Jaga,
Mutual stereotypes and caricatures easily are made between the Netherlands and Poland. I heard the stereotypes in both countries. But also between the USA and Europe.
My mother was a young (Roman-Catholic) Polish educated woman who went to Netherlands in 1967, and she also had had some difficulties to adabt to the Dutch life and society of that time. First some absolute Roman-Catholic truths and securities weren't absolute truths or mainstream in the partly Calvinist and partly secular Netherlands. My mother was mainly shocked about the position of the women in the Netherlands back then. They were less equal and less free than Polish women. Because most Dutch women didn't work back then, the majority were housewives back then. My mother was used to be surrounded by educated, working and independent Polish women in Warsaw, Poland. Her working environment was an Urbanistic buro, and she also worked for an architect buro as a technical drawer and planner. Suddenly she was surrounded by dependend Dutch housewives, and that caused some isolation in the beginning. She was used to her city life in Warsaw. Polish women and men were different than Dutch men and women. But the story of this Polish women is different. She came to and worked and lived in a different Netherlands than my mother came to during the sixties.
My mother hasn't washed thousands of hotel toilets. She is different than Agnieszka. She became a housewife in the Netherlands. But when we (my sister and I) were little, she worked some time for a Dutch architect bureau in Vlissingen, in the early seventies. But that was just for a very short moment.
The translation from Polish to English is sometimes a little bit difficult to understand, but I try, despite the little bit strange sentences. It's the same when you try to translate Dutch into Polish or vice versa.
It is a strange but maybe also logical phenomenon that immigrants often start to look with different eyes to their country of origin, because they see what things are better in their new homeland, and also what is missing there (less good that from their Heimat; homeland). Why did she felt the urge or desire to tame Poland? Is it necessery to scold, ridicule and hate her to find your own personal position in an antithesis between Poland and the Netherlands? I remember that I never missed the Netherlands when I was abroad. England (GB), Oxford; France, Montpellier; Belgium, working on our holiday home in the Ardennes mountains (mainy hours, many days, weeks); Poland (Poznań, Warszawa, Kraków), South-Africa, USA, West coast and East coast; Hungary, Budapest; Czech Republic, Prague; Germany, Berlin, Kassel; Denmark, Copenhagen. But I was there for shorter periods than this Polish lady (ofcourse).
I saw that these countries and sometimes continents were different, and in some (many) cases weren't comparable with the Netherlands. People in colder or cooler Northern climates have a different way of living and organisation than people from a dry Southern-climate. The same is the case with the mild, wet, sea climate of Northern-Western Europe. The Netherlands is a country founded on river beds, costal planes, marshlands and flat grass lands. Poland is a land climate with more diversity in landscapes, huge rural area's and large cities. Poland is more traditional, more homegenous (autochtoon), more centralistic in nature, more religious in culture, spirituality and life philosophy. The Netherlands is more liberal, secular and maybe more materialistic, like Agnieszka stated. A saying says that the Netherlands is a country of merchants and Calvinist ministers. So you have the dualism of materialism (trade) and faith (spiritualism of the Calvinist fatalist Predestination. The Dutch indifference about most things, often confused with tolerance, in Agnieszka's eyes maybe has to do with that predestination, which stil lays under the secular-humanist society in the Netherlands. Calvinism had such a profound influence that even Dutch Roman-Catholics and socialist, liberal and conservative atheists are calvinist in nature and culture. Calvinism was very dominant. It dominated in the Netherlands (Northern Low Countries. The Southern-Low Countries were Flanders, Brabant and Limburg), the Dutch colonies, South-Africa, Namibia (the Afrikaander part of the population of this former German colony), Scotland, Northern-Ireland. Apartheid and the tough Northern-Irish ministers and parties are typical Calvinists. The contradictio in terminis is the fact that there has been a lot of artists, writers, comedians, politicians and musicians who have left their Calvinist family roots, and often became the harshest criticizers or fierces atheists. Coming from a strict Dutch Reformed background is damaging and traumatic for many people. Because the faith is puritinical, harsh, fundamentalist (Old testament and new testament), fanatic and anti modernity. Orthodox Calvinists reject the values of the French revolution and the secular democracy. In some way they share view points with Ultra-Orthodox jews and conservative muslims. from the other side the conservative, traditional branch of Dutch Roman-Catholicism increasingly tries to creat alliances with the Orhtodox puritinical Protestants. Both reject the idea of equality of men and women, the equality of Gay men, lesbian women, bisexuals and transgenders. They reject abortion and euthenasia. (which is a reasonable, democratic right. Not anybody has to think the same) This conservative Calvinist and Roman-Catholic minorities sometimes side with jews and Muslims in these ethical, political and social issues.
