About the national anthem: it’s from the perspective of William of Orange, NOT from the perspective of the person singing the Wilhelmus. And a) he actually was originally from what is now Germany, b) Duits didn’t mean German at the time the Wilhelmus was written. There was no Germany back then. What Duits used to mean was: mainland Germanic south of the Danes. The English narrowed the meaning of the word Dutch to mean... well... Dutch. The Germans (Deutsch) and Dutch (Duits) narrowed it down to mean German. This narrowing down happend in the centuries after the Wilhelmus was written. There’s still this old fashioned Dutch word ‘Diets’ which is a variation of the word Duits and it means Dutch. Duits got narrowed down to mean German, Diets got narrowed down to mean Dutch. Diets has fallen out of use though. A few lines further down the Wilhelmus it says ‘the king of Spain have I always honoured’. Which doesn’t make any sense for present day Dutchies but it did for William of Orange. (And then there’re reasons given explaining why William rose against the Spanish king despite having honoured him always before)
People who do not know or are not interested in history might wonder about the king of Spain and the German blood in the Dutch anthem. They should read your explanation :-)
Perfect . i will ad some thing, diets and doots carry the same name and dialect of our roots of dutch people. Diets meaning "part of germany" and doots (is how the english people named us dutch) meaning folk "volks"
#4 Amsterdam. It's literally a swamp. All those canals are there not just to look pretty, that's actually how you 'drain the swamp'.... * crickets * But a drained swamp is still not a stable foundation to build on, so you'll need to slam some poles through the bog until you hit sand. Part of the success story of Amsterdam is that, because it used to be a swamp, no nobles or clergy had any claim to it. So when the technology to drain it was developed in the late middle ages, it had a head start as a kind of free trade area ruled by the merchant class and quickly rose to become an economic powerhouse.
@@JasperJanssen actually 3 of the islands are also part of the country as Caribbean overseas territory, which is a special municipality status. Including Saba.
thef1chesser riiight. You are of course correct. That changed long after I left school, so, yeah, I keep forgetting about it. @jan jager that’s probably also why you didn’t know it, it’s a relatively recent change :)
Aruba, Curaçao and St. Maarten are _countries_ in the _kingdom_ of the Netherlands. Sint Eustatius, Saba and Bonaire are islands in the _country_ of the Netherlands.
I fly KLM a lot for my work and last year I was finally flown by our king from Amsterdam to Rome. He did not use the on-board PA, and the captain did not say who was first officer, but we could see him boarding with the crew from the platform. I had already been wondering about the military police with the automatic weapons at the gate, but then I understood why. He made a really smooth landing in Rome by the way. So that was a real "Royal" Dutch Airlines flight.
About those wooden poles holding up huge buildings in Amsterdam and other places: they were mostly Norwegian Woods! Yes, we cut down all of our coastal oak forests and sold them to the Dutch, who used them to build ships to go to the East, and poles to support buildings. Sadly, we don't have many oak trees left, as the climate got colder and they didn't regrow. Oh, and lots of the seamen on those ships were Norwegians too, creating employment for the then-poor Norwegians- Lots of that wood also went to build London - Norway was the world's largest exporter of timber for 400 years!
The national anthem is a hymne on William of Orange (the leader of the Dutch revolt against Spain). He came from Germany (Dillenburg) but had inherited the title Sovereign Prince of Orange (a principality in nowadays France). That is one explanation why it says "of German blood" because he was. Furthermore in German, German is called Deutsch (sounds almost like Dutch). It means "of the common people in old German. Also from a juridical point of view (before 1585, remember the hymne was written earlier), the Netherlands consisted of many provinces all part of the holy roman (German) empire. So, there's that. What is more weird is that the leader of the revolt against Spain in the national anthem allegedly says that he has always honored the Spanish King. That is because the aim of the Dutch revolt in the beginning was not independence. That evolved later on. Remember the hymne is from the very beginning of the Dutch Revolt! And on the "mountains" don't worry, we learn in school that all below 500 meters is a "hill", from 500-1500 meters high is "modest mountains" and from 1500 meters upwards is "mountain".
