Ben Coates > Quotes

“The Netherlands, for all its faults, was happier than Britain, more efficient than France, more tolerant than America, more worldly than Norway, more modern than Belgium and more fun than Germany.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“Harlem was named after the Dutch city of Haarlem, Brooklyn after the small town of Breukelen, and Flushing after the southern Dutch city of Vlissingen. Wall Street was originally De Waal Street and Broadway was once better known as Breede Weg. Several other Dutch words also made it into the American vocabulary: cookie, waffle, noodles, brandy, coleslaw.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“The Dutch ruled over an empire stretching from the Caribbean to East Asia, founded the city of New York, discovered Australia, played the world’s best football and produced some of the finest art and architecture in Europe. Everywhere one goes in the world, one can always find Dutch people. A country half the size of Scotland, with a population of just seventeen million or so, claims to have invented the DVD, the dialysis machine, the tape recorder, the CD, the energy-saving lightbulb, the pendulum clock, the speed camera, golf, the microscope, the telescope and the doughnut.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“All along the river, the people I spoke to were hard-working and deeply attached to the mental security blanket of having a decent house, clean car and steady job. They were relatively wealthy, but at the same time quite ambivalent about wealth, and disdainful of anything which smacked of excessive consumption. Family was important, but having expensive jewellery or a fancy haircut usually were not. People considered it essential to be productive and efficient, but would also think it an outrage to be expected to reply to a work email on the weekend. From Rotterdam to Ludwigshafen, they counted pennies and returned empty bottles, avoided running up debts, and were careful to save for rainy days. Food was enjoyed but unimportant, and a 'salad' was anything covered with mayonnaise, preferably fried first.”
― Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps

“Of course, Amsterdam’s flourishing mercantile classes did not invest only in art. Trade also financed the construction of the concentric canals encircling the city. Each of these was given a name indicative of the class of resident it hoped to attract: the Gentleman’s Canal (Herengracht), the Prince’s Canal (Prinsengracht), the Emperor’s Canal (Keizersgracht). A northern Venice was born, albeit with colder weather and worse food. Along the canals, handsome townhouses were built in classical or neo-Renaissance style, complete with ornamented façades, large windows and high-ceilinged rooms for entertaining guests. The houses were taxed according to their width at the front, so a unique shape of building evolved: narrow fronted but very tall and surprisingly deep, often with a sizable garden hidden Tardis-like at the back. Many included what the Dutch called doorzonwoningen, individual rooms running the whole length of the house, so that sunlight could shine all the way through from the windows at either end. Steep staircases saved valuable space inside, with elaborate systems of ropes and pulleys enabling front doors to be opened from upstairs by tugging on a loose end. Building smaller rooms on the upper floors than on the lower ones helped enhance the sense of perspective when one looked up from the street, exaggerating the height of the buildings. Gabled rooves were topped with flagpole holders pointing out like fingers, together with cranes and pulleys for lifting in furniture that would not fit through the narrow interior staircases.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands

“The Dutch–German border wasn’t always so invisible. Thomas Jefferson crossed it somewhere near here in 1788 and was amazed by the differences between two countries which he (like many Americans) had assumed were largely identical. Jefferson wrote in his diary: ‘The transition from ease and opulence to extreme poverty is remarkable on crossing the line between the Dutch and Prussian territory. [In Prussia] there are no chateaux, nor houses that bespeak the existence even of a middle class. Universal and equal poverty overspreads the whole.’ ‘The villages,’ he noted in Germany, ‘seem to be falling down.”
― Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps

“One Dutch MEP even once proposed that the government introduce a ban on banning things.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“Several years of living in the Netherlands had reduced my innate English prudishness somewhat, but I still suffered from a typical Englishman's angst at public nudity. Cowering between the changing rooms and the pool, I spent ten anguished minutes trying to decide whether to keep my swimming trunks on or risk taking them off. Would the other patrons run screaming if I stripped off? Or would they run screaming if I didn't? I eventually decided to assimilate as best as I could, and marched to the poolside dressed as God made me, flinging my towel aside with carefree abandon. No one ran screaming, although I did get a big smile and a wink from a bearish, Russian-looking man twice my age, and wondered briefly if I'd strayed into the wrong kind of bathhouse.

The biggest surprise was that men and women were mixing freely not just in the pools but in the showers and changing rooms too, all as happily naked as the day they first drew breath. A group of older men sat talking about football in the hot tub, and a pair of middle-aged women were busily planning someone else's wedding while swimming lengths in the icy main pool. Yet despite the mixing of the sexes, the atmosphere was reassuringly chaste. I was almost certainly the only person who wasn't retired, and there were (to put it politely) more raisins on display than grapes. I didn't quite know where to look, and spent a lot of time feigning interest in the ceiling.”
― Ben Coates, The Rhine: Following Europe's Greatest River from Amsterdam to the Alps

“As a people, the Dutch were healthy, creative, curious, friendly, worldly, always willing to chat with strangers or help out a friend. The mythical ‘work–life balance’ for which others strived in vain seemed to come naturally to them. Compared to citizens of almost every other country, they worked fewer hours, took longer holidays, spent more time with their children, but enjoyed a higher standard of living. In an era when much of the world was cynical and pessimistic, most Dutch remained tolerant, internationalist and open-minded. Challenges like immigration and economic stagnation meant that some freedoms were being trimmed, but I couldn’t help thinking that if the Dutch could preserve even a fraction of their distinctive, happy-go-lucky outlook in the coming years, then the future of orange looked very bright indeed.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“The Dutch famine of the ‘Hunger Winter’ of 1944 had helped spur the creation of a beneficent welfare state that provided cradle-to-grave security for citizens, and perhaps helped shape Dutch attitudes to work and family. Even the Dutch love of bicycles was rooted partly in the planning decisions taken during post-war reconstruction. To understand the Netherlands, then, one had to understand the war.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“Closer to home, the Netherlands’ colonial history was evident on the country’s dining tables and restaurant menus, with Indonesian cuisine offering a rare bright spot among otherwise dire food options. It was common for family celebrations or corporate events to involve a rijsttafel (‘rice table’), a lavish banquet consisting of dozens of gelatinous Indonesian dishes displayed on a vast table. Just as no British town could be complete without an Indian curry house, most Dutch towns had at least one restaurant offering peanut soup, chicken satay and spicy noodles. Nasi goreng (fried rice) and bami goreng (fried noodles) were as well known to Dutch diners as chicken masala and naan bread were to the British. After centuries of trade with Indonesia, the Dutch had developed an abiding obsession with coffee, with an expensive coffee machine an essential feature of even the scruffiest student house. Surinamese food, which I’d never even heard of before moving to the Netherlands, was also popular. The Dutch had left their mark on the world, and the world had returned the favour.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland

“Theo van Gogh was well known in the Netherlands, both as a descendant of the famous painter who shared his surname and as a critic of Islam even more provocative than Fortuyn.”
― Ben Coates, Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands: From Amsterdam to Zwarte Piet, the acclaimed guide to travel in Holland