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Living in Holland is strange. Its liberal attitudes towards soft drugs are amusing. Its insane transport layout of cycle-lanes and roads are confusing. Their willingness to speak whichever language you happen to speaking (be that English, French, German or Belgian) is bemusing. In its essence living in Holland is just like living in the UK except with every rule turned backwards.

Take the topography for example. Utterly flat. Oh yes, perfect for bicycles and short walks perhaps but quietly psychologically altering. After only 4 months here the sight of hills fills me with gushing sentimentality. I dream of vantage points and rolling vistas, but alas I am forever looking up.

Take too their Design culture. Utterly proud. Upon meeting one of my new house-mates it was proclaimed flatly ‘Oh yes, you’ve come to the right place, Dutch design is the best in the world.’ Would I ever hear this of an English designer? I think not. Let us not mistake this for arrogance, it’s pride, it’s confidence in their abilities as a culture, and I think this is in large part linked to their liberal mentality. New ideas seem to be easily absorbed into a culture such as Holland’s and embraced fully and confidently to boot.

Where I’m living, Eindhoven, it seems the entire place is built on ‘Design’. Philips practically created the town with its explosive growth at the turn of the 19^th century, and seems to have integrated itself into every facet, nugget and nodule of ‘Eindhoven culture’. The football team is named after them. The famous Design Academy is located in an old Philips building. Even the train station was moved so as to be more convenient for Philips employees to travel to work, redesigning the appearance to pay homage to a Philips radio. The town centre is littered with ‘design’ shops selling knick knacks of mostly exuberant Dutch pieces, even the street bins were designed by Philippe Starck. A new shopping mall being built looks like amorphic worm crawling out of the ground, but did anyone protest “no this is not true dutch architecture!”? No, because they are prepared to accept the new, and adapt to it.

Somewhere that can produce such successes as Marcel Wanders (Moooi), Richard Hutten, Droog, and most recently Maarten Baas has a lesson worth learning, and I believe that lesson is cultivate. Whether it is on a national, local or business level, the real challenge lies in building a culture which is ready to innovate, implement, and accept new ideas. My hats off to the Dutch! They’ve got balls!

This was posted by new contributor Nick living and interning in Eindhoven, Netherlands.