I think by now they should change it, especially since WWII . Did the Nazis treat us with preference because were of "Duitse bloed"? no they starved us and I know there was much hatred afterward
Hij kwam niet van Duitsland want dat bestaat pas sinds 1871. In zijn tijd zagen ze hier iemand uit Dillenburg niet als buitenlander en Van Nassau niet als buitenlandse naam. Hij noemt zich ook WvN ipv WvO, wat zijn officiële naam is, om te onderstrepen dat hij geen buitenlander is.
@@tjeerdfranskok Ok, dank. Er waren in die tijd sowieso nog niet echt nationaliteiten of paspoorten. Dat kwam pas in de 19e eeuw, inderdaad. Of hij zich van Nassau noemde om niet als "'vreemdeling" gezien te worden, wist ik niet. Het lijkt me vreemd, aangezien de naam "Van Oranje (Orange)" van hem een hoger adellijk persoon maakte. Laat ik het zo zeggen, ik zou als ik hem was Van Oranje genoemd willen worden in die tijd.
Fun Fact. The houses in (old) Amsterdam were build leaning forward. If you look on top of most of the buildings you see a hook. In the oldendays they used that hook to bring goods to the top floors were most of the warehouses were. Now they are still used to bring furniture up and down. And the houses are small but high (for the time they were build) because you payed tax on the wide of the building. And no one wanted to pay more tax.
The anthem thing, the Dutch national anthem predates the whole notion of "Germany" as a nation state by several centuries, so in the context of the time it was written, it means, as you correctly assumed, "I am of germanic origin", since the Netherlands are part of the germanic cultural and linguistic region. There's also a line in there about always having honored the Spanish king, which is ironic since the country was born by rebelling against the Spanish. The king the anthem refers to is the one predecessor of the king we rebelled against. The Netherlands wasn't even a monarchy back then, it was a republic. It didn't become a monarchy until after Napoleon invaded.
It's the predecessor of Philips II of Spain? I thought he meant that guy, because he had always honoured him until it was clear he was a tyrant who wanted to force catholocism on the people instead of the freedom of religion both protestants and catholics wanted and had therefore 'left the throne' (act of abjuration 1581), was no longer a legitimate king because of his own actions. He tried for years to change the king's mind and remove the Spanish Inquisition but to no effect. It was a huge thing back then, kings were absolute rulers with divine authority, he was representing him first, only became elected by the States in the office of stadtholder later. Stadtholder is not a heriditary job. So I believe he's expressing that he didn't go about independence lightheartedly or opportunistically, but in the end saw no other way than to rebel. It didn't start out as a national anthem because the concept of the nation state was still in development, by the Dutch of course. They used the song to promote the idea of all these provinces united in one to beat the evil Spanish and gain independence, it was first printed in in 1581 in the songbook of the rebels (geuzen). Independence came soon but beating the Spanish took another 80 years of war. So the song helped to create the nation rather than that the nation created a national anthem. It only became the national anthem by law in the 1930's, maybe because those republican remnants are always a bit sensitive since the monarchy. So if the Americans want to keep copying the Dutch like they did with their DOI 195 years later, they have to become a monarchy soon. We've already seen political dynasties developping in that republic, so it can't take very long anymore.
He honnered the Spanish king Phillip II because his started as an advisor when Phillip became king. Only when William became protestant things changed. Phillip took Williams son hostage and he never saw him again.
Wrong again, it does not refer to Germanic, it literally refers to the Dutch, to the different DUTCH dialects, and the DUTCH people. The reference can even be found in English and German and in both it refers to ...... Yes the Dutch,
-The king flies(flew) every 2 weeks a European flight to keep his licence up to date. He will use the name W.A. van Buren. He is also count van Buren. -Most houses in the west of the country are built on concrete polls. The are stamped so deep they stand on a hard layer of underground. Otherwise everything would sink into the sand. As you sayed, there is many reclamed land. That's all sand, not stone. -About the anthem. What we sing are the words of Willem of Orange, its his text and he says: Willíam of Nassau, I am of German blood. It means more or less: I am Willem and I was born in a family who comes from the lower parts of Germany. Not the state Germany, thats didn't excist up to the 1880s. The anthem has 15 verses. When you take each first letter you get the word WILLEM VAN NASSOV. The first verse is sung most times, and sometimes (in church) the 6th one. Its about Williams confession to God, how he has trust in him. The rest fof the verses are about the story of the 80-years war, how he lost his brothers in battle, etc.
