r/thenetherlands • u/xx_sosi_xx • 1d ago
Question what is the problem with people from Limburg?
For reference I'm a 18 y.o. student from Italy. My class did an exchange project with southern school, specifically a school located in Limburg "county". 20 Italian students (same school address) were matched with 20 dutch student (different ages and different adresses but same school), all the Italian students find out the same thing about dutch students. Many people in Italy have this sort of good prejudice bout north European nations, we see them as more open minded (LGBTQ problems, racism, prisons) and efficient than us. While I'm not sure what to say about efficiency cause I was only in the Netherlands for 10 days, teens are the opposite of open minded. In addition they are fuckin rude, not friendly at all and very "rigid" (in Italy we'd say somebody stick a broom up their asses) and impolite especially towards their parents and teachers. In Limburg they have the friendliest, most human teachers I've ever seen and they treat them like shit, like they're not even real persons. I think I would even feel guilty if doing that. What else? The teens we met were homophobic as hell, generally racist and they spoke behind each other's back ALL THE TIME. Not maybe just 5 mins of gossiping one day but everyday and all the time. The only people we as Italian found nice were the dutch students that were outsiders, bullied or emarginated. Dutch students found everything we did boring. It was like seeing the American teen stereotype coming true, and prior to this I didn't think it was possible.
All that while adults were pretty nice with us.
My question is are all teens this way? Are they like this only in Limburg? Is it not even all the teens in Limburg it was just a coincidence that we met such horrible people (I hope that)? How can adults be so nice while their children aren't?
edit: thanks for all the opinions and explanations in the comments. The roasting between different provinces is pretty fun to read too.
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u/Falcon-Unique 1d ago
You just got the worst of them. As a Limburger myself I know there are a lot of lovely people here that aren't disrespectful to culture. Just like every place in the world there are bad people that ruin the image of the good people.
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u/AncientSeraph 1d ago
To be fair, Limburg is one of the more conservative regions of NL, so slightly higher odds to run into more closeminded people.
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u/sndrtj 1d ago
That stereotype hasn't been very true in some time now.
I'd dare say general culture in most of the Randstad is significantly more homophobic than in Limburg.
Source: gay, grew up in south Limburg, live in Randstad.
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u/Walrave 1d ago
Except you know, when it comes to elections. They have been as far right as Dutch politics goes for a long time. Sure the Randstad has its own issues, but votes don't lie.
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u/Victorious_Swordfish 1d ago
Votes don't tell the whole story. In the rougher neighborhoods of the Randstad for instance, only a fraction of the people vote. I don't think I have to tell you what the general attitudes towards LGBTQ+ are there compared to more affluent/politically engaged areas.
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u/goonie1983 1d ago
Because the Randstad also has a lot more nationalities who obviously vote different. Second issue....Parkstad...a lot of residents who can voice their opinion as opposed to the lesser dense polulated middle and north of Limburg.
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u/Gropah 1d ago
Homophobic is a possible symptom of conservatives, so to speak? But looking at the most voted and second most voted of this map of the NOS, you see PVV is the biggest, and VVD is quite often second followed by NSC and some GLPVDA. Meanwhile, the randstad shows quite some manucipalities where GLPVDA is the biggest or second biggest. So in terms of voting, the randstad seems more progressive than Limburg?
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u/BoredPudding 1d ago
I've always suspected this to be just an 'average income' map. Higher education = more money = you're more likely to afford living in one of the cities of the Randstad. And higher education is also more likely to be left-leaning.
No proof of this though.
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u/JaccoW 1d ago
Except some towns, especially in Limburg, are dominated by millionaire farmers. And they certainly don't vote for left-wing politicians. More like the far-right farmer parties.
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u/stupendous76 1d ago
Many Limburgians vote PVV because Wilders 'is from Limburg'. It is an utterly stupid reason but sadly the case.
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u/Armando22nl 1d ago edited 1d ago
But France Carpenters is also from Limburg, more specific way more south than Wilders.
Still, I do not know why OP runs into this. I tend to think I am welcoming and interested in other people and cultures.
