NETHERLANDS Provinces, constituent countries/ Special municipalities EXPLAINED 

This was a fun one! Auke from Atlasova came over to not only help with some footage I needed for future projects, but we figured, why not also cover his country, the Netherlands in an all new administrative division video? We haven't done one in a while! Everything from the flat polders to the top of Mt. Scenery, it's the KINGDOM OF THE NETHERLANDS! ENJOY!

Another thing about Zwolle is during WW2, it was liberated by a single one-eyed French Canadian soldier named Léo Major. A street is named after him in the town itself. As a little bit of personal trivia, someone I know from the Netherlands was born in Zwolle, in a hospital that had been around for decades, and she surmises that if it wasn't for Major, that Hospital would have likely been destroyed by allied artillery.

As a Dutch person, this is what i've dreamt of for many years. Thanks Paul and the team

curacao and aruba are huge in baseball, they pretty much carry the kingdom of the netherlands team in the baseball world cup

As someone who grew up on Curaçao, I’m so glad to have y’all talk about it and the other administrative divisions in the Netherlands. Masha Danki Barbs and Auke!

Hey Barbs, if u had time, can u do videos of : - Provinces of Indonesia 🇲🇨 - States and federal territories of Malaysia 🇲🇾 - Regions of Greece 🇬🇷 - Regions of Italy 🇮🇹 - Departments of Colombia 🇨🇴 - Administrative regions of Myanmar 🇲🇲 - Federal entities of Mexico 🇲🇽 - Administrative regions of China 🇨🇳 - Provinces of South Korea 🇰🇷 - Governorates of Iraq 🇮🇶 - Counties of Ireland 🇮🇪 - Provinces of Iran 🇮🇷 Love Netherlands from Malaysia. 🇲🇾🧡🇳🇱

I love the Dutch they are such an amazing nation and the people are all kind and know how to have fun, I'm happy to have several Dutch friends. Love from Bulgaria

Bonus fact about Noord-Holland: The capital (Haarlem) is the place that gave it's name to the neighbourhood Harlem in New York. Another such place is Brooklyn, named after Breukelen, and then there are various other places with minor name connections like Broadway, Wall Street, Staten Island, Bronx and more. Lots of famous places in New York (formerly New Amsterdam) with Dutch roots, i rather like that history personally.

I feel like the whole world loves The Netherlands. I for sure do. Greetings from Spain.

5:57 by the way, that part of Belgium is actually 2 provinces, Walloon Brabant and Flemish Brabant, plus Brussels which is an enclave in the Flemish Brabant province. And the province east of that is called Limburg, just like the one in the Netherlands.

As a Brazilian-portuguee-dutch I am very proud of my heritage, visited all of these islands, fun fact: in the ABC islands they speak "Papiamentu" a Portuguese based creole with some Spanish, dutch and arawak native language mixed into it, if you are fluent in Portuguese you can still understand most of it. Pasa bon dia (have a nice day)!!!

Paul: What? Can you explain? Auke: They were angry. Paul: Okay.

Bonaire has the best diving and windsurfing in the Caribbean. I was lucky enough to go there and also Curacao in 2008! Also, both Curacao and Aruba are really into baseball with many players from there joining the MLB

11:20 Fun fact about Bonaire: They held my great-uncle ransom in the 70's! My grandpa started a company for testing oil and my great-uncle went there. The business deal fell through, so they held him hostage there for a year. Eventually, my grandpa paid the ransom and he got back to his native Texas.

The whole Holland Netherlands thing is like England UK

I love these more in depth videos about country subdivisions. I’m from Assen I know some fun facts about the northern provinces: Friesland and Groningen have a big rivalry with eachother It’s a common joke to say no one lives in Drenthe The people from Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe are often very antagonistic towards city people, but If you’re not being too insensitive no one will mind.

2:58 fun fact: my name is frisian too! Even though I'm not from Friesland either.

I hope you can do one of these on the Departments of Colombia, they are so diverse both physically and culturally, and I think you will have a really fun time researching it!

