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Michelle is Home!!!

Welcome!

This is the home page for The Holland Ring which I started October, 1997.

The Holland Ring is a hobby... I started it to promote Web sites of all Dutch people, but mainly to connect those Dutch who, like me, are living abroad and like to stay in touch with *home*. I also wanted the Holland Ring to be an useful site with information for those who like to know/learn more about The Netherlands.
The Holland Ring is in English in order to reach as big an audience as possible and is called 'Holland' -ring because at that time 'The Netherlands' -ring was allready being used by someone else :-)

Please remember, this is a hobby and I am in NO way an expert on The Netherlands or on immigration! For questions about immigration, please contact the embassy of the country you are interested in. To find out how you can move to The Netherlands... you will need to contact The Dutch Embassy in your country for that!

Please Read:
As much as I like to help, I can not answer all your e-mails... It's not my intention to be rude, I just don't have enough hours in the day :-)
Please do not e-mail me with genealogy questions, address/people searches, or about immigrating to or from The Netherlands! Check out my Immigrating/Remigrating Page, or place your questions on the forum!
There's no membership needed to browse through The Holland Ring, but due to lots of spam you will need to become a member with the forum if you want to use it.

Did you know...

That centuries ago the North-West of the Netherlands was covered with trees... That's where the name Holland comes from; "holt-land", which means woodland.

That The Netherlands occupies an area of 41,160 square kilometres and is home to 16+ million people. Partly reclaimed from the waters of the North Sea, it is Europe’s most densely populated country.

That the Netherlands is one of the European Union's most dynamic centres of trade and industry. Dutch economy ranks sixth in the European Union and fifteenth in the world. The port of Rotterdam is the biggest port in Europe. Amsterdam Schiphol international airport is the fourth biggest cargo-handling airport in Europe. That is why the Netherlands is often called the Gateway to Europe.

That with only 0.008% of the world's area, the Netherlands is the world's third largest agricultural exporter after the USA and France!

That the Dutch are the tallest people in Europe.

That both its people and their language are known to English-speakers as Dutch, a name derived from the old language named Diets. The old low-frankish dialects were very familiar to the 'low-german' dialects that were spoken in the most parts of northern Europe. Together they were referred to as 'nederduits' (low-german) and the language in the area of the low countries was called 'diets', which explains the name 'Dutch' in English.

That nearly a quarter of its surface area is below sea level. The lowest point in the Netherlands, near Rotterdam, is 6.7 metres below sea level. Its highest point, the Vaalserberg, is 312 metres above sea level. The Vaalserberg is in the southeast of the country, where the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet.

That in the entrance lobby of the new town hall in Amsterdam there is a glass pillar filled with water. The level of the water rises and falls according to the rise and fall of the tide. At low tide the water level falls below ground; at high tide it rises to almost 7 feet above ground. This is to say, were it not for the sea wall and the city's defenses against the elements, Amsterdam would be swamped by the waters of the North Sea twice a day.

That the name 'Netherland' is derived from the Dutch word 'neder' meaning 'low', and the term Low Countries is used collectively for Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, a reference to the low-lying nature of the land.

That practically the entire west and low north of the country consists of polders: drained land which is mainly surrounded by dikes, within which groundwater levels can be controlled. There are some 5.000 polders in all. The largest polders are the result of the Zuyderzee works. Since 1920 - when the decision to carry out the works was taken - these have resulted in the inland sea (Zuyder Zee or Zuiderzee) becoming a lake (the IJsselmeer) and a gain of 1.650 square km of land.

That a second major project in the Netherlands' fight against the water is the Delta project. The construction of the Delta works (Delta Werken) started after a devastating storm surge hit the low-lying polders of the southwest Netherlands on 1. February 1953, killing more than 1.800 people and flooding large areas of land.

... and that the supposedly Dutch story, known as the legend of Hans Brinker - who supposedly put his finger in the dike to prevent a flood, was actually a literary invention by the American writer Mary Elizabeth Mapes Dodge (1831-1905), who was born in New York.