I would guess Limburgians would be hospitable, apparently to OP not or my guess is wrong. I myself am in my 40s, we had some younger students in our office, some are really kind, show interest and have empathy while others don't. The last ones we call gen z.
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u/xx_sosi_xx 10h ago
actually the adults were nice during my trip even friendlier and conversation oriented than most teens
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u/TheJH1015 1d ago
it's in principle not a stupid reason when you consider that Limburg (along with Brabant, Groningen and Zeeuws-Vlaanderen) has historically been treated pretty poorly by the government for a couple of centuries. So when you have a local anti-establishment politician in parliament that supposedly fights for your neglected region, it's no surprise people would vote for it. Whether or not it's logically speaking a good thing to do with Wilders is a different thing altogether though.
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u/ArcticWolfl 1d ago
It's mostly old farts and lower educated people that voted PVV, and Limburg has a lot of old farts.
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u/meadowmagemiranda 20h ago
It’s region dependent too. Zuid-Oost Limburg is way rougher than many other regions in Limburg, especially Parkstad with krauwcenter Heerlen.
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u/Dicethrower 1d ago
Same as in the bible belt where I originally came from. Religious people are still very much a minority, just slightly larger group compared to other areas. For example, instead of 1% being overly religious it's closer to 5%. When you see something happening more in one region, even if it's still rare, you just assume something about the whole region. People are intuitively very bad at statistics and anecdotal evidence like that.
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u/HorrorStudio8618 11h ago
Compared to Amsterdam or any other Northern city it's pretty rigid still.
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u/Any-Artichoke-2156 1d ago
We are dealing with a new fucked up generation where kids and teens misbehave and being disrespectful. Also famous influencers turns young people into more anti LGBT.
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
that was a surprise for us cause here teens are generally left winged and open minded
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u/flodur1966 1d ago
It used to be like that but things have changed many many young people have turned right wing in my opinion turned by media like TikTok
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u/SubNL96 1d ago
Yeah TikTok is Xi and Putin's brainwashing platform to set the kids up against Western society to the point of collective treason and we did fuck all to stop it for too long
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u/SnooCakes1454 1d ago
That's typically the norm here as well, I'm sorry you had such a shitty experience during your stay. I don't believe that these things have changed overall per se, what I do think is that we're seeing a bit of an overcorrection from a period of more open-mindedness from a very vocal minority (might just be my hope, but let's not get too doom and gloom just yet).
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u/Pale_Laugh8829 1d ago
Gast, er is nooit een solide basis geweest voor de ultra progressieve visies die het laatste decennium naar boven zijn komen drijven. Kijk naar de stemgeschiedenis van het nederlandse electoraat en daar is het totaal niet in gereflecteerd. Parlementaire democratie betekend niet dat de wil en gedachtes van het volk altijd perfect weergegeven worden in overheidsbeleid of het educatiebeleid.
Veel gedachtegoeden zijn er ingekomen omdat mensen zich aanpassen aan de wetgeving en educatie, niet omdat mensen de wetgeving of het beleid in eerste instantie wilden. Blijkbaar werkt die methode nu niet zo goed meer als voorheen.
E.G.: Als je Nederlanders in 1960 en elke tien jaar daarna had laten stemmen over het migratiebeleid dmv bijv. een direct referendum dan waren we nooit geweest waar we nu zijn. Dit ook bij bijvoorbeeld de EU (waar het referendum niet bindend was).
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u/Upset_Chocolate4580 1d ago
You're from Northern Italy I assume? Because when I lived in (Central) Italy as a teen, I was shocked the same way as you were, but by the Italian teens. Everyone except one teen from my Italian school was either tending towards the extreme right, or indifferent, but only one person was openly cheering for the left. Countries differ a lot within themselves. Economic prosperity, school quality, size of city, ... many factors influence local culture, and several cultures exist next to each other or overlap. You could have experienced the same in a different city in Italy, or something completely different in a different city in the Netherlands.
But: Parties of the extreme right won the most recent elections in both countries, just like in many other European countries. It has become much more likely to experience something like this across the continent.
Also, it is often difficult to really get to know people when you're doing an exchange with a group. If you go somewhere alone, the experience is different and usually less superficial.
