Moving to a new country whithout basically knowing anyone can lead to cool feet for anyone. It can be even worse if you start (as I did) with the predjudice that Dutch people, as all Nordics, are not very friendly and warm, but very different from the Latin Balcanic culture I come from, meaning I would need to bring out the super friendly, nice and cool me :)
It turns out that I was quite wrong about that, and the first sign of that was the HR lady from my company calling the hotel where I was staying to make sure I got there safely. It did not stop there, and in my first day in the office I was received like this:
my colleagues had decorated my desk with NL flags and banners with "Welkome Thuis". Not little was my surprise when I realised it doesn't stop here, they had also prepared a basket with Dutch "goodies".
Among others, what I could find in it were the follwing:
- big jar of mayo, as we are in the land of friet --and if you didn't know, no friet here comes without mayo
- the delicious Stroopwafels, one of the lekkereste (as in delicious) Dutch inventions, which immediately entered my Top 5 favourite sweets ;) But beware, these yummy, sugary/honry/caramel syrup filled double waffles can create serious addiction
- the one and only, the Rookworst or the Christmas Sausage as its very popular this time of the year. Its "goed", but a bit overrated -- for me its still a larger smoked hot dog sausage
- the famous chocolate sprinkles, or hagelslag (they do have a thing for the letter "G" and diffcult to pronounce combinations, don't they? :)) Must admit they are better than expected and can make a more than decent breakfast if you add them on a butter topped slice of bread and have a glass of milk next to it
- Kruuinoten -- the traditional hard spicy cookies that Sinterklaas (more to come on this mysterious character) spreads around, sort of gingerbread in a diferent format
- Audio CD with 2013 Top Hollandse Hits :) Sounds like songs my parets used to listen to, but its me who is not able to appreciate it to its real value as my Dutch level is still a painfull topic
So, are Dutch really nice or what? As I would later find out, they are considered the "Friendly, but not very polite", as opposed to their Eastern neighbours, the Germans, which are "Polite, but not very friendly" -- just love finding out this cool cultural particularities.
Enough about all this, ran to buy some Stroopwafels ;)