For Poles, often traditional Roman-Catholics, the Dutch society can be shockingly secular and anti-religious, due to the secular majority, which is indifferent to religion. Religion is no important in this coutnry and society and often mocked in comedy, on the street in social cirlces and in working environment. There is something like; 'Can we take people who believe, who are religious seriously, because believing is childish, irrational and backward.' This radical atheism, and secular humanist dominance is often difficult for religious people, who want to observe their faith. Stil religious political parties, movements, media and churches play a role as representatives of large minorities. The Dutch king is stil the head of the in majority Dutch Reformed Calvinist Protestant Chrurch in the Netherlands.
The Protestant Church in the Netherlands (Dutch: Protestantse Kerk in Nederland, abbreviated PKN) is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in the Netherlands. With 2,000 congregations and a membership of some 1.8 million (or 10.8% of the Dutch population, 2009), it is the second largest church in the Netherlands after the Catholic Church. Historically the various Protestant churches had collectively formed the largest Christian denomination in the country, with about 60% of the population being Protestant in the early 20th century, but religiosity drastically declined after the 1960s. It is the traditional faith of the Dutch Royal Family - a remnant of the church's historical dominance.
The PKN was founded 1 May 2004 as the merger of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The merger was the culmination of an organizational process started in 1961. The Church incorporates both Reformed and Lutheran theological orientations.
Back to Agnieszka, the article of the Polish immigrant in the Netherlands.
Emigration for every immigrant is the process of opening and closing. It was for my mother when she moved from Warsaw, Poland, to Apeldoorn, in the province of Gelderland in the Netherlands. From a capital she moved to a provincial town in the Netherlands, to become a member of a traditional Dutch upper middle class family. For Agnieszka, who probably had no husbant and secure home like my father, life in the Netherlands was different than my mothers. But maybe their cultural lonelyness, being 'Lost in translation' sometimes, could have been the same. They are different, outsiders in the beginning. Looking different, speaking different, with their heavy 'migrant' slave accent, behaving different and being different (as a fact). Yes, 'Juggling familiarity and strangeness'. '' I '', '' we '', '' you '', '' they '' - '' Folks '' and '' foreign '' must have been common words for my mother too. Where are you coming from. Who am I? we the family of mixed people, they (the Dutch family, the Dutch neighbors, the Poles that stayed in Poland; parents, family, friends, colleages and acqiantences), folks; the people that surround you in your new living environment.
Agnieszka did the typical immigrant jobs hundreds of thousands of foreign immgrants did before here; the Spanish, Italian and Portugese immigrants of the fifties and sixties, the Turkish and Moroccan labour immigrants (called guestworkers in the Netherlands) and later during the nineties and early this century the legal and illegal asylum seekers (the political and economic refugees, which escaped the horrors of war, civil wars, genocides, ethnic cleansing and poverty). In the same time these asylumseekers entered our countries the Poles, Baltic people, East-Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians and people from former Yugoslavia (Bosnians, Croats and Serbs) started to coming in.
I've also heard about easy Polish women, Poles-alcoholics, crazy drivers and Polish pedestrians who cross roads and highways and are hit by cars. The Polish tsunami that attacks western Europe isn't visible in the Netherlands. The new fear is the wave of Rumanians and Bulgarians. With descriptions; "These people are real low lives with no regard for human lives, robers, rapists, Con Men, Pickpockets, murderers and rent killers. In time that the community of Polish Dutch people is growing, you see more and more Dutch Poles who speak Dutch. Polish children from Polish parents that go to Dutch schools. There some of them also learn English and German. There are also German Poles in the Netherlands, and these people often are billingual, Polish-German. Often they also speak a little bit or much Dutch, because Dutch is close to German.
