2018 • The Netherlands
March 31, 2018 to April 2, 2018
For my last of three Spring Break trips in a row, I decided to start in The Netherlands. While I spent most of my time in Amsterdam, I did venture out into the country a little bit. I wanted to go to The Hague being that it is the center of many international organizations and then Doorn, where the Kaiser lived out his life in exile after the First World War. The Netherlands is a fascinating place with some extremely modern features, while at the same time, holding onto some wonderfully medieval customs. One part of visiting The Netherlands as an outsider that was somewhat interesting was how the treat their native language: Dutch. While Dutch is indeed the official language and spoken by a vast majority of people the The Netherlands, English is spoken by some 90% of the population as well (which is higher than that of the United States). Because of this rather peculiar situation, there are many places in which the foreign language of English actually takes precedence over Dutch. This is in stark contrast to a place like Ireland where a vast majority of the population speaks English and only a few actually speak Irish, yet the Irish language always takes precedence in that country.
