4 Weird Things Dutch People Do (that actually make sense!) 

Dutch bread doesn’t have a lot of preservatives (that’s why it tastes good), and so after 2 or 3 days it loses its ‘freshness’, and after a week it’s hardly edible. That’s why we freeze it.

About jumping on the backseat of a bike... Most cyclists in the Netherlands either has a bike that has no gears, or always use the highest gear only. And when doing so, getting your bicycle to move when you have double the weight on it is ... well... hard. So you build up some momentum and then let someone jump on the backseat.

Everything you tell about The Netherlands is actually something you tell about the USA. This is how I learn about the USA.

Dutch don't just try to sell you anything, they try to build a relationship with you in order to come back and spend some more money. The phylosofy is that the total amount of money you spent over each visit combined is more then the quick money you spend only once. The "Doei" is like "Bye come again" and is realy ment to give you the feeling that you are wanted when coming next time.

I just realized why I disturbed so many online american friends when I actually answered when they asked “how are you” , I wondered why they never really asked me anymore , that’s probably bc I’m Dutch .

Bread is only fresh like one day, perhaps two if you put them in them bread-box thingies. So if you go to a shop once or twice a week, you will have non-fresh bread. Unlesssss... you put some in the freezer!

We are not wishing friends and family a happy birthday we are congratulating them on the birthday of there loved ones because its their party too, just celebrating a special day all together.

"You have to RUN and JUMP to get onto the back of a BIKE!... It's how you get around the city." -USA has left the conversation

I always leave the store with "Prettige dag" or "Prettig weekend !"

and when you leave a store you can say "tot ziens"when you are a customer. thats just friendly. in these corona times its worth doing, without them i wouldnt know what i would eat...

It's always nice to hear an opinion about the Netherlands from someone who looks at the Netherlands from a different perspective. I am glad that you enjoy our country and its people, especially now in the exceptional era in which the much loved free spirited and carefree nature of the Dutch people is severely challenged and limited by the global virus regulations. The Netherlands has changed in the last couple of years, we have matured a bit and growing pains are necessary, I think, and inevitable. We have become a country that has become very American culturally and we have been able to retain our own identity too, in a sense we are Scandinavian and a country like Denmark is very similar to this country. Enjoy your life here and try to see as much of this country as you can, Ava, there's a considerable difference between Limburg in the south and the Frisians in the north. ✋

I kinda want to move to the Netherlands, too. It's not too unlike Norway, and the way the roads are built around bikes and pedestrians seems wonderful.

You are like the first ever RU-vid Channel that actually know how it works in the Netherlands! Good job!

Jumping on the back of the bike is helping out the one cycling. It's less heavy. The ultimate dutch way is not just running along side it, but giving it a little push as well. Hold on to the sides of the one cycling, pushing when starting really helps and makes jumping on the back a lot easier.

We Finns freeze our excess fresh bread too. I like my bread toasted so putting a frozen slice of bread takes only 10 to 20 seconds more time to toast but result is as good as non-frozen.

It's more fun to get on a bike when your friend is drunk, happend a few times when I was drunk as well. They where just swinging around in the middle of the night, going one way to the other side of the road. And i was just laughing my ass of.

Thank you for your thoughts.🤗 Here are mine: "Happy birthday": Look at it from another perspective: It's a really effective way to greet everyone, and in the course get to know the a little. "Freezing bread": Actually (this is not the reason why, but a beneficiary side-effect) freezing alters the starch, or carbon-hydrate in a way that the absorption will be much slower! "Aying goodbye": No Ava, you're falling back into the grumpy act! "Jumping on the Back of a bike": When stationary, a bike is far from stabile when someone is on the back. It's only stable when moving. It's not showing off, it's physics.

In Amersfoort the bus drivers says goodbye, see you or have a nice day, when you got out of the bus. They didn’t use to do that. Before that I always said goodbye or waved when I left the bus. But that was because after some time you get to know the drivers and they know you. So the waved in their back mirror. Other people did the same. May be it developed that way.

I am from the US and we also have very good bread without all the added artificial junk, it is a little more expensive and usually in the bakery section not the bread section, or from a bakery, I also freeze half of it so it will remain fresh a little longer.

About saying "Doeg" / "Doei" - it's similar to getting into an elevator with people - in NL we typically say Nothing getting in, but we DO say "Dag !" on getting out .. Having spent time so close to one another created this (forced) micro-bond ..