Saint Martin is basically Belgium, speaks French and Dutch in one place😂😂

The Enschede fireworks disaster was wild. I was born and raised in that city. At the time, I was still in high school. There were two massive explosions, a few minutes apart. We felt the first one, but it was a slight tremor. I asked my mom if she felt it too. As we were talking, the second major explosion occurred and it felt like a mini earthquake. The thing is, we were about 5km (~3 miles) from where it happened. Pretty far all things considered. I thought maybe the nearby gas station had exploded. We looked to the north and saw this MASSIVE black smoke cloud and turned on the TV, realizing it was so much worse than we thought. Apparently it was visible from dozens of kilometers away. It wasn't long before all the information came in. The area it happened in was close to our childhood home, near downtown. The district has since been built up again and it's one of the fancier neighborhoods in my city these days, but holy crap, that was insane. The whole district was cordoned off for a very long time. It was just GONE. More than 1200 people lost their homes. About as many were injured. And a few dozen people lost their lives. Definitely one of the darkest days in my city's history.

quick corrections: 5:25, Vaalserberg, not Vaaserberg (thanks Roger!) 8:22, Zwolle, not Zwole 8:56, Utrecht, not Utrect 9:23, Piet Mondriaan, not Mondrian (thanks thef1chesser!) 11:49, Oranjestad, not Oranjastad

Glad to see you talk about the Caribbean Regions this time, unlike in the France Episode. My colleague from St. Martin is still salty about that. Still love the show though haha

Zelfs voordat ik de video heb bekeken, dankjewel. Niet alleen voor de video's over het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden maar ook zeker voor alle andere video's. Openheid van "zaken" helpt de wereld en de ontwikkeling daarvan. Nogmaals, Dankjewel Barb.

Learned something new about my country today ! Thanks for the vid Barbs & Auke

Fun fact about Curaçao: Most of the Oil the allies used during WW2 was refined here, so The kingdom of the Netherlands was sending the most oil. Not the United States. Oh, and Curaçao only actually became a ‘country’ in 2010, making it one of the youngest countries in the world. (I’m 12, and I’m older. It’s a fact I love saying.)

The conclusion of the Netherlands episode was the best of all, but now got a second one. 😆

It always feels so amazing when such a big RU-vidr makes a video about your country ❤️

these videos are my favourite on this channel, I like these more than the full-on country episodes, I hope we'll see more of these after Zimbabwe video is concluded.

to add some more context regarding some province names: 1. There is also a Limburg in Belgium. We call the Dutch one Nothern Limburg. As the name might suggest, they used to be one, until the Belgian Revolution officially ended in 1839. 2. The two Brabants have a third province in the middle: Antwerp. Join them together and you have more or less the historical Duchy of Brabant.

Im from Arnhem - the capital of Gelderland - also known as "A bridge too far" city! Lovely seeing this episode

The video of tye Old English and Frisian speakers really feels like 2 wizards speaking the Olde Tongues together that absolutely no other mere mortal could comprehend.

I've never seen so many bicycles in my life than in that country.

Small thing but in the UK, Scotland, England and Wales are called constituent countries and depending on who you ask Northern Ireland is aswell.

Fun fact about Belgium we had 9 provinces. So they build the atomium with 9 spheres but then they separated Brabant in between Flemish and Walloon so now we have 10 prov.

So cool to do this with you man! Can't wait to see you again and to create more awesome content!

Wow, this was absolutely fascinating!

Fantastic content as always. I love The Netherlands. Keep it up.

I love the filler videos cool having a Dutch person explain some of the culture surrounding their provinces.

1st level administration of the Kingdom of the Netherlands are the 4 Constitute countries of Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten and the Netherlands. While the Constitute country of the Netherlands has 12 2nd level administrations called provinces and 3 municipalities of Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

As a Frisian myself I can confirm, I do indeed look like Doutzen

I am half Dutch half Bahraini 🇳🇱🇧🇭 my father is Bahraini and my mom is Dutch my mom is from Zuid Holland South Holland and I visit the Netherlands every summer and Christmas to see my Opa and Grootmoeder

I was born in Curaçao, I live now in mainland Netherlands

Always great to see more videos of my country :)

Barbs talking about places I live nearby or visit very regularly made my day. Especially some of the pronunciations 😎 Thanks for that Barbs 👋🏽🇳🇱

This was a great listen while on my daily walk. I learned so much and now want to visit the Netherlands :)

There is a small part of Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, NY that was the town of New Utrecht. There’s a Dutch Reform Church that pre-dates the American Revolution, and a Mile Stone (replica) that explains the old make up of Dutch Brooklyn. My old High School is even New Utrecht High School (the outside was used as the location establishing shot for the TV series “Welcome Back Kotter”).

