetry. Best known, perhaps, are the uncleanable garlic press and the slotted spade-like cheese-slicer (kaasschaaf) that miraculously produces the stingy, stealth-like slithers of processed curd previously reported. (Try it on anything other than cloggy kaas and you risk being left with a pile of crumbled crud that resembles a scale model of the walls of Jericho after The Event.)
But by far the most Dutch of Dutch kitchen drawer-ware is the flessenlikker or bottle-scraper. This wonderous, flexible wand is a pleasure to both behold and be held. With a few skillful flicks of the wrist, the experienced flessenlikker driver can extract enough of those last few elusive smudgettes from a mayonnaise jar or ketchup bottle to (sometimes) save as much as a few cents over a 12-month period. And those last few salvaged remnants taste so much better than the rest of the stuff!
This Dutch-declared device (invented by a Norwegian) has typically met with success only in Holland. It makes an excellent (read: cheap) gift or party piece abroad, as baffled foreigners try to figure out what it is:
backscratcher?
part of a lightweight Bicycle pump?
mini roulette scoop?
flower-arrangement embellishment?
feminine hygiene/gay-play device?
instrument for removing Dutch doggy doo-doo from sufferer’s shoe soles?
They’ll never guess…and probably never want one!
Chapter 18
SEX ‘N DRUGS AND ROCK ‘N ROLL
Wealthy Dutchmen would rather talk about their sex lives than their money, and their sex lives are far less interesting.
—J. van Hezewijk, The Top Elite of the Netherlands, 1987
Every society, no matter how wealthy or puritanical, has its dark side. Having covered the finer elements of the Dutch in the 17 chapters preceding this, we now turn to the more infamous aspects. The three major cities of Holland (Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague) are cities for the young-at-heart, and the nucleus of open vice, crime and corruption. In the 1980’s, Amsterdam was proclaimed the CULTURAL capital of Europe; earlier, it acquired, and still retains, the status of GAY capital of Europe and DRUG capital of Europe.
In some rural areas, diluted forms of vice, crime and corruption are prevalent. In others, strict Calvinism and other moral standards have stemmed the tide of indecency to the extent that cigarette vending machines are emptied at midnight on Saturdays to prevent trading on a Sunday.
Sex as an Activity
It has been said that the Dutch approach the subject of sex with the warmth and passion of an ice cube. Sex is an act society encourages of individuals aged 14 and up. (In 1987, much pressure was applied to the Government to lower the age of consent from 16 to 12 years.) Many mothers monitor their young teenage daughters for signs of their first menstruation. This is the time to whisk the poor, confused girl to her doctor for her first birth control kit. The male situation is quite different. At the first signs of pubescence, it is not unusual for a Dutch lad to be hounded by his father to experiment with sex, sometimes with no concern for the consequences.
These magnificent displays of understanding and tenderness sow the seeds of sex attitude in the developing children. By the time they reach adulthood, performing the sex act regularly is considered part of the daily routine. In the words of a housewife;
Ja, having sex is something you do in the morning and at night, like brushing your teeth.
Sex can be mentioned coldly but candidly with dinner guests: ‘The children had fun at the beach yesterday. We had good sex last night. I must go to the dentist soon.’
Spontaneous stripping and nakedness on the part of cloggies should not necessarily be interpreted as a sexual gesture. They peel off at the slightest excuse and in front of whomever happens to be within visual range. An unwitting visitor meeting a relative for the first time, upon presenting an item of clothing as a gift, may be shocked when the new acquaintance eagerly undresses in front of everyone present in order to try on the clothing. Likewise, visitors to the country are expected to nonchalantly flash their flesh where the natives would. When visiting a doctor, there are no dressing gowns, and patients are expected to undress and remain stark naked in front of the doctor, staff and medical students for the duration of many procedures.
The subject of abortion (a Vrouwen birthright) is treated with similar nonchalance:
‘Did your period start yet?’
‘No, I had an abortion. On the way home, my bicycle had a puncture…’
In an attempt to make sex somewhat interesting, such tantalizing products as illuminating condoms, flavoured condoms and edible underwear are available.