HAHA ! Love the 'jumping on the back of the bike' stuff. Thats indeed what we do (when younger). Now i'm 50 and i have my own bike :)

About #2: I totally understand your bread thing. And yes, it's common in Norway too, especially in small families or one-person household: you buy (or bake) a bread, then freeze half of it, eat half of it fresh. This way bread is never left to dry out for very long; just take a frozen one out in time to overlap the last loaf 🍞

It's really hard to get a bike going with somebody on it so you give them a head start and then jump on when they already have enough speed to keep the two of you going. The bikes balance is dependant on its velocity so it will be safer for you too, more speed = less wobble.

Hi Eva, so much fun to see this "old" video.

When I lived alone I froze my bread because it stays longer fresh. But bread that has not been frozen taste better. Saying goodbye when you leave a store is being polite and you hope the customer comes back.

Hei! I’m from Norway🙂 I like your videos for two reasons: I love Nederland too and you’re very honest to point out the things you don’t like in your home country and it’s not everyone does😉 Our summer holidays are always in the Netherlands and everything you say I see is quite real! Nederland and Norway have a lot in common, which is why I like it so much.I like more We have already been to Amsterdam, but I think it’s a very tight and crowded place! We prefer other places and small cities🙃

It has been a while that I sat on the back of a bike. But I always pushed the biker a bit so he / she got a bit of speed before you "jumped" on it. I use the quotes because I do not see it as jumping, it is just taking a seat on a moving object.

We don't wish friends a happy birthday. We say 'Gefeliciteerd MET {the one whose birthday it is}'. Meaning 'congratulations WITH the birthday of ... '. I think that's stupid too hahah, but we certainly don't wish other people than the birthdayboy/girl a happy birthday. Another thing.... yes, sometimes you jump on the back of a bicycle, but we also just wait until the passenger is sitting on the back and then we ride. Maybe not in Amsterdam, but Amsterdam is so not The Netherlands.

Welcome home! After all, New York used to be New Amsterdam!

The shop/bar hello/goodbye thing is friendly, polite, respectful and just nice. Get used to it....even better...embrace this wonderful habit.

We have been using these bikes for our whole lives. Pretty much every Dutch person or at least every Dutch guy can ride without touching the steering wheel (met losse handen, with loose hands literally).We're like kossacks with their horses.

I'll always remember the two young daughers of a couple who shared their birthdays discovering that not all parents have the same birthday at a party. "congratulations on your birthday" "thanks... .... but it is my wife's birthday not mine. So it is 'congratiulaations on your wife's birthday' " .. It took a while to sink in,

Magnificent! You are so real in your comments. Thank you...

The "happy birthday" to every single person at the party comes (probably) from the 50's or so, a typical birthday would be all people sitting on chairs in a circle around the living room, we had(have) small houses, if you would enter the room you would introduce yourself to every single person, shake their hand/kiss (3 times on the cheeks) and say "hi, i am xxx and happy birthday" We still do it 😄

Gefeliciteerd really isn't more complicated than congratulations.

Hey Eva, Its just fun to watch you elaborate about us Dutch folk, I enjoy your videos... Hope you're stille here during these covidian times... Grtz, Maarten

Bread in the freezer it is the same as with veggies, you keep them fresh and can use them weeks later and still have the same quality and freshness. If you live alone, a bread can last 4-5 days, but after day 3 it's not fresh anymore. Some people buy a few breads when there is a store-discount (typicly duych) and store them in the freezer. My personal favourite is bread with a crunchy outside, that will get soft the next day, but not in the freezer, once you defrost the bread (just at roomtemp, not in microwave!) the crost is still firm and crunchy.

I think both our hello's and goodbye's at stores are meant to humanize the interaction. Keep it social. Neither the cashier nor the customer is robot, its much more gezellig to treat eachother as actual humans.

My experience is that WE DO: Congratulate ("Gefeliciteerd") the loved ones at the party - but we DON't wish them a "Happy Birthday" .. Because THAT wouldn't make sense ..

Love your vids.... keep them comming.... Je video's zijn leuk, blijf ze maar maken... ik kijk wel.... ;)

My experience in NY was that whenever I walk into a store where I just want to be left alone to shop, sales clerks would be very in your face when you come in, because in a lot of cases they work on commission, and also say goodbye or have a nice day when you leave the store. Granted that's different from the "Doei!" when you leave a bar, because they just want to be hospitable and friendly. Personally I enjoy that :)

Did you know that the ride you get on the back of someone's bike is called: "Meevaren" or "Achterop springen"? So a bicylist will ask:" Wil je meevaren" or they say :"Spring maar achterop".