Started watching Geography now years ago and never could I have guessed my hometown of Nijmegen would ever be featured, love to see it. Keep up the good work 👌

One of my best friends is half-dutch and half-dominican. Her and her family are just awesome. I have also met many people from The Netherlands and I am doing businesses in Curaçao so, I can definitely say that most people under the Kingdom of The Netherlands are some of the friendliest and lovely people I have ever met in the world. Much love from Dominican Republic 🇩🇴 ❤

I’ve seen atlasova a lot, didn’t know that he was behind it!

This guy netherlands the greatest man auke 👍🙂

12:19 "that's an interesting name for a capital" laugh in Cockburn town

South Holland also has the oldest University in The Netherlands, in the city of Leiden (founded in 1575).

Instantly knew there would be a Atlasova colab when I saw the title 😁

I love this little crazy country, near whose border I grew up. 😍 The Low German from my home region has many Dutch loan words, the landscape is the same, we also call our land gains "polder", visiting Groningen is huge fun every time and Amsterdam also offers a lot to marvel at outside of the tourist crowds (I think the drive to Amsterdam over the Afsluitdijk alone is great) 🤩

Yes I love these breakdowns!

Yall forgot to mention the papiamento laguage

im from gelderland and i havent looked at my own province this way yet. wildcard is pretty much a good way to describe the province. and for some extra information we are proud of being the province with wildlife (:

Gelderland is also home Duivelsberg, a village/hill that the Netherlands annexed from Germany after WW2(they originally had more but returned almost all the land in the 60s)

My great-grandfather was called Auke. He was renamed "Arthur" when he left Friesland.

Really cool and interesting video to watch! :)

I actually just got into the Netherlands today, staying in North Brabant

Thanks for this video, I'm a Czech but I was born in Limburg, In Landgraaf. I don't remember my life there but It's always been my dream to go back. Great video!

9:44 the name what he probably wanted to hear is "Hollandse Nieuwe". This is what we call the haring when it's catched during a certain time of the year.

Damnit, I hoped you would acknowledge the 2nd largest city of Limburg, Venlo. I'm a long time subscriber and am a member of the municipality council of Venlo at 28 y.o.

The first recorded military fort was also named after Zeeland, Fort Zeelandia, AKA Anping Fort.

As a German living in Limburg I found a typo Barbs it's Vaalserberg you missed the L. Also it is know as Drielanden punt 3 countries point where The Netherlands Belgium and Germany meet.

How the heck did YT not notify me of this. Fantastic episode as usual

Oh my god I’m so hyped for this video

Nice video! You mentioned Frisians speaking their own language, but you forgot to mention the other officially recognised languages of the Netherlands. In the provinces of Groningen, Drenthe, Overijssel, Gelderland and also southern Friesland, Low Saxon is spoken, and in Limburg, Limburgs is spoken (a tonal language!). Besides, on the ABC islands, Papiamentu is an official language, and on the SSS islands it is English. Some mistakes: Flevoland is NOT 100% made of polders. There were two small islands, Urk (inhabited) and Schokland (uninhabited) that became part of the mainland, and are now part of Flevoland. Johan de Witt was NOT a prime minister. He was raadspensionaris or grand pensionary, and unlike a prime minister he had no fellow ministers (this is why it is strange to call him a prime minister) and no head of state above him. Some spelling errors: Zwolle, Den Haag, Utrecht, Mondriaan, Oranjestad.

You should definitely do one on Sweden!!

Awh yes very nice! Loved this episode lol

Great video!

A filler week video about the regions of Italy would be nice

Can you do the administrative subdivisions of Nauru, San Marino, Andorra, and Monaco? It be interesting to see what you come up with. :)

Great video about our country! Thank you for that! 😁🇳🇱

Fun fact that the Brabo in the video did not mention. Is that Noord-Brabant is the proud world leading producer (over 75% of total production) of what the Americans refer to as 'Molly'.

