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The essentials of the Netherlands in eight friendly questions. No expert knowledge needed: everyone can join in, from nine to ninety.
Curious visitor 0–3 · Knows the canals 4–6 · Practically Dutch 7–8
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The Dutch flag has three flat stripes: red, white and blue. It looks almost exactly like the flag of Luxembourg, which is a little longer and uses lighter shades of red and blue.
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King's Day is held on 27 April, the birthday of King Willem-Alexander (or on the 26th when the 27th is a Sunday), and the whole country turns orange, the colour of the royal family. The very first Dutch flag, more than 400 years ago, even had an orange stripe where the red one is now. It is also the one day of the year when anyone may sell things on the street without a permit, so towns fill up with huge flea markets where children sell their old toys.
Photo: Carmelrmd, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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The 19 windmills of Kinderdijk were built around 1740 to pump water out of the low-lying land and keep it dry. Together they form the largest group of old windmills in the Netherlands, and they have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.
Photo: Lucas Hirschegger, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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About 25 million people speak Dutch as their first language, in the Netherlands and in the north of Belgium. English borrowed a few Dutch words along the way: 'cookie' comes from the Dutch 'koekje', a little cake, brought to America by Dutch settlers in what is now New York.
Photo: Dutch Bible Society (Nederlands Bijbel Genootschap), Wikimedia Commons, Copyrighted free use.
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Vincent van Gogh was born in the village of Zundert in 1853. In just over ten years of painting he made about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, and most of them in the last two years of his life.
Photo: Vincent van Gogh, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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The Dutch love skating so much that there is a race on natural ice called the Elfstedentocht: almost 200 km past eleven towns in Friesland. It can only go ahead when the ice is at least 15 cm thick along the whole route, and it was last held in 1997.
Photo: McSmit, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Hagelslag is tiny chocolate sprinkles, scattered over a slice of bread with butter so they stick. Children and grown-ups eat it for breakfast or lunch: an estimated 750,000 hagelslag sandwiches are eaten in the Netherlands every single day.
Photo: Amin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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These wooden shoes are called klompen. Wooden shoes more than 700 years old have been dug up in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, and they look much like the ones some Dutch farmers still wear today. A full wooden clog protects the foot so well that it can even serve as a safety shoe.
Photo: OXLAEY.com, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.
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