International Relations

I’m ashamed to admit that our attempts to learn Dutch are failing miserably.  It’s very easy to have good intentions, very hard to put them into practice when everyone you meet responds to you in perfect English. So far the only problem we have encountered is being unable to read our post – but at the moment we get very little of that and Mr T has very helpful work colleagues who have been able to translate the payment schedule for our waste collection and parking permit.

Now that I’ve met up with a  few ex-pats the incentive to learn has diminished even further. The general opinion of the Dutch language (even from the Dutch themselves) is that it is complicated, impossible for anyone who wasn’t born with a guttural frog in their throat to pronounce, and spoken by no other nation in the world.  I know it’s lazy, and not exactly helpful for integration, but when you’ve met other travellers who have lived in the Netherlands for a dozen years and still don’t speak any Dutch, you do start to wonder what’s the point? If I had children at school, yes. If I planned to spend the rest of my life here, yes, but just passing through? Although I would genuinely like to learn to say more than hello, goodbye, count to ten and understand the days of the week, with ready access to the BBC, English language films at the cinema, and English books and newspapers, it's very easy not to.

Initially I thought a lack of Dutch would prove a major hindrance to my social skills. I worried about making small talk. What if someone I sat next to on the bus or met at the swimming pool wished to stop for a chat? I need not have feared.  The Dutch are remarkably subdued - polite yes, friendly and helpful yes, but this is not America and no-one is going to recount their whole life story to me in the check-out queue.

However,  at least here in the Netherlands people have heard of our home town of Southampton. Back in California whenever we were asked where we were from I got fed up of trying to explain I was from a large shipping port on the south coast of England.  Even mentioning the Titanic still drew a blank. It became easier just to say I was from south (of) London, which wasn’t exactly a lie, just an exaggeration  of about seventy miles. However, here in the Netherlands, it’s a completely different story.

‘Southampton? Ah  Ronald Koeman……’

Yes, dear Saint Ronald. His arrival in our home city couldn’t have been more fortuitous, and not just for the football club.  Everyone from waiters to windmill curators has heard of Southampton.  We have an immediate rapport - in English, of course!