Fact.....most houses in the netherlands are build on heipalen....old systems used wood because that was Est at the time. The reason is that this way the houses stand on the hardest ground deep inside the soil. The top is to soft. Will the houses fall over? Nope. Moderne houses do that sooner...even in the usa....then these old houses.
Actually most wooden poles don't hit solid (sand) ground; the wooden poles aren't tall enough for that in many places. They are literally floating in the soft ground. They give support by 'sticking' to the soft grond (op "kleef"). Friction resistance is not an optimal solution as some spots are weaker and sink faster. Hence the crooked houses in many cities. Not sure where you get the idea that modern houses fall over more quickly, that's simply uninformed nonsense. Current heipalen are always made from armored concrete and always hit the hard ground, so they are rock solid. A further issue with wooden poles is wood-rot. Especially since we have a sewerage the gaps between the sewerage elements causes the ground water to drain, exposing the top part of the wooden poles to air (and starting the rotting process). So reality is even scarier then many imagine, the poles are floating in soft peat grond and exposed to moisture and air since ground water levels nowadays are lower then when the houses were built.
The length of the poles under our houses depend on how deep the layer of sand beneath is. A sand layer forms the stable setting in an otherwise mushy soil make up.
"The monarchy is not as exciting as I thought"--that is by design. The Oranjes like to keep it that way, unlike e.g. in Britain. The king flying: he is a qualified pilot, and needs to spend a certain amount of time flying to keep his qualifications. He also enjoys it. He does it incognito, the passengers do not know they are being flown by the King. Wooden poles: and these poles are also many centuries old. So don't worry: they are not going to suddenly break down--except if the water table drops and they start to rot. William the Silent was indeed from German blood: he was ruler of (among others) the principality of Nassau, which lies in Germany. Not Nassau in the Bahamas, which was named in his honour. William and his offspring gained the right to rule the nation by leading the revolt against Spain in the 80-years war, not through his titles or place of birth. And some other random weird facts: we were also the first nation to denounce an abusive dictator through a Declaration of Independence, which the american one was modeled after. We had the first stock exchange, the first publicly traded company, the first multi-national company, after our independence we long dithered between a confederacy and a republic, finally becoming a monarchy in 1813. So the Oranjes had to wait 200 years before they became Royalty. One Oranje did not have the patience and instead became King of Britain. New York was originally a Dutch colony--which may be why you feel so at home here, New York still seems to have some traits inherited from the Dutch. The Franks that came to rule France were actually Dutch. The Angles that conquered Britain (with the Saxons) were also mainly Dutch. But that was before the nation was defined, so some north-german and danish also came along. Let's call them Dutch anyway! Did you know the Netherlands is officially bi-lingual? Frisian is an official language. Frisian is the closest language to English there is, due to the Frisians exporting their language to Britain in the 6th century when they were called the Angles ;-) And we were the first nation to allow same-sex marriages, but I am sure you already knew that ;-) Etc etc. I like history... Oh, and did you notice were are quite a proud nation? You don't tell a Dutchman what to do. Many foreign managers fail here because their management style is too dictatorial. We like our hierarchies flat. People with power still need to "Doe Normaal". The janitor likes to give the CEO or the Prime Minister advice. We all have our opinions, and like to voice them. I like you channel, seeing my nation through a fresh pair of eyes.
Great info on all aspect except one. The Angles and Frisians aren't the same thing and came from what is now Germany and Denmark. Frisia just was way bigger (including German province Ostfriesland and a large part of the Dutch province Noord-Holland and all of Groningen) Though the Frisians had impact on what became the Anglo-Saxon language that is due to both Frisians moving to Great Britain in the Migration Period ("Barbarian" Invasions) and intensive trade that was kept between Frisia and the migrated tribes. I am half Frisian and sometimes think it especially weird for my Frisian family having more difficulty with English than my Dutch family because from a Frisian perspective you have a greater amount of similarities with the English language as you said.
The Netherlands became a kingdom in 1806 under Louis Napoleon, which was continued by the house of Oranje in 1813. Nevertheless you could argue the kingdom under Louis Napoleon was called "Koningrijk Holland" (Not Koninkrijk) i.e. Kingdom of Holland, or that it was French territory between 1810 and 1813.
