The Netherlands!

During the one month I was in the Europe working at AI office, I had the opportunity to travel around 3 different countries: France (Paris), Belgium (Brussels and Bruges) and The Netherlands (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Maastricht and Hoek van Holland).

In the next posts I will write a little bit about this experience, and my impressions of the places I visited.


Starting the series, the Netherlands.

Before writing about the country, let me tell you one thing about the country’s name. Most of us have probably heard different names for this country, I have had and I was always curious about that although I was never proactive enough to look for the answer :S

The Netherlands (or simply Netherlands) is the official name of the country. However, we often refer to the country by the name Holland (in Portuguese specially :)). This is not exactly correct, because the word Holland derives from a region in the west of the country that currently makes up two of the twelve provinces, namely North Holland and South Holland.

And the term 'Low Countries', which is also used sometimes to refer to the Netherlands, isn’t technically correct, because it refers to a bigger region in Western Europe that includes Belgium and Luxembourg. The term makes reference to the geography of the region, which is low-lying (actually, Nederlands literally means "low countries" or "low lands").

Maybe this confusion happens because once the “Low Countries” (Nederlands) was a kingdom (the Kingdom of the Netherlands) formed by the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. But it was only during some years in the 19th century, because Belgium and Luxembourg gained their independence afterwards. Now, the Kingdom of the Netherlands is formed only by the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba.

Amsterdam is the capital city, but country’s seat of government is The Hague (Dutch: Den Haag, Portuguese: Haia). Den Haage is also the location of the Queen’s house and of most foreign embassies (including the Brazilian one).

Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague are the biggest cities in the Netherlands. None of them have more than 1 million inhabitants. But these cities and a number of smaller cities in the west of the country are expanding towards each other to the extent that the entire area’s being regarded in many ways as one 'big city' agglomeration (a single metropole) that Dutch people know as “Randstad”, with about 7 million inhabitants.

To travel there is really easy.

First, because everything is really close (the Netherlands is a small country). For going from Amsterdam to Rotterdam, it won’t take you more than 45 minutes (the same time I take to go to college everyday, by bus :P)

Second, because they have an excellent, excellent public transport network, even in regional or local levels (in the cities). Everything is really efficient, although it’s expensive.

To travel by train in Europe isn’t the cheapest option, the buses are much cheaper. But it’s muuuuuuch faster! And it’s so nice to travel by train :D.

These things make possible to live in one city and work in a different one (it would be like if we could live in Rio de Janeiro and work in São Paulo, imagine :)). There is even a popular saying for this: “Amsterdam to party, Den Hague to live, Rotterdam to work”.


The Netherland is popularly known for hosting the International Court of Justice and for its windmills, clogs (wooden shoes), dikes, tulips, bicycles, prostitution, same-sex marriage, abortion, euthanasia and drugs liberalization.

I will write more about some of those on the next posts.