First thing that stirs up a newcomer in the Netherlands is food vandalism. It is customary for citizens of this small northern country not to handle dishes with kid gloves, even if those are bacon or hot ribs richly seasoned with berry sauce. Therefore anything that a stomach can't accommodate over lunch or dinner gets thrown away by Dutchmen with ease, becuase they believe that remains are unsuitable for tomorrow.

If you spent half a day enjoying chips with mayonnaise, herring, eel and cheese; your imagination managed to find solutions for all the riddles of the universe while waiting for hours in endless queue to the Rijksmuseum; and within a couple of hours you were almost knocked down on the road thrice, it means, no doubt, you were spending that day in Amsterdam.

Destined to be a port, Rotterdam became the most non-Dutch city of the country. It is the only city in the Netherlands headed by Muslim mayor, it is also a home for the largest Caribbean diaspora and even has its own China Town. Innate inhabitants and comers are almost equally numbered here. But if we look seven centuries back, we will see only a modest settlement on the Rotte River protected by dam from floods.