After a 17 hour travel day full of online poker and less than one hour of sleep, we landed in the Netherlands to sunny weather! We spent our first week going on several company visits, visiting museums, and immersing ourselves with the wonderful city of Amsterdam. Now, after a little over a week of being in this foreign country, I can certainly say I have learned a thing or two about the culture and common practices of the Dutch. For the most part, their lifestyles are very similar to ours: they have the same eating schedule in regard to time of each meal, same attire (maybe a tad dressier than we are used to), and very similar inconsistent weather patterns as Pittsburgh has. However, there are some notable differences that are worth mentioning.
Almost instantly I noticed the immense bike presence throughout the Netherlands. As soon as we left the airport there was a parking lot flooded with bikes but not a single car, which is unheard of in the states. I think I only saw about twenty cars throughout our entire stay in the city of Amsterdam. It seemed that the bikers always had right of way and it was very likely that if you were not paying attention you would get hit by a biker. Their use of bikes align with the sustainability practices of the Netherlands because it reduces carbon exhaustion that release from cars. Being a touristy town, it is much more practical for them to use bikes to get around the city and dodge all of the tourists walking around. More bikes than cars is impossible to imagine in the United States, but that is what is more practical for the people of Amsterdam.
The architecture of houses in the Amsterdam is also extremely different than that in Pittsburgh. Most buildings here are tall and thin with windows lining the entire exterior. The houses are all touching/very close together whereas at home people value a large property and backyard. That does not seem to be a priority in the Netherlands at all. The close proximity in the Netherlands is needed due to their housing crisis, as Amsterdam especially is an extremely populated city with not enough places for people to live. This also led to an increasing amount of house boats in the canals, which were surprisingly just as (if not more) expensive as the houses on land. We do not see house boats lining the Allegheny river as we see here.
One similarity I noticed was the food in the Netherlands is very similar to that in the United States. They had all of the main chain restaurants such as McDonalds, Dunkin, Starbucks, Burger King, etc., and they also had every genre of food. I think that because cities like Amsterdam are so touristy, they want the restaurants to appeal to all types of people so they have a wide variety of food, which reminds me of how it is at home. We did get to try some traditional Dutch foods such as bitterballen (a fried stew ball) and stampot (mashed potatoes with green chicory and a sausage), but other than that the Dutch do not have a certain style of food designated as theirs.
A typical day in the life in Amsterdam is almost exactly how a day at home would be for me. There is the hustle and bustle of people going to work and school in the mornings, but they use a lot of public transportation and have a large train network throughout the Netherlands. They eat lunch at around noon, except their lunch is almost always some sort of sandwich rather than a full meal. Then they go on walks and shop once work/school is over, and have dinner around the same time. The pace of life is very similar during the day, however the night life starts a lot later at around 11pm or midnight. Since weed is legal in the Netherlands, the streets of Amsterdam often smell like weed and/or cigarettes. I noticed that a lot more people than I am used to in Pittsburgh smoke cigarettes, which I was shocked by. Nevertheless, I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in the Netherlands so far and can not wait to see what other adventures await our group!