The fact both Zeeland and New Zealand are famous for beaches and seafood can't be a coincidence

Just subscribed to Atlasova!

Nice video! Really informative as well. You mentioned a few of the most well known Dutch master painters, although you forgot the biggest one (in my opinion) when you talked about South-Holland. Rembrandt van Rijn, who was born in the beautiful city of Leiden :)

I’ve been diving at Statia AND Saba, AND visited St. Martin! Sailed between them all and it was amazing.

Finally my home town gets mentioned(Almere) feels really special,though I was born in Limburg near the German border.

There is a third city in the Netherlands that claims to be the oldest, Voorburg, then called Forum Hadriani, started as a Roman outpost aswell and grew to be an economical centre during its time

During WW2, the Aruban oil refinery (known to the locals as ‘Lago’) was used as a fueling hub for the Allies. Fuel and oil from Aruba was also used for the European Allies. The oil refinery has nothing to do with Venezuela, however; many years later - Citgo did have gas stations in Aruba. Citgo is a Venezuelan owned oil company with fueling stations in the USA too.

Fun video; it really helps people to get a bit of a better idea of the Kingdom of The Netherlands. The photo you have at 3:22 is from the West Friese markt in Schagen by the way: it's found in the region West-Friesland, which is found in the province of Noord- Holland but not Friesland (though there is a lot of shared history, but today it's in Noord- Holland). We have tons of regional identities and cultures in the country, I identify as a Westfries for instance.

intresting how you covered netherlands

WAIT the Atlasova guy?? That’s crazy

Nice informative video! Another quirky artist from Noord Brabant is Jheronimus Bosch, famous for his depictions of heaven, world and hell. His hometown has the St. Janskathedraal (Saint John's Cathedral) with an abundant amount of sculpture from which he got a lot of inspiration. This province also has the largest National Park (nature reserve) 'Loonse en Drunense Duinen / de Brand', with inland dunes, forests, agricultural landscapes and moorlands. And of course the fairy tale amusement park 'De Efteling', one of the best in the world.

Calling Assen just a racetrack is a bit of a understatement lmao Its like one of the crown jewels of Motorbike GPs together with Mugello and probably Phillip Island.

Although the names are boring, you should do the regions of Chile. From top to bottom Chile has one of the most contrasting and beautiful landscapes there is

Nice to hear a reminiscence of Portuguese in Aruba, "bolo preto". It sounds like the cakes my grandmother baked for me and my cousins. I am also planning to go to Curaçao (which sounds like the Portuguese word for "heart" but it stems from the Portuguese word for "healing"). After being in Cape Verde a couple of times and hearing the krioulo patois I think I will get the gist of Papiamento.

Denmark next? I would really like to see a video about their territories. (Especially the Faroe Islands).

Nice consise summaries, well done. Liked that you also memtiomed the diving spots. Geography is not only about above water. Mentioning zeeland, probably mention the delta works?

For the next filler week could you do a video on the south China sea? The overlapping EEZ claims are brought up quite a lot, but I've not seen anyone make a comprehensive video about who actually de facto controls each of the many atolls, islands, sandbanks and artificial islands. I know some are even controlled by Taiwan.

Proud to be an Arnhemmer (From Arnhem) with family from Groningen and Enschede Great work as always Barbs Keep up the great work

Watched this video a week before I traveled to the Netherlands, and now rewatching for the first time after coming back home. I went to Amsterdam (of course) and Groningen, but also traveled through Rotterdam, The Hague, Zwolle, and Flevoland. Such a beautiful country with very friendly and fun people. Much love from the USA!

I'm actually doing a report on the Netherlands rn, this helps

A small correction, the Veluwe nature reserve is actually way bigger than national park de Hoge Veluwe of which you showed a map so technically it isn't a correct map, but further a great video

Fryslân boppe!! Friesland at some point also had a Viking king. Also always love the story about Grutte Pier. A Frisian independence fighter who was freakishly tall for his time and had a HUGE sword 😂 you can see that sword still in the Frisian museum in Ljouwert

Thank you very much!😃👍

8:22 it's Zwolle in stead of Zwole, and 8:59 it's Utrecht in stead of Utrect ;). Great video though!!