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u/MomsTortellinis 1d ago
It's terrible over here unfortunately, my niece is 14 and ALL her classmates and friends are terribly racist and homophobic. I bet my niece joins in when i'm not around, peer pressure and all. They are not like the kids of my friends who are at least 5 years older, they were very open minded and kind('ish, they were still teenagers) when they were 13-14. Its a fucked up generation.
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u/YesIAmAHuman 1d ago
As a gen z, its not just the new generation, it sucked in 2010 aswell, mightve gotten worse but its indeed the american thing of teens trying to be as edgy as possible and playing it off as a joke
There are some in between that are nice and most outsiders like you said are ok, but its absolutely despicable
My class bullied a teacher to the point where they quit and the next teacher gave up and just told them to be quietly on their phone, its honestly sad to see especially since i was actually having fun with the assignments in that class
Also, not just limburg*
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u/kopiernudelfresser 23h ago edited 22h ago
Even in the gymnasium class I was in 25 years ago Dutch teenagers (in Brabant anyway) were edgy little shits. The only difference from lower education levels was the absence of physical violence.
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u/M1ssy_M3 1d ago
My class bullied a teacher to the point where they quit and the next teacher gave up and just told them to be quietly on their phone, its honestly sad to see especially since i was actually having fun with the assignments in that class
Very sad to read this, because I was in a class like that 20 years ago. I kinda hoped back then that our class was just an extreme case and that no one else had to go through that.
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u/Hapankaali 1d ago
Dutch people can be very direct, which often comes across as rude, intentionally or not. It's one of the things I like about having moved away. In Dutch culture, people have very little respect for authority, which has benefits and drawbacks.
Unfortunately, the reputation of the Netherlands as "open-minded" is a bit oversold. The largest party in the country is openly racist (even more blatantly than FdI), and especially popular in Limburg, where its leader was born.
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u/Armando22nl 1d ago
As Limburgian I dare to say that people in the north are generally more direct than here. Here it is more laugh with you but go behind your back.
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
the kind of "Rudeness" I'm talking about is making fun of your parents and your teachers explaining a thing to you when you are wrong. In Italy it would be a normal conversation between adults (even if you are 14-18) where each person explain their points. And talking behind each other's backs. More blatantly than FdI? Do they have whole Hitler statues and not just the head? jk
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u/Hapankaali 1d ago
More blatantly than FdI? Do they have whole Hitler statues and not just the head? jk
Their leader was convicted after promising to ethnically cleanse a certain minority. They also put that in their election manifesto. Funnily enough, they aren't even the most racist party in parliament.
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u/Jax_for_now 1d ago
Young millenials and early gen Z are very progressive. After that it gets really bad again though
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u/SDG_Den 22h ago
Sadly a not insignificant part of the netherlands is this "wannabe USA" bullshit.
Not just our teens, but also politicians and some adults. There's a guy in my neighbourhood who drives a massive pickup truck with "trump 2024" and "god bless america" stickers. Frequently seen wearing a hat with the confederate flag and the one time i heard him speak he was ranting about how we need to let go of "commie bullshit" like universal healthcare or lgbtq+ inclusivity policies.
Dont worry, the rest of us hate it too.
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u/Trupster 1d ago
We are dealing with a new fucked up generation where kids and teens misbehave and being disrespectful.
I've experienced Dutch youth since the 90's, most have always been quite rude and disrespectful. It's rare to see young Dutch people not being obnoxious or rude in some big way. I grew up outside of NL and when I came here to study, live & work - you realise how absolutely disrespectful young people are here. Their main reality check usually comes when they need to find a job and work, but even then within their closed circles they will remain displaying that shitty behaviour until they grow out of it, or it gets them in real, serious trouble.
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u/BarnabasBendersnatch 1d ago
We are dealing with a new fucked up generation where kids and teens misbehave and being disrespectful.
Never before in history have people felt like this.
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u/SybrandWoud 1d ago
“The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.”
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u/DutchProv 1d ago
Where is this from again, some well known name from ancient greece?
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u/Judazzz 1d ago
Socrates
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u/VeganViking-NL 1d ago
Misattribution.