Sex as an Industry
Prostitution grew and flourished in the major cities from the lusting natures of seafarers arriving from long journeys. The Dutch, ever alert to the prospect of easy florins, soon established ‘red light districts’ and even neighbourhoods for the plying of the prostitution trade. These areas are nowadays principally found in the Randstad, especially in Amsterdam. With the advent of sexual openness in the western world in the 1960’s, these areas have lost their sleaziness and become major tourist attractions. Prostitutes accept major credit cards, cheques, foreign currency—anything that represents MONEY. They exude pride in their profession (making no attempt to disguise their business); attend regular medical check-ups which are organized by the local Government; and enjby a healthy relationship with the tax officials who will generally grant deductions for a range of occupational necessities.
Due to the social advantages of fucking for funds in Holland, a large foreign element exists among the prostitute community (in The Hague, more than 25% of prostitutes hold non-Dutch passports). They enter the country, work for three months and claim a tax refund prior to leaving ‘as a traveling circus through Europe.’ All is not plain sailing, however, as many complain about the difficulties of getting Moroccan, Turkish and even many Dutch men to ‘hoist a condom.’
The Rode Draad (Red Thread) organisation, representing cloggy ladies of pleasure (and, presumably, gentlemen of pleasure), frequently protests governmental attempts to tighten up on things such as lighting, toilets, wash facilities and working arrangements. As with all Dutch organisations, they have their own set of membership demands. Among these demands are:
Permit prostitutes (sexwerkers) to choose whether they work in a club or independently. ‘Prostitution is acreative profession that requires creative rules.’
Exempt prostitutes from revealing their true names for official purposes.
Provide improved conditions and benefits such as social security, sick pay, special tax tariffs, pension benefits, pregnancy leave and compensation for time off during menstruation.
Perhaps the best compromise for this conflict would be to instigate partial Government ownership of the industry, wherein the sex business owners would receive subsidies from local Government departments (health, occupational hazards, tourism and art) to improve the quality of service for all to enjoy: the Dutch Civil Cervix.
Nowhere in this particular conflict does the subject of suppressing open prostitution occur. The main opposition to open prostitution comes from the regiment of liberated Vrouwen (see Chapter 11) who view the emancipated, enterprising ‘ladies of pleasure’ as a disease infecting the decent and honest Dutch way of life…
…Thus, those who campaign for women’s freedom and independence are the ones that object most severely to women having achieved that status.
In the early 1990’s, a HFL 300,000 experiment to establish a ‘tolerance zone’ for prostitution in the city of Arnhem failed. The tolerance zone collapsed due to action and protest by local residents who posted so
me 20 people in the area from 9 pm to 2 am every evening for four months. This created an atmosphere which the press reported was ‘too threatening and not anonymous enough for prostitutes and relief workers to start the programme.’ This gave rise to yet another experiment whereby free heroin would be given to addicted street prostitutes…
Eventually, the national Government relented and made prostitution legally legal—and therefore legally taxable. ‘We want to get this business out of the criminal sphere and subject it to strict regulations regarding health standards, labour conditions and public order,’ explained legislator Marian Soutendijk. The love-ladies had a different interpretation: ‘We’re effectively getting another pimp,’ blasted a spokes-vrouw for the national prostitutes’ union.
To further stress the point that penis payment is profoundly permissible, a high court ruled that a severely handicapped man was entitled to a HFL 65- monthly grant towards the cost of a female ‘sex aid worker.’ The sum involved was ruled no great burden on the local Government (Noordoostpolder). The man’s claim to entitlement was based on a psychological report which concluded that he had need of sex once a month. Form a line here please, gentlemen!
For those who prefer synthetic sex, the availability of all things pornographic is overwhelming. Sex shops are in such abundance that one can rarely pass through more than two streets in larger city interiors without spotting a shop window openly displaying devices, films, clothing and literature of a diverse sexual nature. Videos, peep shows (starting price HFL 1-) and live sex shows encompass everything from ‘banana shooting’ to human/animal acts.
1995 - The UnDutchables Page 12