5 Everyday Dutch Things that are Confusing to Americans | US vs the Netherlands

hi everyone i'm ava and today i want to talk to you about five everyday dutch things that can be so confusing as an american now some of you might know i moved to the netherlands from the u.s last year and while my experience has been mostly overwhelmingly positive there are some things that i struggle with and today i wanted to share some things that are confusing these things aren't necessarily a culture shock for me because i was aware of them before i moved but i do find these things quite funny to experience on a daily basis because i feel like i'm really learning these things from scratch like you remember when you were 13 or 12 and you were trying to figure out how the world worked and you were becoming an adult i feel like i've been thrown back into that phase since i moved to the netherlands so while i'm loving my time here there are some things that i definitely find confusing on a day-to-day basis that make everyday things just a little bit harder thing number one is when i go to cafes now i love going to cafes i talk about how much coffee i drink i talk about how much i love coffee it's it's a little bit of a thing bordering on obsession but my obsession now has come with a price when i go to cafes here because there seem to be certain things that i just can't figure out so there was one thing that i kind of caught on pretty quickly in the beginning which is that you don't just wait for people to see you in the u.s you go to a cafe a restaurant and you know you wait unless it's a really tiny coffee shop the american one you can pretty much expect there will be someone there who shows you to your seat now i really felt so awkward walking into cafes and just sitting down like i own the place when i first moved here and i still struggle with that a little bit because now with corona sometimes you do have to wait for people to see you and yes there might be a sign indicating that but not always so this has been confusing it's like i learned one thing and now i have to learn another thing or rather relearn it so when i go to a cafe that's uh step one i have to figure out whether i'm waiting or going in and i guess i have to be uncomfortable and go in all fine when i get in and i sit down and i think okay struggles are over now it's time to enjoy some coffee i realize like i should really get used to this by now but that has not been the case i realized to my dismay that i need to now figure out whether i go to the bar or i wait for someone to come to my table to take the order and i mean how do you guys figure this out because i see other people not struggling they seamlessly walk in take a seat and then they just know what they're supposed to be doing whereas i'm sitting there like okay what do i do and and the funny thing is that like sometimes i make a decision and i go with it so sometimes i'll go to the bar and they'll be like yes we'll bring it to you and other times people have actually been a little bit rude but this was in amsterdam and i know that amsterdam can be a little different but they simply just looked at me dismissingly like please just sit down we'll come to you please we're we're doing our job don't don't come and bother us here at the table and so the struggle continues now you would think that the struggle would end there no no no it doesn't the confusion continues for me i am a very confused person when i live in the netherlands i wish i could tell you that i was better in the us i was a little bit better but now being the awkward person that i am living in a different country this has just gotten so much worse for me after i've you know ordered something and i'm finally enjoying my coffee and book which is my natural state of being after some time i want to leave and then here comes the other dilemma do i wait for them to come to my table so that i could ask them for a check because that's what i'm used to back in the u.s or or do i go to the bar you might be thinking as a dutch person like why don't you just go to the bar and then pay there well as an american that's very very rude to do you can't just go up to the bar and pay because people are going to think they didn't do a good job and they didn't come to you well the sense that i get is that in most places you can go to the bar here in the netherlands and kind of just pay it's really rude as an american to do that so i only moved here last year so i still have not been able to get over this hurdle of just being more assertive and saying take my money okay now in relation to going out to eat comes number two tipping i mean i'm sure you guys were expecting this so i know the dutch people and europeans at large find tipping in the u.s pretty strange i get that but the rules are really simple you tip 18 to 20 percent when the service is good normally you can tip 15 on what you owe but that's the absolute minimum you can tip if the service was pretty good and it wasn't like terribly bad that's the minimum you can tip you tip 10 if the service was terrible and yeah that's how you let them know tipping zero dollars i mean people do that but it's not the norm and okay as i was saying this i understand how you need to be an insider in order to figure this out also you need to low-key be decent at basic math which you know on the spot americans do struggle with we pull out our phones there's an app for it too okay so tipping in the us pretty confusing but tipping in the netherlands after you're used to this system is even more confusing because here i am with my 20 18 to 20 and i know that's not right but then i don't know what is right so i'm still trying to figure this out and i find it very confusing it doesn't help because my partner who is dutch has lived in the us with me for the last five years so she has no idea what's going on either because she's used to the american way so we both feel really bad now for leaving a five percent tip okay that's one struggle but i really don't know how much you should be tipping i've asked dutch people about this and they said a couple of euros is fine okay but i feel like sometimes i'm still tipping too little because let's say you your bill ends up being 53 euros do i tip 55 that just seems like not enough money why don't you guys let me know in the comments let's take this example if your bill is 53 euros would you tip 55 and is that normal that seems too little to me and what if your bill was a 100 what would you tip because i think i at that point maybe would do 105 and feel really really bad about it so let me know the other thing that i should mention with tipping is that sometimes i inadvertently forget the tip this used to happen more when i had just