I am glad that Agnieszka had the chance and privilage to know the delights of working in an international corporation an interesting position. One of the benefits of the Netherlands is that it has an international orientation and is largely dependent on foreign trade (Import and export). The Dutch economy is largely dependent on the Export, Tourism and service sectors.
I am glad that Agnieszka had (and still have) the opportunity to work with people from all over the world and enrich herself through contact with their cultures. Yes, the good part of the Dutch admire the very ambitious and hardworking are Poles. The turbulent Polish history and dynamic development of the Polish economy is fascinating for the Dutch. Not so long ago, they remembered that Poland was a backward Eastblock, primitive communist country, and during the nineties a corrupt country -stil somewhere inbetween communism and western democracy and capitalist economy.
My mother worked hard on adapting Dutch customs, habits, social etiquette, rules, do´s and don´ts. She assimilated and integrated to her best abilities. Understanding the Dutch Calvinists, Dutch Roman-Catholics (different than Polish Roman-Catholics -less strict and less traditional and even more secular than their Calvinist compatriots, who had a more strict biblical upbringing), Dutch atheists, Dutch agnostic people, Dutch socialists (Social-democrats), liberals and conservatives (often christian-democratic).
The cliché of the ideal order in the Dutch streets, public transport punctuality and friendly petitioner offices in the Netherlands is often mentioned by foreigners. That the Dutch rationality and sobriety of thought is undisturbed by national sentiments and religious fanaticism is true. But that is changin slowly. Nationalism and populism are more and more accepted political phenomena, and relgious minority groups are better and better organised. Calvinists, Evangelicals, Roman-Catholics, Muslims and other relgious groups know how to present themselves and get attention. Some christian based broadcast organisations are very succesful. A good example of that is the EO (Evangelical Broacast Corporation), which is very succesful in adressing a Christian (Protestant Calvinist and Evangelical) audience, but also a secular, liberal audience with quality news programs, entertainment and sitcoms.
The small social distance between rich and poor is typical Dutch and has calvinist and socialist roots. Social democracy has been a very powerful ideology and political movement in the Netherlands during the 20th century. For a long time as the most powerful opposition movement and working class cultural movement. Social-democracy made middle class of Dutch working class people via their party, union, cultural influence, university professors, school teachers, journalists (of socialist newspapers, magazines, radio and tv). The Dutch openness in matters of sexuality and death are world famous. But not everybody in the Netherlands agrees with that openess and the side affects of it.
I can understand that people complain about the state of Polish railways and roads, about populism in politics, the threat of growing nationalism and the aggressive intervention of the Catholic Church and religion in the public life of Poles. For older Dutch Roman-Catholics it reminds them of the time of the pillarization in the Netherlands, when the Roman-Catholic pillar dominated the lives of the Dutch Roman-Catholic life. Older Roman-Catholics remember that the 'conservative church' back then controled their lives via the priests, the Roman-Catholic schools, roman-catholic universities, the Roman-Catholic 'Catholic Peoples Party' (a conservative, Vatican loyal, rightwing, Roman-Catholic party), the Roman-Catholic Union and Roman Catholic Workers movement, the Roman Catholic newspapers, magazine and Radio Broadcast corporation KRO (later also television).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_People%27s_Partyen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federatie_Nederlandse_Vakbewegingen.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Volkskranten.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katholieke_Radio_Omroepen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rooms-Katholiek_KerkgenootschapThey will remember the Roman-Catholic priests that urged their Roman-Catholic wives, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, aunts, cousins, friends, colleages to have more children. It was important for the Roman-Catholic glergy and the church that the Roman-Catholic women would have more children than Protestant christian women and these headen atheist socialist women and secular liberal (-conservative) women. There was no civil war, but there was a cultural, religious and political competition and rivalry.