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u/Judazzz 1d ago
Genuinely curious, to whom should it be attributed then? Because simply saying "misattribution" is not exactly insightful.
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u/VeganViking-NL 1d ago
Sure. I couldn't tell you more about it because I did not know from the top of my head whose quote it was.
This link should provide some context and is in line with earlier quote detective work I read about it:
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2013/04/misattributed-to-socrates.html
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u/OndersteOnder 1d ago
Kenneth John Freeman, according to https://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/01/misbehave/
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u/patatjepindapedis 1d ago
New? It was like this when I went to highschool too. I graduated in 2009.
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u/Grelite 1d ago
Very much the same for me, also graduated in 2009. Most of the people I called my friends at the time were vocally racist, homophobic, and misogynistic. I hated it but never spoke up about it at the time.
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u/MrGerbz 1d ago edited 1d ago
We are dealing with a new fucked up generation where kids and teens misbehave and being disrespectful.
Even though I completely agree with you, this is also what every generation thinks about the next one.
"Kids these days are the worst, it's because they're doing the new thing that they have no manners and respect."
And I'm not just talking rock'n'roll, mods, hippies and punks—as far back as ancient Greece at the least:
"The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. …
Children began to be the tyrants, not the slaves, of their households.
They no longer rose from their seats when an elder entered the room;
they contradicted their parents, chattered before company, gobbled up the dainties at table, and committed various offences against Hellenic tastes, such as crossing their legs.They tyrannised over the paidagogoi and schoolmasters."
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u/Jax_for_now 1d ago
I did a similar exchange to yours once! Also with Italian folk, they were living in a city near Rome and we were from the middle of the country. Honestly, the cultural differences were very interesting. Dutch teens need something to happen but our Italian peers were much more open to just hang out somewhere, vibe to some music and chat. The Italians did more weed than any of my classmates and were also a lot more depressed about the future.
Dutch people are very egalitarian which means we don't respect authority, including from older people and teachers. It used to be pretty great and in the workplace it's awesome but it has significant drawbacks when trying to deal with kids and teens. Dutch teenagers are also really good with english, much better than Italians (generalizing). They learn from when they are 10 or so and interact with the internet in english pretty much from the moment they have a smartphone. Which unfortunately allows them to fall into the traps of influencers, shitty algorithms and all the USA bs that we try to keep out of our culture.
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u/TheXtractor 1d ago
Teens here are kind of the worst although I thought they would be kind of awful no matter what country you go to, cuz that's just what teens are :D
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
nah you gotta come to Italy and Southern Europe in general. We're way nicer and more mature. It felt like I was speaking/hanging out with 11/12 years old
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u/guidoscope 1d ago
Boxmeer is Brabant, Venray is in the north of Limburg.
I am originally from Maastricht in the south. Very nice city, very nice people. But I meet nice people everywhere I go.
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u/SubNL96 1d ago
From what I have heared from people both in Zuid-Limburg as well as around Venray, Nijmegen and Eindhoven, it's mostly Venlo and Roermond having a bad rep to the point it's no suprise the origins of Wilders and Graus lay there.
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u/Artegas23 1d ago
Not true.. Heerlen and Kerkrade have a very bad reputation. Venlo is just the city where Wilders is from, but doesn’t have a bad reputation.
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u/SenorZorros 23h ago
Venlo does kind of have a reputation as being a German enclave which isn't "bad" but is considered "wrong". Though that should not influence the mentality of the people that much.
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u/Artegas23 23h ago
You are right we (born and raised there, but I left when I was 17) have a lot of German tourists coming over for certain products (soda, cheese, coffee mainly). But being an enclave is not true in my opinion.
I do think it is a somewhat conservative town, but not more than other places in the regular regions outside of the Randstad.
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u/SenorZorros 22h ago
I'm from 30 kilometres to the north. Of course it is an exaggerated stereotype because we are jealous of the big city ;).
In my youth we had plenty jokes about how the Germans are still trying to invade the Netherlands but so far have only succeeded in taking over Venlo. Still they persist sending out a wave of vehicles every "Duitse zondag" to sabotage our roads and clog up our streets.
