likewise! I was several times in NL and perceived you guys the cooler germans.
This open minded culture I adored seemed so fixed to me. I hope this conservative backlash will diminsh.
American here, have only visited NL and DE for a few weeks, never lived there.
It was also my perception that the Dutch had a live-and-let-live toleration, that seems like the opposite of the monitoring regime described in the comment. (I'm not really referring to marijuana, I'm speaking more generally.) To this naive outsider, who admittedly has something of a crush on Amsterdam, that level of monitoring is puzzling.
But maybe all those bike roads and dikes point to another aspect of the culture -- a little too well-supervised and well-engineered.
I didn't think marijuana was such a big thing there? I was under the impression that it was mostly just a tourist thing rather than a real part of the local culture