With the mountain thing, I think it's also that language also has a cultural component, and if your country is relatively flat it makes sense that you use the terms differently that make more sense in the context of the country, and thus the highest/steepest parts of your country is what you call mountains, and then you use hill for something between that and completely flat. Meanwhile, if you live in a place with a lot of height variation, you'd probably have a looser definition of flat then we use in the Netherlands; what we call hills you might call flat, what we call mountains you call hills, and what we call flat is just beyond you, and what you call mountains is beyond us.
Below sea level is half the story. The NL is the flood plane of large European rivers Rhine and Meuse, plus lesser ones like IJssel at Schelde. It also is the flood plane of the North Sea over that river delta. Now imagine the pumps stop that keep our feet dry in claimed land. Water management has its own government here, with its own elections. Imagine regular politics with their compromises would govern that - a nightmare. "More land" may not have been the reason to claim land from water, but getting rid of swamp fever (brought by midges). Land was a benefit, though, and became an important driver.
During the first years of the 1950's one could get the endemic dutch malaria (especially in areas around Amsterdam): www.lumc.nl/org/parasitologie/patient-en-zorg/Meerinformatieoverparasieten/Malaria/Malaria-in-Nederland-vroeger-en-nu/
I was born in Muiderberg, a town next to the city of Muiden. probably as high as 5ft. Correct me if I'm wrong. then we moved to Hilversum. Part of that was Trompenberg, there again you would never know if you passed it
Those hills aren’t mountains for us as wel. Those are actually small hills. But if you have to make those Hill you still need to put a lot of sand above each other making ‘“een bult” or “een belt” and that means “een hoop zand” in other words: “een berg zand”. It is that weird translation that change the Dutch word “berg” into the English word “mountain”. So after this I hope you don’t get confused if someone uses the wrong translation.
If with the houses being crooked you mean they lean slightly forward, that's intentional, combined with the hook that's on top and removable windows, it's to allow for hoisting things up to higher floors, which works better if the house leans slightly forward; you'd remove the window and have a rope on the hook that can be used to hoist things up; of course nowadays that's not really used as we now have moving elevators which are more convenient (although the windows being able to be removed still comes in rather handy for that)
Out national anthem is about Wilhelm van Oranje. In the past "Duits" meant "common people". So the first line of the enthem says: Willem van Oranje is a man of the people. (although he was nobility)
Originally Duits means common people, that is the word “Diutisc” and this word goes back to the 10th century. Wilhelmus van Nassouwe is a German and from German blood, Nassau is not far from Frankfurt. So the Dutch Americano is right: we all sing that we are from German blood. Anyway the dutch are a Germanic people.
As said, the anthem describes Willem van Oranje-Nassau, not the general Dutchman/woman. The Nassaus are from the town of Dillenburg Germany. He was born there in 1533. There was their home castle which is gone, instead they built the Wilhelmsturm to remember the Nassaus, which is a museum now and shows portraits of familiar people in Dutch history, so really cool to visit.
Fun Facts....at the moment our defence of the sea is complete. Check out all bridges, dams and constructions of the Delta Plan. The Dutch were called after Katrina hits New Orleans to get knowledge of defence of water. Our King made watermanagement his topic when je was crownprince. Also we are now defencing our selves to water from floothing rivers by giving land back as nature and waterbassin in time of high water. Water it is a topic...and you can always talk about the weather and if rain is expected.
King still is an employee, he was recently retrained for either the 727 or 737 since they retired the Fokkers. Most if not all have a job. Amsterdam was for a large part but not entirely built on poles. Many are rotting now, some being replaced by concrete, but it is hard, time consuming and very expensive and they took measures to not lose more divers making it even more expensive.
Lol... You're funny. ;-) . Regarding the reclaiming the land bit, that obviously was a gradual process which started with small chunks of the river delta behind the island of Holland. The invention of the windmill (15th century) as a pump to drain the land was the breakthrough that enabled reclaiming of ever bigger chunks etc..
I live in Assen and we have this really small hill here, you can literally walk up it in less than a minute an we call it the pitteloose berg(pitteloose mountain)
The wooden poles don't rot, for the water level in the ground is kept high enough and standing in water they won't rot. Also some to know, they drill the hole, then throw in cow hides and such, then put the pole in and that hole filled up with water, only the top needed to be protected by something I forgot, for that was dry.
