GOING DUTCH: Or, How I Went to Holland an Undiscovered Superstar and Came Back a Rock Star

This is the text from my piece last night:

When I say Holland, what’s the first thing you think of?

(Note: I actually addressed this question to the audience hoping someone would say...)

Pot?

(Note: Someone did. It was Chris, who curates the show. Go figure!)

Wooden Shoes? 6 to 8 black men? (If you’re a big David Sedaris fan.) There are lots of things the average American probably knows about Holland. They have tulips and windmills, sex and drugs, Heineken and Amstel, bikes and dykes – the kind that holds back water, as in “the-boy-who-stuck-his-finger-in-the,” and the kind that said boy will never get a finger in. Both are essential to the national character. Holland is proud of its reputation as the low-country loaded with liberals. But what you might not know is, Holland, or Nederland as the natives call it, is a very small country. In fact, it’s about the same size as the state of New Jersey. If in New Jersey everything is big: big cars, big hair, big mouths, the opposite is true in Holland. Everything is small: the houses, the cars, the food portions. Dutch people love small things. They’ve even created a syllable in their language that revels in that fact: “TJE.” Now in the states, when I hear someone say “TJE,” I say “Bless You.” But in Holland when I hear someone say “TJE,” it makes me wanna die. Here’s why: Like many other words or phrases in the Dutch language, the “TJE” suffix is way overused.

“Oh, wat een mooi huisje!”

“Wil jij een biertje?”

“Heb jij een autootje?”

and my favorite, “Wat een heel klein babytje.”

Which translates to, “What a very small little baby.” To me, that’s kind of like saying, “What a very rich loaded millionaire.” Pardon my French, since we’re talking about Dutch, but, “No shit, Sherlock. It’s a baby. Of course it’s small!”

In our culture, we celebrate all things large: grande, venti, super-size! But we don’t add a syllable to the end of our words just for extra effect.

Hey – you wanna come over to my house-HUH? We can drink a keg of beer-HUH, and then I can show you my SUV-UH!” No. We let our obnoxiousness speak for itself. Whereas Dutch people just speak obnoxiously.

Now, before you think I’m anti-Dutch, you should know that I my husband is Dutch, which is how I got to know so much about the culture. There are many wonderful things about Holland: the architecture, the canals, the French fries with sate sauce. I’ve been to Holland four times now and stayed at length with my in-laws, so I’ve really gotten to know the people and what they think about us Americans. Most Dutch people think American tourists only come to Holland for the pot. That’s not true. They also come for mushrooms, XTC, opium, hashish, space cake and cheese.

(Note: When I got to this part, I forgot to say mushrooms, and someone shouted out, "Don't forget mushrooms!" It was Chris, who curates the show. Go figure!)

I can get drugs anywhere in New York City. What I can’t get is a 200 lb. wheel of komijnekaas and free trip to the dentist. That’s another thing that’s so wonderful about Holland: free healthcare. For everyone. Even the hookers are insured! “Hey you, lady with the dick in her mouth! When was the last time you had a mammogram?” Come on! It’s free!

People ask me a lot about the food in Holland. For the most part, it’s terrible. Sure, putting sate sauce on French fries is like having sex while eating pizza, but that’s only a snack or a treat. Traditional Dutch fare, and what the average “inwooner” eats for dinner, includes a sort of creamy green dish called stamppot – or mashed potatoes mixed with kale – yes kale, that sorry-ass piece of lettuce you usually find wilted under a burger - or mashed potatoes and carrots mixed together, called hutspot, which is eaten to celebrate the relief of the siege of Leiden in 1574, but will most likely just relieve you of your appetite. Cuts of meat are very expensive in Holland and thus are dolled out in very small portions, if at all. On our last trip there, my mother-in-law put a pork chop on my plate that was so small I actually said, “So?” Turns out there was no more meat, but my husband assured me that there would be dessert. I am not a big fan of dessert, which is good, because if I was I’d be disappointed. Dessert in Holland is not cake, pie or ice cream like it is here. Dessert is yogurt or pudding, or maybe a cookie. Pie is only eaten with coffee. And coffee is drunk ALL THE TIME.

Now I love coffee, don’t get me wrong. But when all you drink is coffee, tea, wine and beer, you get a little thirsty. One day when my host asked me what I wanted to drink I said, “Water.” To which she replied, “Water? You want water? No, you don’t want water. Here, have a Heineken – there’s plenty of water in that!”

