GERMANY🇩🇪 vs NETHERLANDS🇳🇱 | Cultural differences & similarities

Hi guys, welcome back to my channel and if you're new here it is so great to have you. I'm Antoinette, a New Zealander who has been living for the last 10 years in Germany and in this video today I am going to be discussing the cultural similarities and differences between Germany and the Netherlands and this is just through my own personal experience. So my family and I recently just returned from a wonderful holiday in the Netherlands. It was the first time I had been there. My husband had visited a couple of times before. We stayed in an absolutely beautiful little coastal town called Egmondensee. I don't know if I'm pronouncing that right. I'm sorry I don't speak Dutch and we also spent the day in Amsterdam. Wow, just wow. I have so many good things to say about the Netherlands. I had such a great time. I wanted to stay for longer. I cried when we left. The first day I arrived I said to my husband, I feel so at home here and I realized the reason why I felt so at home in the Netherlands is because culturally it reminded me so much of Germany. I honestly think that if I had just arrived in the Netherlands without having previously lived or visited Germany it would have been a bit of a culture shock for me and I probably wouldn't have felt as at home as I did. I just kind of felt like the whole overall vibe of the country, the way people acted and dressed were just quite similar to what I had experienced in Germany and obviously the language is totally different. It's a different landscape, different architecture but just the vibe was quite similar if that makes sense. I also surprisingly have quite a few Dutch viewers and some of you have said to me that you can identify with the German cultural side of what I talk about which I found so interesting. I didn't fully understand it until I visited the Netherlands. One of my Dutch viewers actually said to me that they feel at home whenever they visit Germany like I would probably feel when I'm in Australia or say the UK and I thought that was just a really interesting sort of comparison. Okay so let's get into the cultural comparisons between the Netherlands and Germany. The first thing that I want to talk about is the language, the Dutch language. I had hardly ever heard the Dutch language being spoken before I arrived in the Netherlands and wow this language is so cool. I just was blown away by the language. I was thinking that because I can speak German I would be able to understand a little bit of Dutch but I was so wrong and also my husband, he's a native German speaker and he said to me that he could not work out anything they were saying. He was trying really hard to work out what they were saying but he just couldn't, he couldn't understand it at all. I actually heard that native German speakers can't understand Dutch but native Dutch speakers on the other hand can understand a lot of the German language which kind of confused me. I couldn't work out why this was. So after our first day in the Netherlands that evening my husband was watching a documentary on YouTube about the Netherlands with German subtitles and then he said to me oh my goodness I can understand what they are saying if I look at the German subtitles and so he was like listening and he was like oh my goodness yes yes this means this. I just have to listen really carefully. He said that if he concentrated really hard and was reading the German subtitles he could make out a lot of what they were saying in Dutch and he said it was kind of like German with a really really strong dialect and you just had to kind of get used to it and Rob said that he felt that he could probably learn the Dutch language really quickly being a German native speaker. So I found that so interesting. I'd really love to hear what other Germans experience have been like with the Dutch language if you have learned Dutch as a native German speaker. Okay something I noticed, this really struck me when I first arrived in the Netherlands, is the difference in architecture between the German and the Dutch homes and yes I know that I'm generalizing here. I'm aware that not all of the Netherlands look the same. It depends on where you are in the Netherlands and you know the same with Germany. I'm just like talking about the area where I visited but I noticed a huge difference in the architecture. Something that absolutely fascinated me was the Dutch window and growing up in New Zealand you know you hear about the Dutch window you know a great big window but I never really thought it was an actual thing in the Netherlands until I visited and I realized that a lot of the homes, at least in the area where I visited, had a huge big window at the front of their homes where everything was on display. So you could see right through into people's living rooms and you could see what they were doing, you could see them eating dinner, you could see them sitting watching tv, reading a book and you could just see everything that was going on. And I thought wow this is so so different to how homes are built in Germany where everything is just so private and you know the living room will be sort of in the back of the house and you won't be able to see anything. We arrived in the Netherlands at night time and so you could really see in that window and see what was going on and so in Germany you know you can see like little windows lit up but you can't see what's going on in the window. It really felt like these people wanted you to look in and so I have not done any research on this topic. I am so interested to know whether this is done purposely in the Netherlands. It just looked so so cool and the homes they were just so beautifully set up it was almost like a showroom they were showing off this beautiful room that they had in their house. I just absolutely love the style of the Dutch homes that were just so cozy and I love like the big bookshelves on display and all of the beautiful furniture and everything was just so just gorgeous. You felt like you shouldn't really be looking in but you couldn't help it because it looked so inviting and in the evening my family and I went for a walk around the neighborhood we