I blame the Dutch

When asked to describe the Dutch I usually rant about the fact that they
are a bunch of windmill turning, clog wearing, dike stuffing, tulip
eaters... and go downhill from there.

The second thing that crosses my mind is a scene from 'Goldmember':

GOLDMEMBER

Can I paint his yoo-hoo gold now? It's kind of my thing, you know...

DR EVIL crosses the room in his moving chair and comes in close to the
camera. He pauses, working up to the answer.

DR. EVIL

How 'bout no, you crazy Dutch bastard.

Either way, I'm convinced that the Dutch are weird and don't do things in
a conventional manner. This includes the practical things like getting
around.

I was supposed to be in Amsterdam for 1 or 2 meetings. So we had all
planned to come up the night before, have an extra diner meeting that
evening and get back to the regular business the following day.

But at about 4pm on the night before I got a message from the Dutch rep
that the next day's meetings were not in fact in Amsterdam but in a town,
Maassluis, that was, not only 1.5 hours from Amsterdam but 1/2 way between
where I was at present and the meeting that night.

Sucking up my two steps forward, one step back. I got up at the crack of
dawn the next morning, fell out of my overpriced single bed downtown, and
trudged to the rail station.

After standing in line for 10 minutes I found out that the station didn't
take credit cards, none of the vending machines did, and unless you had
cash you were S.O.L.

Handing over the last of my notes, I sat in the train for the first leg
of the journey, got off at the correct station, then tried to find a cab
for the last portion.

Simple, you may think, but no. Not only did the cab driver have no idea
where the address was, but he didn't take credit cards, and neither did
any of the others.

Now you may be thinking that this was just an isolated case but I was
when I mentioned this to someone who lived in Amsterdam, they had this to
say :

"...Been there, done that, have the T-shirt. This is Dutch service and
hospitality at its best. To give you a hint:

While having a nice dinner, the waiters start vacuuming and ask the
guests to lift there feet so that they can vacuum under the table.

My father was visiting, and asked the waiter for bread with his gambas.
The waiter said no and left.

I was going to a meeting outside of The Hague. Once I got to the train
station I called for a taxi. After 30min there taxi still hadn't arrived
and I called back. It was freezing, I might add. After a lot of back and
forth, it turned out that this taxi company did not pick up passengers
in this area and no other company in the area either. So the people
where I had the meeting had to pick me up. "

Oh yeah, and I'm never drinking Heiniken again.