New Standards

Since classes started, I’ve been trying to keep mental note of how Dutch people tend to act in day to day life. In many ways, I’ve found the people in Amsterdam to be rather similar to those in U.S. cities; some are polite, some are rude, some rush to their next destination, and some take their time. However, one difference that has stood out to me, especially when I’m at school, is the way they tend to dress. On an American college campus, it seems very typical to wear sweatpants, leggings, sweatshirts, etc. to class. Here, however, I have yet to see one Dutch person dressed in sweatpants at school. People wear trousers and jeans with nice shoes or sneakers. I feel oddly exposed as an American when I wear leggings and a hoodie to class. 

Sticking to this theme of the importance of appearances, I’ve also noticed that the streets, subways, and public restrooms here are also kept much cleaner than they are, for example, in New York. We took a weekend trip to Rotterdam (the second largest city in the Netherlands) last week, and we saw a city worker actually vacuuming the sidewalk. That is definitely not something I have ever seen in the U.S. Even the couple of McDonald’s I’ve been in have been much nicer than the ones I’m used to. Also, you almost always have to pay between 50 cents and a euro to use a public bathroom, which must be because of how much labor goes into keeping them all clean. This was a difference I honestly did not expect, and I never really noticed how dirty some bathrooms, and even streets, are in the U.S. until I saw how clean they are here. 

I think, overall, people in The Netherlands have a much higher standard for cleanliness and appearances. Between vacuuming the streets and always looking presentable, it seems as though much more effort is put into keeping things looking and feeling nice. As I travel to other cities and countries, I hope to find out if these differences tend to hold true all throughout Europe, or just in big Dutch cities like Amsterdam and Rotterdam.