Stopping and starting cycling is the riskiest and heaviest part (yay physics) so you are quite right with your idea to help someone who helps you. Not having a passenger in the first 3-5 pedals allows you to get rolling, find your balance and lets traffic know you are cycling there. When someone hops on you don't really need a lot of effort to keep the momentum going and the cyclist has already found their balance and only needs to compensate a little. However if someone is physically unable to hop on and voice their issues then it is rarely a problem to start stationary. If you prefer one leg on each side then you are expected to stand up when standing still and help out balancing the bike & getting it up to speed with a little "flintstone run".

A new weird custom is not just to greet the busdriver when getting on the bus but to THANK him as well when getting off. I do this myself now. The less people on thebus, the more pronounced this behaviour is.

the worst thing on family birthdays is to come in late, then you have to go to each family member and congratulate and greet them, but if you come early then every one who comes later has to come to you to congratulate which makes sure your seating is there and you just don't have to spend the first ten minutes walking round greeting every one :D especially in big family settings this is something people "plan ahead" for :D to say goodbye is also a means of "checking" how many are in the store and keep count, besides it is being friendly and hoping for a return, and sometimes it is just because we are taught to say hello and goodbye in every encounter, i don't know if you been in smaller places or more relaxed places in the netherlands, where people greet each other on the streets without knowing each other, just nodding to each other of wave hello when there is eye contact ? this still happens .... makes sure social coherence is kept i guess and friendly streets...

We prefer to eat our bread fresh. But usually supermarkets aren't open before you go to work. So, then you'll have to eat bread that you didn't finish the other day (which is kind of old) or you defreeze a bread that's in the freezer. So, the latter is usually more fresh. That's kind of the reason.

Yeah we all celebrate the birthday of a dear friend or family member that he or she is still with us - we also feel very sad if a friend or family member die , then we cry also with the complete group.

One thing you definitely shouldn’t do with bread is stick it in the fridge because it’ll cause it to mold faster because of the condensation inside the fridge.

can confirm on the "doei". i'm a prety big guy, and i do the high pitched voice too, not only that, i also say it twice quickly, like "doeidoei", which is quite a common thing in certain areas too and certainly has become a habit with me. i think it sounds abit more friendly than "DOEWIE!". as for the "how are you doing?", this does exist in some places in the Netherlands too where people say "gaat ie?", to greet one another, rather than to actually inform on how they are doing, but you can still say "ja, best" as you pass by :D

re Happy Birthday, a similar thing happens at funerals. You extend your condolences to family and not anyone else but it is good form to extend condolences to very close friends, too. If you don't know who they are, you can extend your condolences to wild strangers present. However, here it is rather easy. The people you need to shake hands with for condolences are either standing in a row next to one another or you have seen them in the front row and making speeches during the remembrance service.

Okay I just have to say you have incredible eyebrows. And I like your vids.

Gefeliciteerd does not mean Happy Birtday but just Congratulations. So the person who’s birthday it is will hear happy birthday or congratulations and the rest of the family only gets a congratulations. It’s to congratulate the mom/dad, grandpa/grandma, sister/brother, etc. with the fact their close family member adds another healthy year to it’s live.

You only have to take like 2 steps before jumping on the back of the bike. It's like you have to run and push the person up to speed. Just make sure they have a bit momentum going on.

About point number 3. Most people actually say "tot ziens" which means "see you soon."

when you freeze bread properly it is just as fresh as when you put it in. but you freezer needs to do a minimum of -18 degrees celsius colder is better.

Learning to cycle when small is easy. Learning to break is another matter!

Congratulating everybody on a birthday party is only common in some parts of the Netherlands. It is not done in other parts. Here in the south people would be very surprised If you congratulate them on a birthday party when it is not their birthday.

Fresh bread is fine if you can get to the baker everyday. However commuting and work tend to get in the way, so stock up on that special bread which you can only get from one shop

I like the extremely specifiek "good morning" untill 11.59. And when you say "good morning" at 12.00 you get a comment. And then you feel stupid for saying good morning. As a Dutch, I still find this so funny.

