Thursday, March 30, 2006

Holland vs. The Netherlands



Since living in Holland I’ve had a surprising amount of conversations with people that did not realize The Netherlands and Holland are names for one and the same country. Obviously these are not conversations I have been having with Dutch people. They seem to have caught onto this fact due to insider knowledge.


I’ve been told the reason for the two names is much like the way England is referred to as Great Britain and/or The United Kingdom sometimes. Holland is only the name for two Western provinces with in The Netherlands. Technically this might mean my blog should be called ‘Invading the two Western provinces with in the Netherlands’ but luckily for me Holland is used to refer to the entire country in most cases now.

This might sound confusing but it is not as confusing as the wedding invite I was once sent by an old college friend which was addressed to me in The Neverlands. As much as I would like to think otherwise I am pretty sure I have aged in the five years I have been here and I think the only way to see Tinkerbell is to spend too long in a Amsterdam coffee shop. Of course it’s always possible that she thought I was living with Michael Jackson.

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