One question project: Tracy Metz
Based on your own experience, how would you advise someone to navigate seemingly very different cultures - American and Dutch?!
I was lucky enough to know nothing about Dutch culture when I arrived here - nor did I know that I would spend my adult life in the Netherlands and grow into a career as a journalist, writer and podcaster. I say lucky because that meant that I had no preconceptions about ‘what the Dutch are like’ - and since there wasn’t even the internet yet then, there were no YouTube films to watch to get indoctrinated with someone else’s ideas.
Having said that, I did soon discover how different Dutch and American cultures indeed are. And that has everything to do with how different the countries are in their history, in size, in landscape, in expectations of other people and of government (just to mention a few).
In our huge country, Americans move all the time. We are footloose and fancy-free - but many are also rootless. Not the Dutch! They may move around, inside the country and abroad, but pretty much everyone has a solid network of people they went to grammar school with, to high school, to university. Everyone knows people from their old street, people who used to live around the corner from the brother-in-law of their uncle, you name it and there’s a connection.
Everyone is one-and-a-half handshake away.
That makes the Netherlands solid and stable, but also standoffish and not inclined to rock the boat.
It is for that very reason that the Dutch admire the US - for its energy, its innovation, its willingness to take risks and explore new and potentially lucrative ideas. As an American living in the Netherlands, I have had the great fortune to blend into Dutch society and still enjoy the advantages of being an American.
I remember hearing a talk by a Swedish professor here about how long it takes to ‘become’ a Finn, or a Swede, or an American. (He lived in Finland). “Finland? Oh, generations, a hundred years. Sweden? Less, within two generations.” And how long to become an American? “Two years. One to speak some English, one to get a driver’s license. Because America is not a country, it’s a concept.” And I would add: a dream.
How to navigate these differences? Most of them you can actually ignore - it is quite possible to create your own life within the shell of expats and the international cultural world. If you want to belong, learn the language. It’s not easy and the Dutch don’t make it easy - they immediately switch to English when they hear an accent. But even if you do speak the language - which I do, and very well too - don’t expect that the Dutch will see you as Dutch. My theory is that this language is Holland’s secret handshake. The whole point is to draw the line between who knows and who doesn’t.
To learn more about Tracy and her work, please visit her website.
About Tracy:
I am a journalist, author and podcaster, as well as the director of the John Adams Institute, an independent podium that brings the best and the brightest of American thinking to the Netherlands.
I see myself as a storyteller, be it in newsprint, books, podcasts, radio or a talk show format - all of which I have applied in the course of my career. I am very interested in water, which is a very Dutch subject but also something most people here know surprisingly little about. I was born and bred in the US, in California, but came to Europe after college and my career has been here in the Netherlands.
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