First off, let me address the elephant in the room: Dutch weather. Most days it’s a battle against the rain, wind, my hair and endless grey. My girlfriend once claimed this is the reason Dutch people are so tall; ‘We need to get closer to the sun’. As an Australian who’s traded in the sun, surf and sunscreen to be here, the first question I’m asked, without fail, is ‘why’! Love, I say. But romance aside, the summers are beautiful, with lovely, long evenings.

Ever heard a Dutch person speak English? It can also be shockingly direct. The Dutch value efficiency, honesty and a tell-it-like-it-is approach, so don’t be taken aback when you’re asked about your relationship status or political stance right off the bat!

While the Dutch language can be blunt, it also has some down-right fun words to say! I remember feeling giddy pushing the ‘winkelwagen’ around the supermarket. Other words are simply perfect and cannot be translated into English. ‘Wat gezellig!’, you might hear when feeling that warm, convivial feeling in good company, and, if you’re anything like me, you’re a ‘levensgenieter’, a ‘life-enjoyer’, someone who finds joy in the simple, everyday pleasures.

That brings me to food. Gouda cheese is delicious. But what else constitutes Dutch cuisine? Well, there’s ‘bitterballen’, deep-fried goulash balls, lashings of mayo, chocolate sprinkles hail as a bread topping, delicious caramel syrup waffels, salty liquorice, and raw herring eaten whole. But there’s one thing that really caught my attention: ‘stamppot’.

Roughly translated as ‘mashed dish’, stamppot involves cooked potatoes and vegetables, mashing them all together into one dish and serving it with a smoked sausage or meatballs on top. It was only after I saw my father-in-law mashing his rice and chilli con carne together that I realised how deeply ingrained stamppot is in Dutch cuisine. And once you get past the fact that you’re pretty much eating baby food, it’s actually quite tasty!

Apart from its weird and wonderful people, the distances are tiny. Living on a little farm in a tiny town that nobody knows the name of, I love that I can be in a relatively large city in just 15 minutes, or 40 minutes by bike, which is the preferred way of getting around. In fact, 20 million bicycles outnumber the 17 million inhabitants!

I could ‘babbelen’ – or chat – all day about my strange encounters with Dutch culture, there is so much to love about this little country. So go Dutch! A glass of oranjebitters liqueur, Dutch gin or even one of the hundreds of Dutch beers just hits the spot. Proost!