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.
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