I write this* on the return journey from my family's holiday in The Netherlands, which has been wonderful; silliness aplenty, boundless relaxing, and no small bit of drinking.
*and post it the day after my return... Poops and giggles, y'all.
And I come away feeling a little bit awful for being from Britain. Not because we were rowdy (though we truly were), or because we didn't appreciate Holland for all its beauty (we did), but because I don't speak a single word of Dutch... Not a syllable.
The vast majority of holidays I've been fortunate enough to embark upon have been to France, a country where I can get by with my GCSE-level, rough approximation of the French language. Whilst many of the French do resort to English once my telltale accent massacres their poetic tongue, I still feel that they appreciate the effort. It's an enormous help to be able to say please, thank you, and ask for directions to the nearest pharmacist so that I may procure a cream for my sunburn ("la soleil, la mer, je suis mal a la jambons").
Add onto that the fact that I lived in Tokyo for a year with the sole aim of attaining fluency in Japanese. Whilst far from perfect, I could make myself understood there well enough that I rarely had to eat something that I didn't intend to order, and only got lost a few dozen times.
The point is, this is the first time in a very long time (barring a drunken weekend in Prague) that I've been in a country where the language is completely and totally alien to me. Asking for a bus ticket led me to use some bastardised German to attempt to convey where I wanted to go, and bars or restaurants have seen me give up the ghost completely and just point at what I think I want. On more than one occasion, I've had Dutch people come up and ask me something, only for me to respond with "I'm sorry, I don't speak Dutch" which doesn't quite seem to cut it. Perhaps the whole of Europe has collectively realised that the English as a people have a tendency to be lazy when it comes to foreign languages, and it seems barmy to them that anybody but the English would attempt to enter their beautiful (I can't stress that enough) country, without first learning a bit of the Netherlands-speak.
To compound matters, it seems that a large number of Dutch people speak incredible (and delightfully accented) English. Bafflingly, it doesn't bother me all that much when French people speak English to me... I imagine this is because at least in France, I've opened with French, even if I revert to English down the line. All in all though, I've come away from Holland a peculiar mixture of extremely relaxed, and mildly embarrassed.
The simple solution, of course, would be to learn a few phrases before heading into foreign climes, but some how this holiday crept up on me in terms of preparation. As it is, in terms of blending in, I royally buggered this one up.
Next time I'll do a bit more prep to avoid being lumped in with those Brits that say "they all speak English anyway, so what's the point?", and then having to say that hideously shameful phrase; "I'm sorry, I'm English."
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