About the mountain part... You've got to see it through our eyes to understand what we mean. Most of the Netherlands is flat and sure we only have hills. But relative to what we are used to Limburg has some mountains. Which doesn't mean we are not familiar with the mount Everest ;) Try taking the non electric bike out and ride up that vaalserberg and I'm sure you'll see it as a mountain too :)
I was always told, that the longest "heipalen" are used in Overveen, close to Haarlem. They are building on veen=peat, hence the name and the poles are 27 meters long. that is how deep the alluvial sand layers are sturdy enough for the poles. there is even an building with 4 basement layers, that floats on the peat like a ship!
@beek: I seem to know that the concrete poles used in Amsterdam are 30 m long. They have to reach the "derde zandlaag": the third layer of sand to be met when drilling down through the peat. I'm sure that some of the high buildings in Rotterdam would stand on even longer concrete poles. I wouldn't be surprized if similar sizes could also be found in the "swampier" parts of The Hague and Utrecht. How about places like Singapore and Hong Kong? On the "floating": a major problem building the metro tunnels of Amsterdam was keeping those huge concrete boxes down. (Archimedes' Law)
And as long as the groundwater level stays up, those poles will be there for a long time still. Once the water level goes down for a significant amount of time, they'll start to rot, though, and buildings will start to sag, as their foundations disappear.
Regarding the king flying for KLM: he has a commercial pilot license and in order to maintain it (and as such being able to fly the government jet for foreign trips) he has to fly a certain number of hours on the type of plane he was certified for. That was when the government plane was a Fokker F100 and KLM was also still operating them. That has changed now as KLM has decommissioned them all and also the government F100 has been decommissioned. So I don't think he is flying for KLM anymore. Oh, and it was never announced he was piloting a flight.
Our country on the west/north is sinking in for centuries. It´s a river delta. Therefore it is relatively easy to reclaim land. In Florida it is about the opposite, the sea rises up from under the land.
Related to the reclamed land: At Neeltje Jans (part of the Delta works) the side of the building says "Hier gaan over het tij de maan, de wind en wij" meaning "over here the tide is ruled by the moon, the wind and us"
The Dutch national anthem is even stranger than you might think The melody is originally from France, the lyrics are by a guy from Belgium and it tells the tale of the dispute between the (German) prince of Orange and the Spanish King
Belgium is synonymous for The Netherlands. The rebellion of the Dutch started in the south, financed by Flanders, Brabant and the Antwerp merchants. After the fall of Antwerp in 1585 only the north could survive, the part that we nowadays call Nederland. www.bol.com/nl/f/belgium-dat-is-nederlandt/9200000023862823/
Carrots can be white, yellow, orange, purple or blackish, or combinations of these colors. A minute detail which is overlooked is the Netherlands control a very large part of seed development and crossbreeding techniques to improve both the productivity as the resistance against pests and diseases of an enormous amount of crops... This also includes GMO and single use hybrids, but understand crossbreeding is genetic modification ( only through trial and error) as well. Humans have tried to select the strongest plants for 1000s of years now, so this isn't a new development as such. Orange carrots were a gift to the Dutch monarchy by Dutch seed growers, and the fact most people do not know there are other color products is partly because of good marketing techniques and a superior product. Houses in Amsterdam are built on marshy land, without poles the houses topple or sink. The King of The Netherlands is from the house of Orange Nassau which has it's roots traceable to it's creation in 1515, where a German nobleman and a French Noblewoman were wed, and their respective lands of Nassau and Orange were merged. More info on Wikipedia. The highest point of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is actually Mount Scenery (883m) on the Island Saba in the Carribean. As Saba is seen as a municipality it's formally part of the Netherlands.
The poles shouldn't be that surprising. Haven't you seen a building being constructed? You need a solid foundation. And in the time before concrete, they put wooden poles in the soft ground, until they reached a harder layer underneath. Wooden poles have been replaced by other materials, but the priciple still stands.
one of the benefits of orange carrots is their carotene content. Carotene is a pre-vitamin A, meaning that when the body is in low supply of vitamin A this colour agent can be split into two vitamin A molecules to supply the body. (In Asia the "golden rice" is actually genetically modified to contain vitamin A because Asian population suffered from a massive vitamin A deficiency. While I do not know if this had anything to do with the orange carrots, it's a nice added benefit.
