From Reporter Issue 100 

IN SEARCH OF SPACE…

Wherever you go in the world you find the Dutch. For centuries they have travelled around the globe and put their mark on the history of many countries from Surinam to Sri Lanka and including my native South Africa. Here on the Côte d’Azur they have a thriving community. How many of them are there? I put this question to Joke Waris-Boekholdt, editor of Holland-Côte d’Azur magazine, the quarterly of the Dutch Club. “It’s never easy to put a figure on any group of expats, as you know, but I’d say that between Menton and Toulon there are about 18,000 of us. About half are full-time residents, others spend a large part of the year here but also live for some of the time in the Netherlands. They’re scattered all over the region but you do get areas of concentration like Lorgues, Seillans, Peymeinade.”

Why do they come? “Well, there are the obvious things that bring everyone else — the Brits, the Swedes and the rest — the weather, the food and wine, that famous Riviera lifestyle. But with us there’s something else — and that’s space. The Netherlands is a very crowded country. Think about it this way: the area of the kingdom — some 32,000 square kilometres — is about the same as that of the PACA. But while the PACA has something over 4 million people, the Netherlands has rather more than 16 million. It’s a squeeze… and you certainly notice the difference when you go back. The traffic jams are awful, the streets are crowded and it’s hard to get away from it all by driving into the country as you can here.”

What do the Dutch do when they get here? “I suppose the profile of our community is much like that of other nationalities. It used to be mainly retirees and still a lot of older people come. They look at the possibilities — Spain, Portugal and France, mainly — and they choose France, either here or the West of the country. It’s a good place to spend a long and happy retirement. Actually, last year we lost our oldest member. That was Hugo Verkuyl, a former diplomat who died aged 104. It’s also a very convenient place to be. Nice airport has excellent connections to Amsterdam and you can even fly direct to Rotterdam. It’s easy to visit your friends and family and they can come here without it being a great effort. There’s a lot of to- and fro-ing.”

But, I’ve noticed, not all the Dutch are older people. “These days certainly not. A sizeable number are here to work. That’s not an entirely new thing. Richard Rinck came here over fifty years ago. He started as a florist, then tried chicken-farming before going into the travel business where he’s made his name. Some of the Dutch advertisers in your magazine have been here for quite a while like Kick de Vries, the insurer, and Ralph Ras, the garden specialist. But there are new people coming all the time. Just in the past few months I’ve come across Patrick Schippers, a young electrician who’s settled in Opio with his family, and Réné and Amanda Bos who’ve opened a hotel in Les Adrets. Then you find the Dutch employed in all sorts of fields from banking to the yacht business and there’s quite a number working up in Sophia Antipolis.”

Are the Dutch an organised community? “I’d say so but there’s one thing they don’t have: a church. The Brits and Scandinavians use their churches partly as social centres. We don’t have that and I suppose that reflects the situation in the Netherlands where a lot of people don’t go to church anymore. Those living here who want religion go to the French churches or to the British. But our social focus is the Nederlandse Club which goes back a very long way. At the moment we’ve got nearly 2000 active members. We’ve got a varied programme — everything from bridge and bowls to outings, lectures and general get-togethers. We keep in touch through our magazine and that’s varied, too. We cover a lot of topics… computers and cooking, books and gardens… and tax problems. There are some high points in our year: Queen’s Day on April 30th and there’s our Christmas fair and our big New Year’s party when a lot of people turn out to catch up with their friends.”

Sometimes expats lose something of their national identity. Is this true of the Dutch? “I’d say not. We’re from a small country speaking a minority language. We have to be international and we are. Many of us have three or four languages but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about our country, our culture, our language. There’s a lot of watching Dutch television on satellite and — at another level — we’ve got a school on Saturdays and Wednesdays for the children. What I have to say — and I imagine it’s true of other expats — is that we’re not always happy with what’s going on in our home country. Crime, drugs, racial problems, business scandals, even Royal scandals, and then there was the murder not so long ago of right-wing politician Pim Fortuyn and that shocked a lot of us. At the same time we’re proud to be Dutch and of Dutch achievements. A lot of us care about KLM, for example — flying now for over 80 years — and after that recent merger with Air France many of us felt like Pieter van der Maat, one of our television newscasters, who said the night it was announced that ‘The pride of the nation has been hurt.’ Exactly so.”

Leaving aside things like weather and wine are the Dutch happy living in France? “Of course — otherwise they wouldn’t stay, but there’s a downside, inevitably. A lot of bureaucracy — but the Dutch aren’t exactly amateurs in that field themselves. To be brutally frank there’s another thing some of us notice. People aren’t quite as reliable as we’d like. You get it with tradesmen and artisans. They give you their word but don’t always keep it. It’s a cultural thing, I suppose, and you have to get used to it. I’m annoyed when the plumber who says he’ll come on Friday at half past three doesn’t show up but calls on Saturday to tell you he’ll be by on Monday at ten. But I can work off my frustration by going for a long walk by myself in the countryside around Peymeinade. That would be hard to do back home.”

Dutch Club - 04 92 97 12 98

© Cressida van Zyl-Pithey 

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