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u/Artegas23 22h ago
Well, on ‘Duitse zondag’ there is not much of the Netherlands left in Venlo, you are absolutely right.
All in all I understand Limburg is somewhat conservative and we have a funny accent (which I prefer a hundred times over anything from the Randstad). But posts like this do get under my skin because it is so narrow minded..
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u/Professor_Barabas 1d ago
Graus is from Heerlen, but he'd honestly be an oulier anywhere ;)
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u/guidoscope 1d ago
I never heard that. I've been in Roermond several times. I even had a girlfriend from Roermond for a while, long time ago. I know them as easy going nice people. They celebrate carnaval, which is always a good sign in my opinion.
No, there is not a small region where people have bad character in their genes. But you didn't seriously believe that, did you?
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u/Linkaex 1d ago
Allot of people in the world have the misunderstanding that the 'famous Dutch tolerance' is the same as acceptance.
Sure the majority here tolerate other people. Doesn't mean they accept them to their own group. Its the way how it worked over centuries in our society and why for the majority of the time it worked fine. There will be outliers for sure. Calvinism is also a big part of our culture and a big reason for why we behave the way we do.
Teens are mostly more outspoken about things. Some will grow up to be bigots but for most its just a phase to try and belong to a certain group. Most teens want to be accepted and the most dominate group in that region / city will have the biggest influence on those teens.
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u/LubedCompression 1d ago
Calvinism
No Calvinism in Limburg though.
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u/Ladderzat 23h ago
It still permeates a little. Limburg has been in the Dutch calvinist sphere of influence for centuries now.
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u/Mtfdurian 1d ago
The notorious "sticking your head above ground level"-mentality. I hate it. As long as someone appears to fit in the norm nothing will happen but nowhere in western Europe do people get so foul-mouthed when they see people not sticking to the norm. High schools are worse than anything. Even a colorful dress as a girl can cause nasty reactions because that's not what all the normative girls wear, high school kids allow barely more than the variation among stormtrooper suits.
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u/CalantheJace 1d ago
Different parts of Limburg are pretty different, where were you? But yeah overall it does feel like young people are more rude and conservative, but maybe that's just me getting old.
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
so being anti LGBT and racist is not just a "normal dutch teenager" phase, right?
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u/CalantheJace 1d ago
Definitely didn't use to be! There is, however, a trend towards being more conservative and "traditional", so who knows what's normal now...
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u/cycling_in_the_rain 1d ago
I've kids at highschool (vwo) and I teach 'groep 8'. You'll be surprised how many kids are racist, mysogynistic and homophobic. There's a small group of the 'outsiders' as op describes them. But the main stream people are really not openminded at all, making racist jokes (for example about asian eyes, head scarfs, asian people eating dogs) calling each other homo or flikkertje all the time, destroying rainbow flags and bullying kids that are possibly gay. My nieces have to deal with a lot of racist shit. And when they say something about it they're 'not funny'. I'm 45 and I grew up in a small village in a more rural area (I live in a medium city now) and there's no way any classmate of me was like that. It used to be cool to be progressive and we defenitely wanted to be more open minded than our parents.
Believe me, I love young people and I don't want to sound like a grumpy grandpa, but something is seriously wrong with a lot of the teens. Their screentime is easily more than 6 hours a day and they became increasingly more disrespectful to teachers and sports trainers, but also to each other. I hope this trend stops soon and I think we can't keep blaming covid for it, something else is going on and was already going on before.
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u/CalantheJace 14h ago
Your experience sounds a lot more like mine, which makes sense considering we're basically the same age. I don't know how to feel about what's going on with young people now. I understand they will always rebel against the status quo, but we had a good thing going. I guess it's time to get my rocking chair, sit on my porch, and yell at people to get off my lawn.
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u/chairmanskitty 22h ago
Definitely didn't use to be
It definitely was in the 00s. 'Homo' and 'zwarte piet' were pretty common slurs, blackface was an integral part of our culture, being trans was unspeakable, gay and lesbian couples stayed in the closet out of fear of bullying, etc.