Wanna hear something even stranger about the Dutch national anthem? It was written in Belgium! In Belgium there is a beautiful small castle that you can visit to see where it was written.
Do realise that modern Belgium used to be part of "De Nederlanden". We always pride ourselves for the successful rebellion against te king of Spain. But it was only "half successful". The Southern provinces remained under Spanish control and became Belgium later on.
and an even better fun fact is that the music the anthem was written over, is an old FRENCH marching song, used by the french soldiers to keep pace while moving from one place to another..
To a lot of Dutch people (I guess especially the ones who travel a lot) a hill of 320 m isn't really a mountain either... But that's what you get when your country really is that flat. I've watched a lot of your videos back to back now, and I have to say, I love your content! It's really fun and interesting to see what an expat thinks of our country. I'm glad you feel so positive about our home. We complain a lot (another thing the Dutch like to do), but I really believe that the Netherlands is one of the best places in the world to live. Sure, I'm a little biased, but still. I hope you have a lot of good years to come in our humble little country. And please keep it up with the awesoome content! You present it in a really fun, genuine and casual way and I even learned some new stuff about my on country. How cool is that?!
Step 1. Look up the full Dutch national anthem. (We only sing a part) Step 2. Get the first letter of each couplet. Step 3. Organise the letters. Last step. Read it out!
It's still very strange for me. . But the line that we honored the Spanish King is even more strange. especially if you are living in Breda where i live.
About the poles Amsterdam resides on. This is not only Amsterdam a lot of old cities are build on wooden poles, because it all used to be swampy marshy area
Hi Eva, the 1st verse not only says: “I am of German blood” (true for the house of Orange) but also “I have always honored the king of Spain”. The latter has a nice connection with the1581 "Act of Abjuration" (google it): As this king didn’t serve his subjects well, he “lost” his rights - we declared our independence! Because of resemblances in the text it is speculated that Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the "Act of Abjuration" when he drafted the American Declaration of Independence.
Hé, don’t mess with our king ;-). We are proud of our monarchy (well at least most of us) though it’s mostly ceremonial. And we do get a day off, wear our orange hats and shirts again and get wasted at 3 pm....
Did you know the island Texel has a place that is called De Hoge Berg (the high mountain) and it is only about 15 meters high. You hardly see it at all ;). About the wooden polen, old buildings on clay or peat soils have wooden polen under them to keep them from sinking in the soil. Modern building have these poles too, but they are made from concrete. So it is far from exclusive to Amsterdam and the poles aren't under the streets themselves.
Duits used to mean "of the people" (which we would now call volks in Dutch) and the anthem is written from the perspective of Willem Van Nassau, it's essentially expressing he's of the same blood as the people of the country, in contrast to the Spanish/foreign king; the whole song originated as Geuzenlied song of the Geuzen (Beggars) which were Dutch Nobles opposing the Spanish rule. Fun fact, the first letter of each verse of the original lyrics of the full song (usually only the first, and sometimes the sixth verse are sung) spell out Willem Van Nassov which was how you'd write Willem Van Nassau back then (the v was still commonly used as a u as well, and au and ou sounds are very similar in Dutch)
Those poles are driven into the swamp, so, the houses are build "on poles" partly, and partly on mud.. the poles connect the sandy underground and the houses...these days concrete poles...
Fun fact, Sint Petersburg is build on poles as well. Tsaar Peter the Great came to the Netherlands to learn about shipbuilding, among other things. So he copied the building proces when he was building Sint Petersburg.
Reclaiming land started way earlier than Flevoland. Schiphol is for example situated in a polder. And we are not singing of German blood. It’s from duitschen bloed, and why do you think the Dutch are called Dutch? Duitsch is an old-Dutch word for the people in the Netherlands. So the English name comes from the Dutch word Duitsch. Germany, or Duitsland, didn’t even exist in the time the Wilhelmus was written.
About those wooden poles: Without these poles the buildings would be sinking into the soil. The soil is to set ft to carry any buildings. So what th these poles the drilled them down until the found a hard surface. This technology is still used today but the wooden poles have been replaced since the midst of last century bi concrete poles. So the assumption that Amsterdam and other cities are build on wooden poles is incorrect. It is only in the older parts of the city.