If we would have to keep bread fresh enough to eat it, without putting it in the freezer, then it would only be fresh enough for about 2 or 3 days, or even just 1 day if the slight difference of taste doesn't suit you. In the supermaket, you can find half or whole breads. Now, imagine yourself to eat half a bread every day when you're living alone. For some people that's very much. It's not such a big deal if you're not living alone. Also, if you have to use your car to get some bread from the supermarket or the bakery every single day, because it's too far away to walk or bike to, then that can become pretty expensive, because fuel in the Netherlands is not cheap at all. So, for preservation purposes, we would buy more than just one bread at once and put all of it in the freezer or keep one them out of it. If you want to have the best taste while you put bread in the freezer, then I'd recommend you to just lay some slices on a plate and wait for about 10 to 15 minutes to defrost them. You can accelarate this proces a bit by holding each slice between your hands and bending them forth and back after a while. A much quicker method is to defrost them in the microwave (the microwave has a special function for that), or even heat them for 30 seconds, but I wouldn't recommend it, because more of the freshness will be gone that way and the slices feel as if they're sweating.

Dutch bikes are different from the bikes used in most other countries. Most countries use bikes build for sports where you bend your body over to reach the steer. Dutch bikes are made especially for commuters, using the bikes in traffic. You sit upright and your weight is on the saddle. This allows you much better to participate in busy traffic, you see much more what is happening around you which makes it much safer to be in heavy traffic with your bike.

In a SMAL Village named bierum in the provincie of Groningen is a bakery and the Bread is sooooo good there

Actually.. You pronounced "Gefeliciteerd" (happy birthday) very well. You don't hear such a good "G" from American people :)

Nice video's! About the birthday rituals. Gefeliciteerd literally means congratulations. So you congratulate the family with their family member reaching that age. Actually not all Dutch people do it, although it's pretty common. Happy Birthday equals "Fijne verjaardag" in Dutch.

I'm Dutch, I help you skip 10 minutes of dragging out a topic for no reason: #1 Wishing friends and family a happy birthday when it's not their birthday. #2 Freezing bread. #3 Saying goodbye in stores #4 Jumping on the back of bicycles About number 1, every (young) Dutch person disagrees with you, it's just what parents teach you but makes no sense at all.

I never got the hang of jumping on the back of a riding bike either. I just prefer to ride it myself, start in the lowest gear and just power through it and it always turn out fine. Turns out I got pretty strong legs for someone who doesn’t really exercise, oop

I think showing numbers with your hands is also different. I noticed it for the first time watching your video;)

I think that jumping on the back of the bike is part of the "inburgeringstest"

That’s so hilarious, you indeed do have to run and jump on the backseat of the bike, because it is hard to get the bicycle on speed with the weight of someone sitting on the backseat. It always is a bit exciting to jump, will the person who steers hold you or not.... 🤣

Not everybody freezes all the bread. Only if you have more then you eat that day, you freeze the surplus to keep it as fresh as possible 🙂

We freeze our bread, in Denver. Wife is a wonderful baker. So... To thaw set it out room temp. very good.

I agree with Jeroen down below - we learn how to ride a bike at the same time (or before ;-) we really start to walk. And in most of our cities, we basically do everything by bike - easiest & fastest .... So it becomes second nature; only thing is, we may forget to tell our foreign friends that or explain how to do it exactly ... Sorry about that :-)

I think the happy birthday thing is a bit of misinterpretation of our languages. Gefeliciteerd doesn't necessarily mean happy birthday. It's more of a congratulations. If someone tells you that he got a promotion you can say gefeliciteerd. But you can't say happy birthday to him😁. Literal translation of happy birthday is blije geboortedag. And no dutch would say that. We say gefeliciteerd. You made it another year. And you say gefeliciteerd to the others because they are important enough to be in the inner circle of family and friends of the birthday girl/boy to celebrate.

hello like your video ive been living here for years now got use to alot of things now i love amsterdam and utrecht i find most dutch are a easy going people greetings

Do you know why you have to jump on the bike? It is because to start to bike when someone is on the back it is very hard and unstable, so we first start up the speed then when it is stable you can jump on the safest. Dit you tried a tandomebike already? You can rent them to. Then you both have paddles and a bike seat and extra steering handles that do not stear just are there to hold on to..

Granes are grown here for export to the whole world.modified and organic it's been an export product for ages.and yeah just like Belgium (most parts in western europe and France we bake bread every day.🥳

I'm Dutch and I think I've only sat on the back of a bike like once or twice since childhood just because I always have a bike with me when I need to bike somewhere.