were staying and there were just so many of these big Dutch windows and we were just walking past these families you know in their home eating watching tv reading whatever and it was so cool so so cool. I wanted to take photos but I felt like I was invading their privacy so anyway that's something I noticed that was totally different to Germany. Okay so something else I noticed is that the Dutch love to ride bikes just like the Germans. Germans absolutely love to ride bikes at least in the area of Germany where I live. One thing that shocked me when I first came to Germany is seeing people riding bikes without bicycle helmets. Well in the Netherlands they actually take it to a whole new level and not just the adults wear no bicycle helmets but the kids also wear no bicycle helmets so in Germany if you see a kid riding a bike most likely like 99.9% of the time they will be wearing a bicycle helmet. In the Netherlands I saw so many kids riding bikes but without bicycle helmets so I guess it's just a cultural norm in the Netherlands and I found it super interesting um it was like quite a shock for me to see actually my little girl pointed it out that little girl's not wearing a bicycle helmet. So in the Netherlands not only did I see people riding bikes without bicycle helmets I saw people riding electric scooters without bicycle helmets which you don't see in Germany. You also see a lot of elderly people in the Netherlands riding bikes like over the age of 75 even 80. In Germany you also see this you see a lot of elderly people riding bikes but in the Netherlands I just saw so many like even more so than in Germany. I think this is so cool I love this cultural aspect of the Netherlands and Germany and in the Netherlands I saw a lot of people riding these really cool vintage bikes like really old school bikes and there was a lot of bike shops I saw a lot of bike shops in the Netherlands and they were all selling these old fashion style bikes and in Germany you see a lot of people on modern bikes like electric bikes and just super modern bikes. A lot of the younger generation in Germany like students they like to ride these vintage bikes similar to the bikes you see in the Netherlands um but for the most part I think a lot of Germans ride like more modern bikes. Something else I noticed in the Netherlands is that so many Dutch people have such a high level of English it's crazy and I was used to this because it's the same in Germany. Germans have a very high level of English in general. Most people in Germany, not everybody, but a lot of Germans speak a pretty decent level of English whether it be just you know conversational English or just really great like fluent English and the same in the Netherlands. I was really really surprised by this and what amazed me is that two of the restaurants where we ate at including the holiday park we were staying the people who served us spoke English and German and so we were like sorry we don't speak Dutch but we can speak English or German they were like it doesn't matter either. The Dutch in general just have a great level of English not all of them and I don't expect all of them to speak English but a lot of them that I came into contact with when I was there spoke great English and great German which was a bonus. Another similarity I noticed between the Netherlands and Germany is just the overall sort of condition of the country if that makes sense probably that wasn't the right word but in the Netherlands everything is so neat and tidy you don't see just trash lying around everywhere and same with Germany it's just overall very well looked after as a country and you can see both countries they are you know wealthy countries Germany and the Netherlands you can see it you can see the condition of the roads all the buildings everything is just very orderly and well kept if that makes sense. A cultural difference that I noticed is how you pay for things in Germany versus the Netherlands so if anyone's been to Germany you will know that cash is king and so you are expected to pay basically everything with cash rather than a debit card or a credit card and in the Netherlands it's not like this. In Germany it doesn't matter whether you are in a clothing shop, a restaurant, a supermarket most people will pay with cash in the Netherlands it's not like this most people pay with a card from what I saw. In a cafe in the Netherlands we ordered two cappuccinos and two apple juices and it came to around I think it was like 10-12 euros. I was expecting that I should pay with this in cash like we do in Germany and so I got out my cash and the lady serving me looked a little bit like not confused but just surprised I think she was expecting for me to pay with a card and after that I was taking notice of how people were paying for things in the Netherlands like at supermarkets and cafes and the majority 99% of people were paying with a card rather than cash which I found really interesting so anyway guys I feel like I could even make a part two to this video there were so many differences and similarities that I noticed between Germany and the Netherlands and when it comes down to it both countries are amazing both countries are awesome I love the vibe in both countries so I kind of feel like the Netherlands and Germany they're kind of like cousins in a way different but really similar if that makes sense and I just want to make it clear I am absolutely no expert on Dutch culture I was only in the Netherlands for three nights and four days and during that time I feel like I experienced a lot but definitely nowhere near as much as there is to experience someone who is an expert on Dutch culture is my friend Jovi from the YouTube channel Jovi's Home I will link it below if you haven't already checked it out she's awesome so anyway guys I really hope you enjoyed this video if you have visited the Netherlands and Germany I would love to hear about your experiences in the comment section below thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this video then don't forget to give it a big thumbs up I would love you to consider subscribing to my channel feel free to connect with me on Instagram and I will see you again really soon bye