Holland

My talk is going to be about Holland.

Holland or Netherlands is a country located in north-west Europe and with parts in the Caribbean. It’s between Belgium and Germany. The capital is Amsterdam. The country is a member of the European Union. The language they speak in Holland is Dutch, a language which sounds similar to German.

Well, first of all I’m going to talk about the geography of the country. In Dutch Neder means low, so Nederland means lowland because most of the country is located under the sea level. It means that Holland has been built with a system of dikes. That’s the reason why Netherlands has a lot of rivers and canals inside of the cities and villages. We can see easily with maps and photographs of the country that Holland is all the time changing its structure as a result of the human intervention and natural disasters. The country has big problems with the floods, in the past storms even caused dead of many people. The tallest place in the country is a region call Limburg with only 321 meters above the sea level.

The weather in Netherlands is call maritime climate with cool summers and mild winters. A thing I hated when I went to Holland was the winter, because when you are by bike you have the winter against to you.

In the XX century began the First World War in this one Holland stay neutral. In the Second World War they declared themselves neutral but Germans attacked them.

Currently the Netherlands has been a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary democracy. This country is very famous because of the drugs and prostitution.

Ok now I’m going to talk about Holland’s typical things

Amsterdam is considered the capital of the marihuana or weed because it is allowed to smoke joints in coffee shops. When you go to a tourist shop you can find all kind of gadgets for smoke and all kind of things with weed. I didn’t know that there were so many things to smoke.

Amsterdam has a district call Red Lights district where the prostitutes are in windows. Tulips are a very typical thing too. You can see a kind of street markets where sells a lot of tulips and bulbs. Another interesting place to go in Amsterdam is Anne Frank’s house.

But I think the most typical thing in whole Holland is bikes. You can see bikes everywhere, everybody go by bike wherever they go. There are a lot of bikes parking, in the stations, in the airport, in the school, in the supermarkets… It is very funny to see a woman going to her job with skirt and heels but riding a bike. But in my opinion it is a very good habit because they don’t produce pollution.

I don’t know very well the really typical Dutch food so I’m going to tell you my experience. When I went there we had breakfast at 9 more or less, it depended of the day, and the things I ate were bread with butter and Hagelslag and vlokken which were my favorite breakfast! Hagelslag and vlokken are two kinds of chocolate chip that you put in your bread. I drank milk and tea. The milk is very strange, has a strange flavor, it is good but different than our milk. The problem is that they had lunch at 12 and not to much food maybe a sandwich at school. And then at tea time we had a banana and my favorite sweet in the world STROOPWAFELS. Stroopwafel is a kind of big biscuit. Inside it is cream and caramel, it is really nice. And finally at dinner time at 6 in the afternoon they had a normal food like sausages, soup, salad, fish or steak.

They also have fast foods like burger kings or McDonalds, but maybe the typical fast food I saw in Amsterdam was a kind of refrigerators with crockets or chips inside and if you put money you can take the crocket.

And finally I’m going to tell you a bit about the city where I stayed. I went to a place near of Amsterdam call Almere. Almere is the best place you can imagine. I think is the best place to live. It is very beautiful and big with canals, river, grass, beach, commercial center and nice houses, and schools,it seems like you are in a film.