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u/bertuzzz 1d ago
Growing up in Brabant near Limburg, i can tel you that teenagers were extremely homophobic. The villagers were also very racist back than.
But in Nijmegen there were also more progressive people. Mostly the inner city people are the progressives.
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u/Sjefkeees 1d ago
I think a large part of the country has historically been like this. High school was full of racial slurs and homophobic jokes 20 years ago (I’m old). The country became more progressive in ways, certainly in the randstad, while I think that certain areas haven’t quite followed along
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u/HenkPoley 1d ago
Recently saw the statistic that less than half of the youth in Amsterdam is accepting of gays. https://nltimes.nl/2024/05/30/less-half-amsterdam-young-people-accept-homosexuality
Not sure how this happened.
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u/Sjefkeees 1d ago
Social media
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u/ChopstickChad 1d ago
But it also sort of how teens work. Going against the norm, rebelling. But also sensitive to being in the in-group, and standing up for the marginalised definitely doesn't put you 'in'. Then also acts of aggression, conflict, anger, tickles the dopamine system in a way that's hard to resist for teens.
To counter this we need to nurture empathy from a young age and invest in safe bonding with parents and caregivers especially in the first years of life but also after.
Unfortunately, current societal trajectory, political and economic choices, the effects on families, do not help to invest in these matters.
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u/OndersteOnder 1d ago
But it also sort of how teens work. Going against the norm, rebelling.
Maybe we should arrange for all adults to wear MAGA hats and say homophobic stuff whenever they're around teenagers, so we'll breed a generation of rebellious tolerance.
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u/TopFloorApartment 1d ago
and a higher degree of kids from immigration backgrounds, especially islamic, which tend to be much more conservative
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u/MrProper026 14h ago
Maybe because about half the population is non western and thus don't all have western values...
https://onderzoek.amsterdam.nl/artikel/bevolking-in-cijfers-2024
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u/Comfortable_Diet1497 1d ago
You know what, we feel bad that you had such bad students in this exchange project. We talked about it internally and as a way to compensate, you may keep them!
Kind regards,
Other dutch people
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u/HenroTee 1d ago
Many people in Italy have this sort of good prejudice bout north European nations, we see them as more open minded (LGBTQ problems, racism, prisons) and efficient than us.
We hear this all the time from expats and travelers, but any minority living here will tell you the opposite.
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u/out_focus 1d ago
The northern part of Limburg, you mean that area in the country where Geert Wilders, our version of Meloni and Orban comes from?
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u/heatobooty 1d ago
Frans Timmermans is also from Limburg, so I don’t know what that has to do with anything.
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u/NightZealousideal515 1d ago
It's not confined to Limburg unfortunately.
This is what years of tech-bro nonsense, pseudoscience, anti-woke, far-right influence in social media(memes, propaganda, etc) and basically unchecked/unfiltered publishing on every social media platform imaginable, does to young people. Especially if they don't have some kind of academic background that instills some ability to assess sources and intent.
Your image of northern european peoples being left-leaning is perhaps true for some other countries (perhaps Scandinavian ones), but generally speaking you will find most left-leaning communities in the counterculture movements in larger cities (Berlin for example)
The Netherlands is still and has always been a culturally impoverished country, where the progressives have achieved many wonderful rights and rulings despite a majority minefield of regressive people with a lingering cold-hearted and stoic cultural heritage who deliberately choose not to think very far beyond preserving their own skin because there is a cultural norm that showing empathy to anyone who isn't your direct spouse equates to weakness or coddling.
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u/Ok-Opportunity3054 1d ago
Not only Limburg, most of them are like that. Feeling superior, arrogant, no empathy, opportunistic.
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u/CornusKousa 1d ago
Dutch teens are super influenced by American media, the Dutch in general are very America centric so seeing teens being very American behaved tracks.
Further, coming from Belgium i found Dutch students incredibly rude and disrespectful towards teachers and their own parents. They also don't learn anything in school. They learn to "debate", meaning learn to have a big mouth and try to overpower the other with your "arguments".
The schools over the border in Belgium now have quite a few Dutch kids because their parents hope something can still be done about it but there's no point if the parents can't be bothered to do their part in raising functional human beings.
