Netherlands Guide
Introduction to The Netherlands
The Netherlands is a country in part reclaimed from the blue-black waters of the North Sea, an artificially created land, around half of which lies at or below sea level. It's a country of unique and resonant images – the fertile, pancake-flat landscapes gridded with canals and interrupted by windmills and church spires, all beneath huge, open skies. Every city in the country has its ornately gabled town houses, the greatest and most noble in Amsterdam, while the bulbfields provide bold splashes of colour in springtime; in the west the long coastline is marked by mile upon mile of protective dune, backing onto wide stretches of pristine, sandy beach.
A major colonial power, the Dutch mercantile fleet once challenged the English for world naval supremacy, and throughout its seventeenth-century Golden Age, the standard of living (for the majority at least) was second to none. There have been a few economic ups and downs since then, but today the Netherlands is one of the most developed countries in the world, small and urban, with the highest population density in Europe, its sixteen million inhabitants concentrated into an area about the size of the US state of Maine. It's an international, well-integrated place too: many people speak English, at least in the heavily populated west of the country; and most of the country is easy to reach on a public transport system of trains and buses, whose efficiency may make British and American visitors weep with envy.