Each Dutch person going abroad will sooner or later be confronted with remarks about *typical Dutch* things, such as smoking pot and redlight districts. They are all based on people's general view on our supposedly liberal country (I guess I can't complain that much, as I would certainly prefer having to say "no" ten times a day when someone asks me if everybody smokes pot in my country of origin, over having to admit there are indeed more people voting Republican than Democrat).
It makes us believe other people are so naive about our country. But then, sometimes it is the other way around. Recently I have been teaching Dutch to a lecturer from the music department, who is in return teaching me about music and political movements around 1960 in the Netherlands. I am embarrassed to know so little of these topics, so I gratefully swallow all the new information. We actually do have some interesting history!
Take the
Provos, for example, of whom apparently we have to be thankful for our drug policies. This particular example is interesting: I don't remember being taught or told about this nevertheless influential movement before. A quick look into wikipedia confirms my suspicions. The
Dutch page about the provos is much, much smaller than the
English and
Portugese(!) pages. No wonder others know more about some parts of our history than we do. Are we afraid this could be yet another source for a 'Dutch joke'? Well, the sticking-your-head-in-the-sand technique is definitely not working (probably making things worse, say...
Dutch denial?)