Which brings me to a discussion of the Dutchman’s character. Dutch people are proud, but even more so they are stubborn. They don’t ask you things, they tell you, which, when you don’t speak the language is really the same thing. My 87,000 year-old Mother-in-law doesn’t speak a word of English, so we communicate mostly through food. She dishes up my plate like I’m a four-year-old girl and then shows me how to eat whatever it is she’s made. One night, when she made stamppot, she plopped a load of it down on my plate and started going (visual of mashing the potatoes down). I looked at my husband and said, “What the hell is she doing? What am I supposed to do?” and he said, “Make a hole.” So then she poured about a pound of bacon fat into the hole and said, “Eet smakelijk!” or, “Enjoy your food.” I found that an interesting command, since what I was eating tasted like what I imagine licking the bottom of a frying pan does. Dutch people are so quick to criticize the American penchant for eating fast food, yet they serve raw bacon and put mayonnaise on their fries. I’m not one to judge, so when in Rome, I do as the Romans do. But then I’m not supposed to feel bitter a few days later when my 8 sisters-in-law are going, “Oh my God, would you look at the American girl? Jesus, she is chunky, isn’t she? Look at Fatty McFatterson over there! Must be all that fast food they eat in America…”

Not only are you expected to eat whatever is put down in front of you, you’re expected to love it. The Dutch overemphasize (and sometimes totally invent) their enjoyment of things, especially when they run the risk of insulting someone who has taken great pains to make everything “gezellig,” or cozy, like at a dinner party, for example. When someone asks, “So, how’s the food?” you must respond, “Mmm, Lekker! Heerlijk!,” which roughly translate to “yummy” and “delicious.” This becomes a difficult task when you’re eating buttery, stringed chicken mixed with flour mashed with rice, not only because it tastes like a breakfast burrito gone wrong, but also because your tongue is stuck to the roof of your mouth. But don’t ask for water – because you know what they’ll say! “Water? You want water? Here! Have some gin! It’s the same color as water and by the time you finish that you won’t even know you were thirsty!”

Now, as we all know, when food goes in, it must come out. And since there’s no nice way to say it, if you go to Holland, get ready to shit on a shelf. I know that sounds disgusting, and that’s because it is. Dutch toilets aren’t made the way ours are; there’s no bowl of water at the bottom. So instead of dropping the kids off at the pool, it’s more like dropping the kids off on the diving platform and hoping that when you flush they slide down. I felt a little self-conscious while writing this section since potty humor is such a no-no in the world of stand-up, so I googled “Dutch toilets” to see if I was the only one who was upset about “the shelf.” Turns out, there are tons of people out there who are just as boggled and bothered as I am, including Mike Lynett and Louise Doorn from expatica.com. In their article, “Toilet inconvenience,” they call it “the inspection shelf,” and go on to say, “The odd shape of the toilet incorporates a shelf that rests above the waterline and acts as an examination table, as it would appear the Dutch pay more attention to their meals after they eat them than when making them.”

My point exactly.

Upon doing further research, I found that even rock stars took the time to write about the toilets. The band Sebadoh noted simply on their tour log, “With Dutch toilets you get to know what you're made of.”

Alright. Enough of that shit. It’s time to get personal. On my last trip to Holland, I got a really upset with my mother-in-law. It was bad enough that we had to eat her horrible food everyday and sleep in twin beds, that though next to each other, were different heights. All my husband and I could do was reach out to each other like, “Are you comfy?” “Not really.” “Me, either.” “Are you cold?” “Yeah, I’m cold.” “Can you move closer?” “Okay!” But, the thing that really took the cake was the way my mother in law kept getting in my face and saying things like, “Ja, lekker wijffie. Ja, lekker meissie. Wil jij een lekker bakkie koffie, eh? Eh? Je doet dat nee meer. Je doet dat nee meer, eh?” I had no idea what she was talking about, and apparently neither did she. She’d just bark at me for a minute, smile and then walk away. Top that off with the fact that the woman smokes like a chimney and I was going crazy! In a blog post from January 2 I summed it up best when I said:

“…smoke is streaming out of my pores, wine is dripping from my eye sockets... CAN I JUST HAVE A GLASS OF FRICKING WATER, PEOPLE?!”