Not only Amsterdam is built on poles, a large part of the country is. The ground is too soft to build on directly, if you do that it would just sink into the ground. In the past they used wooden poles, so in most of the old parts of city's there are still buildings on wooden poles. But today we use concrete poles, in Dutch they are called heipalen. They are used to transfer the weight to a sand layer somewhere between 5 en 20 meters down
every 'heap of land' that sticks out more then 200 meter above the landscape around it is defined as 'berg' (mountain), everything below that is technically a hill, I think. And since the vaalserberg is about 322m above sea level, that would make it a berg. I would like to see what you think about metric vs the mile (etc) system, did it confuse you? which one makes more sense to you?
First of all Willem-Alexander had this job on the side before he became king. An efficient way to keep your license valid. Before that he flew small bush planes in Africa for a doctors service. As for the monarchy system: a king like the ones on Europe has no actual power, he is a figurehead. A comparison with an executive president like the American one is fully beside the point.
I like to give to you some background info about the King and the Kingdom. As most modern monarchies being the King is hereditary but it is only a ceremonial function. And that is a great advantage. So modern monarchies implemented a modern job description for the King. But first of all, the King and his family represent the united senses among the citizens. In case of a pandemic, in case of a war, on the national Memorial Day and during World Cup soccer matches or Olympic Games and so forth. This entire saga reunites nearly everybody, it generates a nice national pride and community feeling. So that is part one. It is very important and should not be estimated. With a president you can celebrate the same but is doesn't feel the same because a president is always linked to politics and therefore he might be not your cup of tea. Secondly, and that's not less important, at international contacts, with other countries as well as with other royal families, with contacts with other governments or presidents and with international industry, it is the best when you have a KIng or Queen. The are politically not linked to any party. They can freely speak about anything avoiding difficult international and national issues. They are just the best business card you can wish for. If Trumo, Merkel or Macron would meet our Prime Minister, political and diplomatic issues must be addressed and they are expected to solve matters which can be extremely difficult. Especially when the mutual contact is not running smoothly. But Trump, Merkel or Macron meeting up with the King or Queen of The Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark or the United Kingdom, that is a complete different level. That is about friendship, liaisons, connecting, enjoying and representation. When the diplomatic and political situation is made smooth and nice, than our Prime Minister can start doing what his job is all about. It is wonderful to be able to improve international relationships. Republics don't really understand. Often the pay were revolutionary and kicked out or killed their royal family. But the citizens of modern monarchies were and still are very smart. Having a royal family has a financial price but it also generates a lot of money. In addition: Orange is the national color because the King of The Netherlands has a lot of titles, amongst which the Prince of Orange, a former principality in France. The city of Orange still exists.
Yes a monarchy has it's price, literally. But don't forget, having a president has it's price too. That country is not only paying for the reigning president and his/her staff, family, security etc. but also for all, still living, former presidents, their families, staff, security etc. etc..
About the poles; Amsterdam is not as unique in that way as you might think. Lots of cities are in some degree built on poles. It either be because of being built in a swamp, like Amsterdam, or being build around or even on top of at river, like Antwerp. Next to Amsterdam, Venice is of course also entirely built on poles.
Fun facts for a linguist: I have a pdf copy of a dictionary called "Nederduitsch woordenboek¨ from 1860. It formed the basis of all Dutch dictionaries ever since. Yet, the word "Nederduits" (modern spelling), has vanished from our language long before WW II. On the other hand, Jonathan Swift in 1728 mentions languages familiar to the character Gulliver and there he mentions "low dutch" and "high dutch", but not german.
I live in Germany very close to this mountains. If you take a bicycle and ride from Maastricht 25-30km up to this point you now, that it is a mountain.
"Dutch people with nothing to do converted water to land" well that is not really how this originates. Look at a very old map of the Netherlands. You will see that there were very many inland lakes, especially in Noord- and Zuid-Holland (e.g. around Amsterdam). These lakes had very shallow borders, more like a beach. Whenever there was a storm, the water would wash over the borders and cause local flooding. That of course was a nuisance so those were pumped dry and converted to land. You will find many regions with a name ending in "meer" (lake) which originally were lakes. The Flevoland province is a bit of a different thing, that was really made on purpose to gain land. But that was centuries later.