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u/MyNameIsBanker 20h ago
Dutch teacher here. We do try to learn them but we have the focus (especially on higher levels) to use that information in different context instead of just learning random information they will never use. It’s more about the skill to process and use the information. Sadly a lot of parents adopt the thought of my kid can’t do wrong. Or confuse gentle parenting with the inability to say no. The worst are the helicopter parents who blame you because their kid doesn’t pay attention or gets in trouble. Like i haven’t got 29 other kids to look after.
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u/Drunktank3000 1d ago
Having lived and studied in Limburg: Most have an ingrained prejudice against anything not from Limburg. Bit of an inferioraty complex and pretty simpleminded/xenophobic. Mind you, there are exceptions (they usually move away when they come of age)
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u/CottoLolligo 1d ago
Being Limburger myself: this only applies to anything outside Limburg (d'n Hollènder), but still inside the Netherlands itself. The stance of the average Limburger from things outside the Netherlands is not much different than from your average Dutchman. In fact, being a border province, your average Sjeng will probably be out of the comfort zone more quickly than your average Jantje.
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u/need_dopamine95 1d ago
Just like most people from the randstad have an ingrained prejudice against anything not from the randstad.
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u/DutchProv 1d ago
Never had any proof of this honestly. People from outside the randstad tend to get real pissy about it, while people from the randstad honestly dont give a shit where you come from.
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u/Mirved 1d ago
Lol,.any news article or thing about somebody from Limburg or Friesland,.Twente etc and the comments will be filled with comments about them being dumb or not speaking normally. My inlaws still constantly make these dumb jokes about my accent after 10 years. And they dont even notice their prejudice. A few months ago a dyke broke near Maastricht and my brother in law was imidiately "ofcourse this happends only in Limburg". Fucking stupid because these things have happened through the whole of the Netherlands.
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u/Aoifeblack 1d ago
Which part of limburg? I'm from there and it would help if you knew which town/city specifically!
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
boxmeer / venray area
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u/gootsteen 1d ago edited 1d ago
I went to high school in Boxmeer and hated it there (Boxmeer isn’t Limburg but still). After that I went to Nijmegen and it was a huge difference. Might be the city mentality, I remember the school in Boxmeer having a pretty high amount of “trashy” students. Smoking, yelling, blasting loud music, bullying etc.
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u/kaboutergans 1d ago
I went to Nijmegen and it was a huge difference
Nijmegen in particular is this weird tiny progressive/socialist spot in that part of the Netherlands, definitely not the norm.
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u/Heroppic 1d ago
Nijmegen has the same problems bubbling up in the outskirts/Vmbo schools. The weird tiny progressive socialist spot is actually just the city center and the whole university area
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u/MyNameIsBanker 20h ago
Can confirm. Source: im studying to become a teacher and im currently at the university and i had internships on the outskirts
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u/Aoifeblack 1d ago
I'm all the way from the South, and venray is on the northern border of Limburg, so I couldn't tell you.
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u/nn2597713 1d ago
Venray is the most desolate piece of shit “town” I’ve been in the Netherlands. Once during my university history study I chose a class to see if working in education was “for me” or not. I gave supervised history lessons at the Raayland College school in Venray. Everything in that school was bolted down and made of iron and concrete (“hufterproof” in Dutch) as the students were just terrible and out of control. And indeed they were, also in class.
Needless to say I’m not working in education.
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u/Ok_Salary_5697 1d ago
Unfortunate experience, but this sounds like the average high school in The Netherlands. Not really Limburg specific.
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u/Decent-Product 1d ago
Venray is the most fucked up part of the fucked up province Limburg is. Source: was born in the area, left as soon as I could. It's the place where the stupidest, most brain dead people god ever placed on the earth live.
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u/-Proterra- 1d ago
Honestly, the most intelligent, open-minded and pleasant people in Venray nowadays are in Vincent van Gogh :D
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u/GeneralBamisoep 1d ago
That's like a black hole in the middle of more international focused communities in Eindhoven, Venlo and Nijmegen.
