The Dutch pride themselves as being a very open culture and, my dear reader, they are. And it’s not too hard to see that this is so. The only thing you need to do is take a walk down a street with houses and you’ll be amazed by how many of them have no curtains.

Above – unrelated photo of a crazy Dutch bird. I mean, common, I couldn’t go that far as making pictures of people eating dinner inside their homes, right?

You might ask, no curtains, so what? Well, paired with the fact that the windows are, in many cases, just a tiny little bit smaller than the whole wall and that you can see from one side of the house to the other, than you could ask yourself what’s wrong with these crazy Dutch, don’t they know the meaning of the word privacy? I mean, really, whenever I come home I can see what my neighbor is watching on TV. And I’m not even interested in seeing what he’s watching. I bet I could tell what mail he got if i fancied to do so.

But you know what? You get used to it. My apartment, although lacks the huge  windows, still offers a remarkable view on the office building next door and vice-versa, I would expect. Every morning when going into the kitchen felt strange knowing that, potentially, somebody could look at me making breakfast. And of course I could see perfectly people sipping coffee and reading their e-mails.

Guess what? I stopped giving a damn. And guess what else? Nobody gives a damn. Probably the only people that walk down the street and look in other peoples homes are those who are not used to it.  Yup, the crazy Dutch have some crazy homes…

Above – some crazy narrow Dutch houses in Amsterdam

And talking about houses I already wrote about the magnificent stairs they have. And you have to keep in mind that a lot of homes are so small or narrow that would make a claustrophobic person go crazy by just looking at them.

Yup, the crazy Dutch have some crazy homes…

But you know what? After some time they start to feel just right. The big curtenless windows make sense, since there is so little sunlight, the narrow staircases don’t seem so weird anymore and the narrow houses seem in the right place. And what can you do? It’s just the way the crazy Dutch like them…

So, my dear reader, Read on!

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if the first two posts were on the positive side today, my dear reader, you are going to find out about a dark place in Dutch culture – stairs. I don’t know what’s wrong with this people… Why do the stairs in most of the older buildings need to be like a corkscrew is beyond me. My own apartment is blessed with a perfect example of just that kind of stairs.

Above – The crazy stairs to my apartment

Going up and down is not that much of a challenge, when you get used to it, but God help that you don’t have to carry something upstairs. I still hear horror stories from my friends Simon and Levi about the task of carrying a couch up those same stairs and something tells me that they still have nightmares about carrying it down. Sorry guys, but it’s not my fault, I didn’t make the stairs, your crazy Dutch architects and builders did. And don’t even get me started about the time I wanted to take my bike upstairs. I almost didn’t make it…

And you know, you can find a lot of excuses for having this kind of masochistic stairs, like the land is expensive, there is not much space but, in reality, I think that there is just something wrong with the Dutch when it comes to stairs.

Above – Check out the winches on these houses in Amsterdam

Now, really, who in his right mind would build a warehouse and make such small stairs that you would need a winch to get anything in or out. Yup, an warehouse. A building built for the sole purpose of putting things in and taking them out.

And if you ever wondered what those typical winches on a lot of the houses in Amsterdam are for, now you know. Those are either old warehouses or homes with stairs so small that you can only crawl on them.

Yes, my eager minded reader, there are a lot of strange things in Holland and stairs is one of them. Read on!

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