Netherlands: A Day of What Americans Think the Dutch Do

While “living like a local” may be in vogue, I myself am a shameless tourist. I have no qualms about red bus tours or standing in line to see the most frequented exhibits. Therefore, when I visited the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, I wasn’t looking to walk “the road less traveled” in a pair of cute sandals. Rather, I was aiming to walk the road traveled by every tourist on the planet and wanted to do so wearing a pair of wooden clogs.

Some aspects of Dutch culture are so deeply embedded into the naïve American mind they have become a parody of themselves. I willingly chose to spend an entire day, along with my best friend and thirty other wide-eyed, selfie stick clad tourists to what Americans think the Dutch do in the cities of Marken, Volendam, and Zaanse Schans. Here’s how that went:

Craft and Wear Clogs in The Netherlands.

When someone says, “Dutch” (you know how people randomly be shouting that word all the time) most of us generate an image that is automatic. A little blonde boy and a little blonde girl in milkmaid outfits among the tulips in their wooden clogs. If you say, “that’s not what I picture…” WELL THEN YOU’RE A DAMN LIAR.

There is no shoe which has more global fame and iconic status than the legendary Dutch clog. It might not be a great choice for a first date, or any date, or any occasion ever, but clogs are an important wooden component of the Dutch cultural tapestry. (Fun fact, the Stroopwafel syrup weaves together the Dutch cultural tapestry)

Our tour guide gave us the opportunity to watch a master clog maker carve a keen pair of footwear as he talked endlessly about the history of the shoes. Farmers, fishermen, and other artisans wore clogs to protect their feet while carrying out labor-intensive tasks. Some Dutch who live in the countryside still wear them. Others will wear clogs when they don’t want to be picked up by a potential mate at a bar. Why did they choose clogs? Well, they do a damn good job of protecting the foot and provide a breathable material that can withstand the moisture that feet come into contact with when working the lands or near the sea.

After our lesson, we were able to try on a pair of clogs ourselves, and take photos with the [very] sexy shoes. Not everyone in my hometown is a culture vulture like me, and wouldn’t understand the sex appeal behind clogs, so I didn’t get a pair. But, Amanda and I did get cute clog ornaments for our Christmas trees!

Pro tip: If you want to spice up your love life, buy a pair of Dutch wooden clogs and wear them to bed. Your significant other will not be able to keep their hands off you!

As Gouda It Gets.

Paris has brie. Spain has manchego. And the Netherlands, well, they have gouda, and there’s a reason that gouda [ kind of?] has the word “good” right in it. Creamy, smoked, and absolutely heavenly.

After feeling hot and heavy from being turned on by the thousands of wooden clogs surrounding us, our tour group headed to the Cheese Factory in Volendam. Here, we were able to hear about the process of creating Gouda cheese. But, I’ll be honest, I didn’t listen, even a little bit. I eagerly stood in a runner’s lunge, waiting to head into the tasting room.

I have never been deprived of food in my life, so I really have no idea why I behave like this. As the milkmaid with the headset yammered on about this milk and that milk, I was drawing up tactical measures in my mind. I thought carefully about how I’d swing past the family of seven, how I’d tuck and roll between the legs of the tall guy who looked like he was on the edge of his seat ready to try to get ahead of me.

I’m enormously proud that I was successful in getting us to the tasting room first. It had a lot of options, but I was slightly disappointed as I felt that the Amsterdam Cheese Museum had way more options. We visited there first, like seven minutes after arriving in the city, and after the wide-eyed splendor of that paradise, I wasn’t so impressed with the sampling room in Volendam.

I strongly suggest visiting the Amsterdam Cheese Museum. I have no idea if the cheese in the store was overpriced, but who gives a fuck? You get samples of the DOZENS of varieties, and it makes a great souvenir. We bought a little Tupperware of Gouda and kept it in our room to sop up our poor decisions every night. Creamy, hard, neon pink, aged, newer, beer cheese, pesto cheese, lactose intolerant cheese, THEY HAVE IT ALL! Nearly everything is airplane ready as well if you want to bring some home for friends and family.

Suffer Through Eating Herring.

As I scoured through documentaries, travel vlogs, blogs, and guides preparing for my trip to the Netherlands – one slippery snack continuously made its way into every bit of information I could get my hands on… herring. Not just any herring, apparently, if I wanted to “do as the Dutch do” I had to eat it raw. Honestly, this sounded like it would be absolutely delightful. I love seafood, and the promise of crunching into the raw onions and sour pickle as accompaniments to the fish seemed rather lovely.

While in Volendam, a picturesque town, my best friend Amanda and I ordered raw herring on a bun to be split by us both. The jolly, cream-colored, round man behind the counter looked overjoyed that we would be sampling his catch. Insert joke here. He was eager to show us the different manners in which one could eat the fish. Together, we decided on giving the silver swimmer a jacket made of bread (a bun) and to load up on pickles and onions.

Amanda and I took a seat looking over the lovely seaside, smelling the briny breeze as it whipped by our ears and hair. I took a bite, and it turns out…this dish is not for me, you guys. BLECH. I wanted to enjoy this so badly, but I COULDN’T! I even gave it a few bites, and couldn’t even swallow the attempts that came after the first. My struggle was not so much with the taste, but the texture. The herring was slimy, cold, and in my mind, felt as though it were still wiggling. I’m sorry, Netherlands, I’ve let you down!

Whimsy Among the Windmills of The Netherlands.

The last stop on our giant, red, bus tour was Zaanse Schans—where the windmills of the Netherlands grow in captivity. I really loved this little place, full of wooden barns and windmills, and with plenty of farmland and animals.

I’m dreaming of the day that I can take my son back there, he’s something of a barnyard connoisseur. His being a toddler makes him apt at keen observations in this field such as “the duck say quack-quack.”

Here, the quaint, pastoral, countryside of the Netherlands I read about since being a little girl came to life. The green grass and giant blades of the windmills moseying around in circles were peaceful. Imagine if they weren’t though? “AHH! THE WINDMILL IS OUT OF CONTROL! IT SLICED RIGHT THROUGH DOOBY VON DYCK’S HEARD OF COWS! IT JUST CLOCKED AT 50MPH!”

I had no idea just how huge some windmills can be, apparently, big enough to live in! We were able to tour one giant one by at least the dozen.

Beyond windmills, it was wonderful to stand by the rugged wooden fencing, and watch the swans swim by in the beautiful little pond, wondering if it was going to beat me unconscious with its giant wings, and peck both of my eyes of out my head, or just one of them.

I don’t know if I did the Netherlands proud, or terribly terribly wrong with this post. But, I loved spending the day getting out of the city and into the more rural parts of the country. Learning while traveling is the best part of exploring the world, and there was so much to learn on our day trip to Zaanse Schans, Marken, and Volendam.