The insider Wednesday

Sanne van Nistelrooij


The most important difference between Dutch and Spanish people, is how we handle the time. In Spain, the people are very relaxed. They don´t worry about the time and when they go somewhere, it´s normal to be late. When we say in Holland that we´ll be somewhere at 6 o´clock, we are there at 6 o´clock. So that´s a big difference.


In Holland we also like to know what we are going to do and i´ve noticed that Spanish people don´t like planning very much. In the previous days, the Spanish people from the exchange group didn´t know what we were going to do and they decided last minute.


My exchange partner is Cristina. She lives with her parents and sister in Barcelona. She also has a cat. Her parents aren´t from Catalonia originially. They are from Galicia. Every summer they go back to Galicia with the whole family. They are all very nice and take good care of me.


We´ve tried to learn the Spanish students a few Dutch words. Sometimes they can pronounce it correct, but there also are words which are very hard for them to pronounce. I´ve got Spanish at school, so I know a few words. That´s very handy, because now I sometimes can understand what they are talking about when the speak Spanish. Cristina´s parents can´t speak english, but sometimes when her mother asks me something, I don´t need a translation.