Fun Dutch Facts

I have a bunch of things I want to post about, but I'm about to head to London for Easter to visit my family. SO for today, I will leave you with a handful of fun Dutch facts my Dutch teacher shared with us in class the other day. Some I knew, some I didn't...and here are my favorites!

1) The Rijksmuseum was designed to represent a church and "The Night Watch" by Rembrandt formed the 'altar piece.'

2) Manhattan, among others governed by Peter Stuyvesant around 1650, was purchased by the Dutch West Indita Company for the equivalent of 25 euros.

3) When you arrive at Schiphol Airport, you are four and a half meters below sea level.

4) The Dutch swapped New York, formerly called New Amsterdam, for Suriname in 1667 in a trade with the Brittish.

5) For more than 200 years, from 1639 to 1868, the Dutch were the only westerners in the world allowed to trade with the Japanese.

6) Sri Lanka was a Dutch colony from 1656 until 1802. Therefore, Dutch has contributed substantially to its official language Singhalese.

7) The last German emperor Wilhelm II found asylum in a castle near Utrecht in 1920. The castle used to be the home of the grandmother of Audrey Hepburn.

8) When queen Beatrix turned 65 she received a state pension just like everyone else, despite the fact that she is worth $300 million.

9)If requested, a sex worker will be provided for a physically and mentally disabled person, paid by the state.

10) The Dutch company Philips invented the CD player in 1979.

11) Out of the 16 Dutch Nobel Prize Winners, 10 received the prize for their research in physics and chemistry.

12) The first dikes were built around the year 1100 by monks.

13) The original color of a carrot is not orange. The Dutch artificially manipulated the carrot around 1600 into orange to match it to the national color.

14) In 1679, the Dutch scientist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek found for the first time bacteria and spermatozoa with his own made microscope.

15) According to Dutch scientist Simon Stevin, Adam and Eve spoke Dutch in Paradise, and Dutch would be the most logical language in the world. Therefore he wrote most of his work - late 1500s- in Dutch. This is the main reason why in Dutch most scientific words are Dutch not Latin.

16) In the beginning of the 1630s, tulips were more expensive than gold and cause a tulip mania. It collapsed as they didn't know yet the different colors and stripes were caused by a viral disease.

Day Trip to Den Haag

Look! Its a post that is NOT about food! You should all be proud.

Since Rachel (other girl from Oxy in my program) and I both do not have class on Fridays, we decided to get on a train and go to the Hague for the day. The Dutch public transport system is awesome, so this was really not a big deal at all, trains run there at least every half hour if not more. I am SO jealous of the Dutch public transport system when compared to Los Angeles.

We ran around the city happily for the day, covering a lot of ground and having a blast. The main attractions/sights we visited:

1. The Queen's Palace

I wasn't that excited by this, as it was fairly understated on the outside, as is usual for the Dutch. More attention grabbing was the pair of evil seagulls that harassed us as we tried to eat our sandwiches on a bench across from the palace. Still, it was neat to see.

2. The International Court of Justice/Peace Palace

It took us a while to find the building, but I was glad when we finally did. While we were not able to go inside (you have to reserve a tour in advance, and we also didn't have our passports on us for identification). Still, the building was beautiful, and it was just fun to stand outside and look at.

3. Museum of Communications

Rachel and I stumbled up this on the way to the Peace Palace. Thanks to our museumkaart (thanks CIEE!) we were able to get into the museum for free. Everything was in Dutch, so we clearly missed some things, but the museum was basically an exhibit on the different ways we communicate. The most exciting areas for me was the section showcasing the different phones used in Hollywood movies (including Clueless!), and the children's section, which was this huge interactive board game/play area. Seriously, if I were a Dutch 10 year old this would have been the best museum ever! There was even an R2D2 phone in the futuristic section, which made me VERY happy

4. The Mauritshuis

Probably the coolest part of our visit. The Mauritshuis is an art gallery which showcases Dutch painters, including Rembrandt and Vermeer. Rachel was SO excited to go see The Girl with the Pearl Earing, and even though I'm not a huge art history person, I'll admit it was pretty awesome. It helped that you recieved a free audio tour with your admission (again, free thanks to the museumkaart!), which helped make me look at the paintings and not just wander restlessly. The Mauritshuis itself was a beautiful place for an art gallery, feeling like a stately old mansion with character rather than a sterile museum.