moved because in the u.s they come to your table you know you give them your card and then they go away i know that's not what they do in the netherlands and in europe they take your card away and then they come back with a receipt where you fill out what tip you want to give in in in your own you know private little bubble at your table you can fill in an amount that you want to tip in the netherlands not so they come and they stand there with the machine and they're like all right let's go and then you need to tell them there that you want to up the amount so if they tell you okay your total is 53 euros you need to tell them then and there that you want to pay 55. so that is really strange to me and bit confusing because i forget i always am waiting for that moment where they make it obvious that the tip should go there but that doesn't happen and so sometimes i forget to do that and then i end up not tipping and then i feel super awkward and confused and i walk out and i'm like man should i go back in and order something else so that i could do it right no but you get what i'm trying to say so moving right along to number three which is being a pedestrian here in the netherlands okay i am going to speak about this from my perspective in big cities because that's where most of my experience here has been but when i would visit amsterdam when i was a tourist so this is before i moved last year this is starting about four years ago and what i noticed immediately was that pedestrians no longer had the most right-of-way in fact bicycles were the king of the road now to dutch person this might seem like a duh no-brainer i mean don't you see all the bikes here like what else were you expecting you american but okay coming from the northeast of the us especially cities like new york and philadelphia if you are on foot the road is yours people jaywalk all the time jaywalking is this very strange term for when you cross the street when you're not supposed to because we have traffic lights everywhere as in the netherlands and if you cross when it's red that's jaywalking if you cross when there's no traffic lights also jaywalking we jaywalk all the time because pedestrians can do whatever they want i mean if a vehicle bigger than us including bikes hit us it is their fault automatically because we are amazing we do no wrong we are on foot and we can just walk around no problem now of course don't get me wrong i totally see the problem with that but really in new york where i'm from people are just used to walking around wherever they want it doesn't even matter i've seen people walk into oncoming traffic and they're not even afraid because they know that the cars will stop but in the netherlands that is just not the case and i discovered this when i was in amsterdam and i found myself walking on this beautifully paved sidewalk and then i realized that was a bicycle lane and a bike nearly ran into me okay so the first thing that i learned from that experience is that oh my god those are bike lanes i need to be aware of bike lanes at all times and sometimes bike lanes are red so it's a little easier to know which part of the street belongs to the bikes and which part belong to pedestrians okay but in the u.s what would happen is if i were on a bike lane or if i were trying to cross through a bike lane it doesn't matter how close to me the bike is i'm exaggerating a little bit because of course as a pedestrian you want to walk carefully but let's say i was crossing the street and there were bikes coming i wouldn't need to be afraid that a bike was going to hit me because in no world would it be my fault if any accident happened so i would just be able to cross the street no problem but here in the netherlands the bikes on the bike lane are not watching out for you and of course this was my experience in amsterdam it's kind of the same in utrecht where i live now but the bikes will run you over if you are in their way you know what it's your fault it's not the bikes fault because the bikes are just bikes and everyone here in the netherlands is on a bike so they want to make sure that they can continue being on their bikes and you need to get out of the way it's like when dutch people are on their bikes they don't see people on foot they see targets so they're gonna hit you okay so that was one part of it but the other thing about being a pedestrian that's confusing and you have to pay close attention here because whenever i've tried to tell people about this they seem to get a little confused this applies mostly in amsterdam where i've noticed i haven't really noticed it here in utrecht but maybe there are a couple of traffic lights where this happens so at a traffic light in the u.s when you see a red person on the traffic light in the u.s and that person is blinking and there is a number underneath it means that you have x amount of seconds to cross before it turns permanently red and it stops blinking so that is the countdown to red now the converse is true in the netherlands where in amsterdam especially i've noticed they have these cute traffic lights with bicycles instead of people so let's say there's this bicycle traffic light now if it is a red bicycle that's blinking and there's a number underneath that is the countdown to green so it means that it's still very much red which means that that is the amount of time you need to be waiting before you can go so you know how long you need to be waiting so maybe you're prevented from jaywalking because maybe if you're dutch you're super impatient whereas if you're american you're probably also impatient when crossing the street whatever so that's the difference now where this gets confusing is is if you're so used to one system like i am and you want to do the opposite now the funny thing is when my girlfriend came to the us she would end up waiting for a really long time at traffic lights because it was blinking red and then it would turn permanently red so then she would just wait and she would have this short period where she could actually cross the street when it was not red green it's white in the u.s so that was her problem now for me it's actually a little bit dangerous because i would see this blinking red light and i still do and my first instinct is to cross when it's still blinking because that is a countdown until it's green but it's not green yet so i shouldn't be crossing but i do and i'm just gonna get hit by a car one of these days or worse a bike okay moving on to number four measurements now i know that americans are weird in using the imperial system but the metric system has been confusing for me and that's just how it is there are also certain other measurements that we use in the us that we