ABC Holland
My first ABC book! With the fine folk at Snor Publishing, I wrote the freshly released book ABC Holland. It covers 26-plus things that visitors find delightfully eccentric about the Netherlands – such as bitter balls, wooden shoes, drugs, herring and Hazes. Indeed, it’s the perfect gift. (But not for me because I already have a copy.)
Below, I pasted a few write-ups that didn’t make the final cut (for obvious reasons).
F is for Flowers
Holland is an economic floral powerhouse, controlling almost half of the global trade. The Dutch are bud-obsessed. Holland’s ‘Tulipmania’ of 1636-7 saw single bulbs get traded for real estate, heaps of cash or endless kilos of cheese, before crashing into a chaos of bankruptcies and suicides. Let’s hope they learned their lesson.
V is for Vindmill
Oops, typo! Anyway… Windmills have made a deep impact on the Dutch landscape and psyche. Many Dutch sayings describe insanity and general absurdity in relation to windmills or ‘windmillies’, as a child’s wind wheel is called. This toy twirls without any true function: like the brains of the insanely drunk. Ironically, most still existing windmills also serve no function. They twirl on government subsidy.
Y is for ‘You’re Not Normal’
Yes, the Dutch exhibit wildness and diversity on King’s Day (see K) and Gay Pride (see G), and with their appetite for XTC (see X). But the rest of the year is more about: ‘Do normal, then you’re crazy enough’. Conformity is important: people should just relax, fit in, and not act as if they ‘got hit in the head with a windmill blade’. ‘Y’ is also for yodeling (just kidding: we hate yodeling – it’s just not freaking normal*).
* Apologies to friend and yodel scholar Bart Plantenga. I’m shameless when it comes to low-hanging fruit.
Let’s just hope that the write-ups that DID make the book are of better quality then this fucking nonsense, Mr. Korver. I mean: is the publication supposed to be informative for people visiting this country or does it only serve the purpose of you and the Snorries having a laugh?
This is gold. Thanks Harry!
Thanks for making me laugh!
This is gold. Thanks Carina!