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In order to get my visa for the Netherlands I had to write a language and culture test, designed to make sure I would be able to fit in.

Part of the test involved watching a film very reminiscent of one of those new animated movies they have in aircraft these days to show you the plane’s safety procedures.

Aside from depriving air hostesses of their god-given right to stand in front of a cramped audience and go through the air-safety version of the Macarena, these films engage in horrible overacting and hyperbole to get unenthused passengers to remember the brace position. In a similar way, the film called “Coming to the Netherlands” has been, I am sure, met with equally unenthused viewers who cringe while watching an overeager “foreigner” bumble through various new and challenging social situations.

While much of the film is, thankfully, rather forgettable, there are a few vignettes that stick in the mind and one, in particular, intrigued me enormously. Dutch people, I was told do not close their curtains, as they believe it implies one has something to hide. Now, given the density of the population of the country, and how closely on top of each other everyone lives, this did seem rather strange. It does, however, explain a lot about where the idea for Big Brother (one of the latest in a long line of Dutch exports) came from.

Being vaguely WASP-ish, the thought of everyone being able to stare into my windows and know what I am having for breakfast didn’t really appeal but, thankfully, in the next breath, the narrator informed me that, while there is nothing to hide, it is considered poor form to gawk through these windows. And, it is on this space that I want to dwell for a moment.

In many respects that distance, the thickness of double glazed glass, sums up the Dutch. That dichotomy, between leaving everything clearly in the open - putting the prostitute squarely in the window, so to speak - and having the conservative restraint not to look at her is unique.

I can think of few other countries that would, for example, as Groningen is doing, think nothing of holding a Whiskey Festival in a church and, in the same breath maintain that people should not work on a Sunday.
The whole notion of the quiet Sunday is nice at one level, and definitely reminiscent of an older, slower time in the world. A world where blackberries were something you picked on a lazy Sunday drive, rather than an umbilical cord to one’s office. But, it can be rather frustrating when you are not used to it you forget to buy milk or worse, coffee on the Saturday.

Stranger still than the fact that shops aren’t open on Sundays, is the notion of a 'koopzondag', where once a month it is suddenly permitted for shops to be open and, in true Dutch spirit they are then chock-a-block. My question is this, if there is clearly such a need for shops to be open – so much so that the queue runs out the door on a Sunday afternoon just before the only supermarket opens its doors at 16h00, why not open more of them?

It seems logical right? But, then again, I am someone that often can’t help grabbing a peak through an open window.