don't have here so starting with of course the obvious metric versus imperial it's just that you know for me particularly because i also lived in india for many years i don't find it too difficult to understand what people are trying to say even though that's not my first instinct and i do get confused when it comes to kilometers versus miles because i don't know i just don't i just don't have a good sense of meters and kilometers anymore so i still need to relearn that and i still struggle with it i still think in miles i feel like my idioms don't even make sense in the metric system i can't say walk a kilometer in someone's shoes which you clever viewers pointed out to me in one of my videos where i said walk a mile in someone's shoes and you pointed out that i should probably be saying kilometers so yes i'm even confused in my idioms when it comes to celsius and fahrenheit i have to say i am a strong fahrenheit camper okay maybe not strong strong sounds too strong but i definitely think 100 degrees fahrenheit when it's super warm just sounds sounds warm whereas saying something like it is 34 degrees celsius just doesn't sound that bad and this is where i'm expecting all the dutch people watching this all the europeans watching this any user of the metric system to comment but water boils at 100 degrees celsius tell me you weren't thinking that there are some measurements that i really really miss which is saying something like um oh that store is only a couple blocks from here i miss saying blocks i know there are no blocks in the netherlands and i find that super cute that you guys have tiny little streets going like this but it's something that i miss because a block is just so short to just indicate that something is just a couple of blocks away from here so i miss saying that i also miss baking with cups because a cup to me is just very intuitive and i'm not someone who does precise measurements so i really enjoyed using cups and it was like i said just very intuitive but having to follow these precise measurements just makes it a little too fiddly for me so i definitely have to relearn that and i never owned a weighing scale in my kitchen back in the us now i do because how else am i gonna make anything that said for you dutch people watching this i learned about a special dutch measurement the pond which sounds a lot like my beloved pound but it is not 2.2 pounds make a kilogram but when you're talking about the dutch bones that is half a kilogram is a pound so that means that a pound is 1.1 pounds that is confusing that is so specifically dutch but you know what it makes more sense because it's half a kilogram why don't we have one pound as being half a kilogram i guess but we don't we just have our own thing i do find that a fun interesting dutch fact and i come across it in my dutch textbooks so that's where i have to think about it a little and be like nope it's not a pound and then i often hear uh pond being said around me sometimes and i don't know what they're referring to so that's also a bit confusing do you guys still use the dutch phones as a system i'm curious and finally i wanted to tell you guys about number five which is standing in a line and i am confused because dutch people don't seem to like standing in a line this is the dutch people don't like to stand in a queue phenomenon which is how non-americans seem to refer to it but let me tell you he was a letter of the alphabet that's not how you say it it's standing in a line and dutch people don't do that don't do either of those things so i do find this very confusing because americans like to line up a lot americans really like to line up even when there's no point to it so it's very confusing to me to be in a culture where you don't line up how do i know who got there first sometimes i go to the store and i stand in front of the cash register trying to form a line but everyone around me just just gathers and they seem to be able to seamlessly keep track of who got there before them who got them who got there after them i on the other hand on my phone i just want to be called when it's my turn i just want to be waiting chilling so i find it very confusing when other people don't so now i have to be vigilant because if you don't know where your place is in line people will go ahead of you they're not gonna wait to pay for your mistakes that's something that i still find confusing because it is so against my nature to not line up in order to understand this you need to know that americans like to line up even when it makes no sense for instance if you are going to take the amtrak the train you need to wait until your train is called out or when they open the gates and then you can go to your train down at the platform which is how it typically works at many of these stations so americans like to line up so much that they will line up all around the station hall just to wait for their gate to open up and then you you will not believe this then oftentimes you get to this you get to the platform and the train isn't there you're waiting for the train and everyone just disperses so that line that you stood in made no sense but people did it anyway so that's how much americans like to learn in new york there is a professional line waiter there is someone who will wait in line for you that's how common it is here i don't think dutch people would wait in line very long i mean in covet times it's actually quite funny to see that people do need to wait in line because otherwise you wouldn't be able to go into very many places that you need to that are small and very cute but small so it is funny to see dutch people lighting up and sometimes at least in the beginning people were quite confused where they're like wait how does this work especially when they're multiple lines and they're like does this count as one line does it count as uh multiple lines what what whereas to me i'm in my natural habitat i'm like i love wasting time standing in lines of course i don't it's just that i'm used to this other thing and it's quite confusing here anyway those are my five things that i find confusing as an american here in the netherlands these are everyday dutch things but i'm still struggling with them just because of my different cultural experience

Channel: Dutch Americano

Views: 69,569

Keywords: US vs the Netherlands, everyday Dutch things, cultural differences, Dutch experiences, life in holland, living abroad, america vs europe culture, European culture, Dutch habits, expat in the Netherlands, American expat, American abroad, American culture, tipping in America, American in the Netherlands

Id: CmUuic_4TJI

Length: 19min 17sec (1157 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 01 2020