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The Netherlands (view source)

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'''Chandler:''' And the ''other'' Dutch? They come from somewhere near the Netherlands, right?<br />
'''Joey:''' Nice try. See, the Netherlands is this ''make-believe place'' where Peter Pan and Tinkerbell come from.<br />
'''[[Friends]]''', "[[The One With...]] The Football" }}
 
 
The country with Cheese (Gouda, Edam), Delftware, windmills, tulips, clogs, [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|blow-up dolls and cannabis.]]
 
Sometimes called improperly [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/Holland_:Holland (disambiguation) |Holland]] (even by Dutch people), which is only the name of two of the twelve provinces <ref>So people who actually ''live'' in either Noord-Holland or Zuid-Holland are excused</ref>, the Netherlands is a country famous for not only being flat, but in large part below sea level. Fun fact - although the country's name is in plural in English<ref>Also in French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Finnish...</ref>, the Dutch name for it is simply "Nederland", which would translate to "Netherland". The country has engaged in a considerable amount of sea reclamation during the last centuries (spawning the joke that "God made the world, but the Dutch made the Netherlands"), to the point that when ''[[QI]]'' asked "what is the largest man-made structure on Earth" serious consideration was given to accepting The Netherlands as the correct answer.
 
Let's just get it out of the way: most people's idea of the country is that it's a big giant [[Freestate Amsterdam]], where everything is legal. This is far from true (the Netherlands in fact have their own "Bible Belt"), but still, the Netherlands (or "Nederland", singular, as it's known nowadays) is very liberal compared to most other countries. To sum up:
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The present-day Netherlands has a large Muslim population, though the majority of them are the descendants of Turkish and Moroccan guest workers rather than immigrants from the former colonies. Religious and social tensions are almost exclusively focused on Turkish and Moroccan labour immigrants, who were supposed to just stay a few years and help the ailing textile industry. Of course they didn't need to learn the language, since that would only encourage them to stay. The heavy industries are gone but the low-education labour immigrants are still there.
 
The Netherlands also have a "homegrown" linguistic minority in the Province of Frisia (also called West Frisia by foreigners<ref>To make things more complicated, there is actually an area called West Frisia, [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Friesland_%28region%29:West Friesland chr(28)regionchr(29)|that's not in Frisia]]. Try to explain that to the international community.</ref> because East and North Frisia are in Germany). Frisian, which is spoken there and on the North Sea coast and islands of Schleswig-Holstein, is the West Germanic language most closely related to Old English.
 
A founding member of the [[European Union]] and [[NATO]], it is also home to the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the latter also being the origin of the famous Hague Conventions.
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