One day, when I was about to snap and wanted nothing more than to be back in the land of the free and the home of the fat, I turned on the radio. (CUE MUSIC) And I heard a beat that sounded familiar. I thought, “Yes! A boy band song! There’s nothing like cheesy pop music to make me feel like I’m back at home.” Then I started listening to the words:

Als er nooit meer een morgen zou zijn (If there was no tomorrow)
En de zon viel in slaap met de maan (and the sun fell asleep with the moon)
Heb je enig idee wat het met je zou doen (do you have any idea what you'd do)
Als je nog maar een dag zou bestaan (if you were only alive for one more day?)

I Do.

RAP: Voor sommige kinderen zal er nooit meer een morgen zijn,
hoe zou je het vinden als je dagen vol zorgen zijn.
Je bent zo jong en klein het doet enorm pijn,
het hartje van een kind is zo breekbaar als porselein.
Dus neem nou de tijd om dit even te horen,
als wij niks doen dan is hun leven verloren.
iedereen heeft recht op een eerlijke leven,
En ze kunnen nog zoveel op deze wereld beleven.
Kom we geven ze een kans en bieden ze hulp,
Hou je koppie omhoog en kruip niet in je schulp.
Steek de handen in elkaar, want dan staan we sterk,
Nee, we kijken niet, we gaan aan het werk.

Wat zou ik doen als ik woonde in Bagdad?
Zou ik zeiken naar degeen die de macht had?
Eh yo hoe erg zou het zijn op de Balkan?
De meeste mensen die snappen er geen bal van.
Kongo, Kosovo en Pakistan,
Sierra Leone, Soedan en Afghanistan.
Eritrea en natuurlijk Georgië,
Het is oorlog van hier tot aan Bosnië.

I’d learn how to rap in Dutch.

Zou je hart zich veel vullen met vuur (Would your heart be filled with fire)
van de eeuwige schaamte bevrijd (freed from the eternal shame)
Keek je niet meer benauwd (would you no longer look anxiously)
naar de klok aan de muur (at the clock on the wall)
kwam je los uit de greep van te tijd (would you free yourself from the grip of time?)

We verbannen de dromen naar morgen en later (We banish our dreams to tomorrow & later)
maar doet het je stiekem geen pijn (but doesn’t it secretly give you pain?)
Dat je dan pas zou doen wat je altijd al wou (that you’d only do then what you always wanted to)
als er nooit meer een morgen zou zijn (if there were no tomorrow?)

I say screw that - bring that beat back, bitch!

RAP: Je schrikt je zelf rot als je ziet wat er gebeurt,
Een kleine kind van 8 jaar loopt met een mitrailleur.
Dit is niet correct, het hoort te spelen met speelgoed,
Of voetballen misschien zijn ze wel heel goed.
Hoeveel moet zo een kind nog lijden,
Iedereen wilt toch wel zo’n kind bevrijden.
Bevrijden van de druk nee ze horen niet te stressen,
De meisjes doen hun best en het worden leraressen.
Rappers of zangeressen, ik hoop dat het lukt,
Nou geef me twee vingers, hou ze hoog in de lucht.
Van links naar rechts en hou ze hoog in de lucht,
Want de glimlach van een kind is het grote geluk.

Wat zou ik doen als ik woonde in Bagdad?
Zou ik smeken bij degene die de macht had?
Eh yo hoe erg zou het zijn op de Balkan?
De meeste mensen die snappen er geen bal van.
Kongo, Kosovo en Pakistan,
Sierra Leone, Soedan en Afghanistan.
Eritrea en natuurlijk Georgië,
Het is oorlog van hier tot aan Bosnië.

What would you do if there was no tomorrow and you knew your last meal was going to consist of fried crap balls and mashed mush?

What would you do if you had to eat buttery stringed chicken mixed with flour mashed with rice every day?

“Twee vingers in de lucht! Kom op! Kom op!”

Would you call your mother and ruin her Christmas by telling her, “Mom, things aren’t going so well here. I feel like a…”

WAR CHILD WAR CHILD

No. You’d just drink another glass of wine, suck back another Heineken, maybe throw back a shot of jenever, smoke an entire pack of cigarettes and pretend you’re a rock star.

That’s what I did.

“Geef ‘m een waanzinnig applaus dit is Ali B!” and I’m Carolyn Castiglia. Thank you. Goodnight!