Day 5, the Netherland’s day

The Netherlands getting ready for
arrival of Sinterklaas

Yesterday participants from the Netherlands woke us up in a kind of an army way by shouting into a loudspeaker since their country has been invaded during the Second World War. After all the other participants got up and enjoyed their breakfast, we all strolled to a nearby lake. Here Sinterklaas would arrive from his long trip from Spain. 

But now you’ll probably wonder: “Who is this Sinterklaas the Dutch invited?”. Well, in The Netherlands there is a festive day in the beginning of December where we celebrate Saint Nicholaas, a saint who cared for the poor. The tradition nowadays is a festivity for children. If children have been behaving good Sinterklaas will reward them with candy and presents, but bad children risk being taken to Spain with Sinterklaas and his zwarte pieten (Black Peters). While being a kid this is actually really scary, because this Sinterklaas has a big book in which everything every kid did that year is written. You are scared he might know about you not being nice to your best friend or not eating all the food on your plate and as a result take you to Spain... Looking back, being taken to the sunny country of Spain might actually be not such a bad thing after all. :)

To share this tradition with the other countries in this exchange we played the entrance of Sinterklaas. We all dressed up like Sinterklaas and his helpers (who are completely covered in coal because of the chimneys they climb through to deliver presents). This tradition eventually spread all over the world in the form of Santa Claus which you most likely have heard of.

Levend Stratego, team one

After Sinterklaas left, while the participants were singing traditional Sinterklaas songs, we played a well known game from the Netherlands: Levend Stratego (the flag capture game) in which each of two teams (this day it was Malta vs. Netherlands) is meant to protect their flag and meanwhile trying to steal the other team’s flag. Although Malta and the Netherlands normally do not try to conquer each others land, the Dutch managed to conquer Malta.

Levend Stratego, team two

Next on the schedule we presented our Dutch culture and history to our fellow Europeans. We started with a video explaining the never disappearing mistake of confusing The Netherlands and Holland. (In short: Holland consists of the provinces of North and South Holland, while the Netherlands is the whole of North and South Holland including ten other provinces). We are not famous for our Dutch cuisine obviously (you cannot expect the krokketen you can buy from a snackmuur to be of noteworthy quality... – fried meat you can buy from a wall in the street). So what are the Dutch famous for then?

The Dutch have always been entrepreneurs. Sailing all over the world to look for good investment opportunities. We actually still have some islands in the Caribbean in our Kingdom from that time we call the Golden Age and in South Africa the people still speak our language. Nowadays, we have a lot of famous export products. Everyone will have heard of the Heineken beer, the beautiful tulips and world famous modern musicians like Tiesto and Armin van Buuren.

Personally I think it is a nice to be able to share our traditions and history with our fellow Europeans. We can only become a stronger Europe by understanding each other and invest in pointing out the differences and similarities to work out the best way to work together as a closer community.

The Dutch might have a small country but our roots spread all over the world!

/Marissa, Delft, the Netherlands/

P.S. A nice video from the Netherland's presentation.