German is nowadays only used to refer to the German people and the German language. The word Diets and the use of German to refer to the Dutch people and the Dutch language have both become obsolete. However, when one speaks of Diets in the proper sense, this never refers to German, but to (southern) Middle Dutch. Diets never mean modern German, but earlier German could also mean Diets.
Another funny fact: Do you know where the name Holland came from? The name Holland first appeared in sources for the region around Haarlem, and by 1064 was being used as the name of the entire county. By the early twelfth century, the inhabitants of Holland were called Hollandi in a Latin text. Holland is derived from the Old Dutch term holtlant ("wood-land"). Wood land, where are these woods? It is countryside and cows every where!
Another nice fact is that the Dutch invented the first stock market. Also don't agree with the term reclaimed land because it was never land. We just kicked the sea out.
Actually, much of the land we reclaimed was indeed 'land' (peaty marches), but the peat was washed away during a number of devastating floods after 1000. Especially the Allerheiligenvloed in 1170, and 3 more massive floods in the next 50 years.
I am from german blood is spoken out in the person of William of Orange, our founding father, which was actually a Herman prince ego tot Holland as a present.
William of Nassau was indeed born in what is now Germany (Holy Roman Empire) who inherited the princedom of Orange which was in France and spent most of his childhood and youth in Brussels so he probably spoke French as his main tongue. So yes he was a French speaking German who defended what is now the Netherlands and Belgium against a Spanish king.
About the mountain thing: You know how eskimos have a bunch of different words for snow because they have so much snow? Well we have the opposite of that with height differences. While the word 'mountain' and dutch word 'berg' technically translate to eachother, they don't quite mean the same thing. I typically associate a much larger structure with the word mountain, wherease the word berg doesn't really have to refer to something very large. In some ways 'pile' or 'heap' might be a better translation for 'berg'. For instance I would never call a 1 meter high pile of sand a mountain but in dutch you would call it "een berg zand". So no, we are not calling vaalserberg a mountain, you are, we call it a berg, which doesn't quite mean the same thing but there is no better translation.
We have purple food in NL, including carrots, culliflower (Bloemkool), eggplant (aubergine), cabbage (kool), and beets. Most poles are replaced by concrete nowadays.
Do you know the reason the king flies for KLM? Its not like.. he has a job... but the royal aircraft was a Boeing 737 (i forgot the new type, it similar though)., and he likes to fly it himself. But in order to keep your type rating, you have a minimum amount of flight hours in that aircraft type you have to do each year. So he flies for the KLM as well on the side just to keep his rating. I remember debates in politics when the KLM was ordering a new aircraft type, and the king supposedly having to been involved in that decision because he wanted to fly a specific type, but then KLM would have to use those as well, so he could keep certified for it :D (haven't seen proof for it though)
Heh, we have 200 foot hills that carry the word berg (mountain) in their name.As a Dutchman, i consider everything over 15 feet a hill! Technically though, anything over 500 meters high we consider a (small) mountain.
As I am from german blood, I have no problem with that sentence. I do have problems with the monarchy (the whole idea of the Netherlands was to have a republic). The national anthem refers to William of Orange, who was of german blood. So it makes sense as such.
The whole idea was not to have a republic, but to get rid of spanish rule. Initially, lordship was offered to Queen Elizabeth I of England (who was an ally) by the dutch nobles, but she refused. This left no other option than to continue without one. Btw, imagine Queen Elizabeth I accepting..
Hi Eva, no doubt this has been explained here already, but still… "Dutch, Deutsch, Diets, Duits" all go back to an older Germanic word that means "people". You can also find it in names, like Diederik (Dutch), Dietrich (German), Thierry (French), meaning "rich among the people" (and of which my own name is a contraction, or shortened form). The confusion however (why do you English-speaking guys call us Dutch, Dutch in the first place?) is due to the fact that the adjectival form also refers to the language(s): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_Low_Countries#Dutch,_Diets_and_Duyts . Ik geniet van je kanaal trouwens!
Dirk Yes😊 Well..The Nederland language is a mixture of English, German and Norwegian.I start to learn nederlandsk because I like Nederland so much( like Ava☺️) and I figure out that it’s very close to norwegian language😊