I can totally understand that Agnieszka missed or misses the Polish mountains, forests, lakes and space. The Netherlands is densly populated if you live in the West or in the Urban agglomerations in the South, or East. The North and far east is less densly populated. Talks about the purpose of life, friendship and values are less common in the Netherlands, because Dutch people are less philosophical and religious than Poles. We lack philosophical and pyschological thinking. Dutch people are often bussy with technical, materialistic, sport or entertainment things. They don't like complicated theoretical things, to much ideology and don't have philosophical conversations. Ofcourse there is a cosmopolitan, international oriented and international educated Dutch minority of philosophy, theology, sociology, psychologuy, politicology, art history, general history, ethics, Netherlands (language), Germanics, language studies and intellectuals, journalists, intellectual Roman-Catholic priests and Calvinist ministers, writers, artists, poets and comedians. But unfortunately they are a tiny minority. The majority is general, materialistic, pragmatic and not fond of philosophy, culture, the arts opr theoretic thinking in general. You could say that our culture has become a mix of American entertainment and cinema, British pop culture, Australian soaps, German technology and products (BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes, Opel and Audi) and French/Belgian cuisine.
Add the vacations to Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey, the Canary Islands and South-Africa to that. We made a Dutch version of that.
Poles will miss their literature and poetry; Czesław Miłosz, Tomek Tryzna, Witold Gombrowicz, Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Różewicz and Mrozek. I don't know if Poles are more authentic and have a greater strength of spirit? I find it difficult to say, all Dutch are like this and all Poles are like that. There are so many differences between Polish people, that the differences between Polish people maybe are different than the difference between Polish and Dutch people. You have cold, calculating, materialistic and distant Polish people and you have warm, passionate, spiritual and concerned Dutch people, who lack indifference. I aggree though with Agnieszka that the indifference of Dutch people about most things, often is confused with tolerance. I don't aggree with her statement that the Dutch can't fight for anything, because they wouldn't have the urge to. I know my compatriots as competititve in work and sports and dedicated to their work. In work mentality they are inbetween the Germans and the British. Technical like the Germans, but also pragmatic and commercial like the English. The Dutch don't think that they have accomplished everything. Many Dutch considered their reconstructed, new built, post-war environment as ugly, cheap and depressing, like the poor Eastblock, communist, cheap, working class neighborhoods, built in Stalinist style in the DDR (East-Germany), Czechoslovakia, Poland, Hugary, Rumania and the former SovjetUnion. The Dutch are dismantling those neighborhoods of the fourties, fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties and replacing them with new apartment buildings, new flats, and in the same time creating new roads, cycling paths, paths for pedestrians, new company buildings and new community buildings. Young Dutch people more often study abroad, work abroad, and live abroad and learn skills in Germany, Belgium, Great-Britian, the USA, France, Denmark/Sweden, Italy, Spain, Poland and other countries. They know that the Netherlands is not the center of the world. New generations of young Dutch kids and teenagers live in a more complicated and faster world we grew up in in the seventies and eighties, and those times weren't easy either. But these kids have to surive in the multi-cultural jungle of the large cities and in towns and the digital age of social media, and electronic bullying.
It is good that Agnieszka looked for work in the Netherlands and found work. She did all kind of jobs and worked a lot in my country. During that work she learned my compatriots and no doubt also other newcommers, the immagrants from all parts of the world., She learned Dutch and that is a great achievement for a Polish lady, because Dutch is a complicated West-Germanic language from a foreigner who comes from a non-Germanic language. Dutch is difficult too for Germans, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians, English people and Scots, but there are some West-Germanic links. Between Polish and Dutch there are very few and limited linguistic links.
Agnieszka has learned a lot about the Netherlands and Poland, and in that matter about Europe, because Germany lies between the Netherlands and Poland and all European nationalities are present in the Netherlands. Being a European foreigner in the Netherlands I believe you will easier seek contact with other European and even non-European foreigners and migrants -if they are open to you-. I remember that abroad I made easily contact with many nationalities and that I was often in multi-ehtnic, multi-cultural and thus international groups of people. I found them more interesting and inspiring than a group of compatriots abroad, who stay in a Dutch ethnic enclave in Spain, France or Belgium. The Dutch corner of a camping, or the Dutch pub or restaurant abroad for Dutch expats and tourists. Boring. Why should you eat Dutch in Spain when you can have delicious Spanish food over there?
Agnieszka has discovered the different layers of the Dutch society, the sociology of the Dutch people, the psychology of the Dutch psyche of the Dutch people she met all those years or months she spend in my country. She took the courage, effort and thus energy to learn my language. And that is great. Learning a foreign language is always good and great. It broadens you horizon, and if you live and work somewhere your life become more easy if you speak the language of the people of the nation you live in.
Cheers,
Pieter