Freezing bread or any other food products will stop it from detaileriorating. Ifyou keep packaging closed well :-).. when defrosting it it still will be readonable nice to eat.. ..

Also gefelicteerd doesnt mean happy birth day literally.. it is more like congratulations ( with your friend/child )

Try the "notenbrood" from Lidl! You will eat all before it gets old.

saying goodbye depends on the state you live. i have been in states where they wish you a nice day when you leave a store and thank . bread in the US is chemical and stays fresh for weeks on end. Our bread is old and gets dry within a day

Common form in my neck of the woods (regio Utrecht), is gefeliciteerd (congratulations) to all the people not celebrating, maybe gefeliciteerd met (congrats with) if it's a little more personal.

What so wrong with say good bye to people without a commercial reason? That's the nice thing about visiting friendly places in the world people are just happy to see you! NSW in Oz

A luggage carrier on a bike is not ment to carry a person. It will damage the bike sooner or later. That is why swappy bikes don`t have one.

I think it differs per family. In my family and circle of friends (Also "Haarlem en omstreken", so it really isn't region bound) we'd do the rounds at every birthday and that included everyone (even complete strangers) who was in the room, including a handshake and 3 kisses. This could take minutes at a time, so at some point people kind of gave up and went with a general wave and "congratulations everyone". We'd have birthdays with upwards of 50 people throughout the day (big family) so I can kinda understand why we moved away from it. It's kinda weird I guess, but it does break the ice, how embarrassed can you really get after you've just kissed everyone?

Saying hello and goodbye is just common curtecy here. Nobody really thinks about it or even realise they do it i think. Same as saying have a nice day or have a great weekend after is done serving you.

point3: part of costumor service, point4: Love biking. Why you have to run and jump. thats because the 1 that rides the bike, is too flimsy to start with someone on the back.

The jumping on the bike is to make it more easy for the person riding the bike. It is heavy if the person sits from the start :) we leurn to jump on as kids ^-^

I like to starts croissants and freeze those. Then unfreeze, then bake them. Croissants for the week, fresh everyday.

I don't get the birthday thing either. Maybe because I'm half german.. But at least you have something to say to people and congratulating someone is always nice.

You use the word "Hallo", for people you want to keep distance to... if a girl writes you as a boy, and starts with Hallo...you are toast for example, neutral is hoi, hi (englsih), or moi, ( in the north), or hei in scandinavia..

The first one is really horrible indeed. My mom has her birthday one day after me, so one of these days I go over to my parents place, perhaps a day early, we celebrate and then all her friends come over and congratulate me WITH MY MOM, totally oblivious that it's actually MY birthday and my mom's is like tomorrow. 'Barrassing. I hate that.

Dutch people don't say happy birthday to the family and friends.. Gefeliciteerd means congratualations, so we say to other people: congratualations with his/her birthday. To the ''jarige job/jet'' we say: gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag (congratualations with your birthday)

Only way to keep bread fresh, is to freese halve loaves, and this way you have fresh bread every day, and don't have to go buy bread everyday, that cost a lot of time.. you leave halve a loaf out, which you use on the same day..

Jumping on the back of a bike even is more weird when you know it's only guaranteed to hold 25 kg (55 lbs). It also tells you something about the sturdiness of Dutch bikes.

In Austria we freece bread too!

I totally agree with you: it's kind of a shame to freeze nice fresh bread. It loses at least some of its taste. So, I don't. Most of the time. Buy half a loaf, or a smaller bread and enjoy its full taste. That said, I do have some bread in the freezer 'just in case', ending up toasting it after a while or 🤫 throwing it out all together, because the just in case didn't happen. There is no substitute for fresh bread. Oh, and I think French bread is even better - the fresh stuff, not the prefab hypermarché stuff, that's gross.

Jumping on the bike. The cyclist need to develop some speed first. It's hard to get going from a stationary position with a passenger in the back.

Gefeliciteerd - Wishing someone to be "fruitful, blessed, happy, lucky". (meaning taken from Felicitas: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicitas )

I LOL-ed so hard visualising you trying to jump on the back of a riding bike and possibly missing the seat. That would have been embarrassing and hilarious at the same time. Riding sideways on the back of a bike isn't so much a Dutch thing, it's a bike-culture thing. It's not a "showing off" thing as it is a "because we can" thing. We Dutch for the most part learn to ride a bike from the moment we can walk and as a result are relatively skilful in maintaining a balance and disturbing the balance by jumping on will rarely result in problems, so why not? It's gezellig.