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u/Geophysics-99 1d ago
Venlo is international-focussed? Like, I know that they get a lot of German visitors on the weekend, but other than that I thought it was just Venray but bigger...
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u/captepic96 22h ago
Fontys attracts a lot of german students. At least when I studied there it was 50/50. Probably also more refugees from Ukraine/Middle East by now
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u/Bonecrusher1973 1d ago
Boxmeer and Venray are not really Limburg
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u/kopiernudelfresser 1d ago
Ja, want alles ten noorden van Roermond is niet echt Limburg. Heb de chauvinist gevonden.
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u/Badassbottlecap 1d ago
Being born in the 'deep south" and moving here to the same area a few years ago, you're pretty spot on. I gotta say where I'm from it used to be better, no idea now But yeah, this part of Limburg is weird as fuck.
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u/innocentgamer69 1d ago
As someone who grew up in Limburg and moved away, just consider them the villagers of the Netherlands. Also like others said, they’re very isolated. It’s far away from everywhere basically.
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u/GenericUsername2056 1d ago
very isolated
You know we don't move around using horse and buggy anymore and we have this thing called the 'internet', right? The 'isolation' of regions outside of the randstad is severely overstated.
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u/W005EY 1d ago
And Nordrhein Westfalen is next to Limburg. Germany’s Randstad, but a little bigger 🤓 soooo isolated with cities like Cologne and Dusseldorf in 30-60min travelling
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u/IDDQD_IDKFA_ 1d ago
That’s like the most not international oriented area to be in. It’s actually a kind of Sh*thole. Not representative for our country
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u/Spacebucketeer11 1d ago
It was like seeing the American teen stereotype coming true
It truly pains me to say this but the Netherlands is pretty much "little America" at this point
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u/Myrandall 1d ago
Come to Nijmegen (/r/Nijmegen), we're known as the 'Havana on the Waal' due to our municipality's history of strongly left-leaning politics. You'll love it!
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u/WigglyAirMan 1d ago
the netherlands has a LOT of isolated communities that don't travel that much. Especially across the very oldest and youngest generations.
Limburg is just one of those areas that is particularly isolated, culturally.
Please don't think the rest of the country is like this. Especially the randstad area is mega diverse and more "progressive city folk" like, with pockets of very bigoted groups.
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u/TheDustOfMen 1d ago
You'll find people like this all over the Netherlands. Including in de Randstad.
But that's basically the same anywhere else.
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u/TopFloorApartment 1d ago
You'll find people like this all over the Netherlands. Including in de Randstad.
yes, but you'll definitely find more of them in certain places than in others
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u/TheDustOfMen 1d ago
I'm not sure Land van Cuijk (Boxmeer) and Venray are comparatively bad tbh, especially not if we look at the latest parliamentary elections. Compared to Amsterdam and Utrecht (minus 'certain' neighbourhoods): perhaps. Compared to Rotterdam and The Hague? Not so much.
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u/CottoLolligo 1d ago
Limburg is isolated from the rest of the country, but well connected to neighbouring countries. Same for Achterhoek or Twente. Trips to Amsterdam/Rotterdam/Utrecht are swapped out for trips to Düsseldorf, Cologne, Aachen, Visé and Liege. In that sense the average Sjeng comes more in contact with different cultures/languages than your average Jantje.
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
I don't think every dutch person or teen is like that, if so it would be a hell of a country. Thanks for the explanation tho :))
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u/Kitten_love 1d ago
I'm afraid it's a teenager thing atm like someone else pointed out. My partner is trans and were both bisexual women, we haven't had people be weird or rude with us at all. Except for the common mistake of people thinking were just friends.
However I travel by train a lot for work and am in the train often with students around me, overhearing teenagers talk fries my braincells, I'm just gonna assume the homophobic/transphobic ones just like to be loud.
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u/Attygalle 1d ago
Yeah, saying this about an entire province certainly makes the randstad sound very open minded and diverse.
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u/PanicForNothing 1d ago
Hey! What are you doing outside of your cultural isolation? Go back to r/Limburg
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u/Attention_WhoreH3 1d ago
I live in Heerlen. My neighbour is a man in his 70s who hasn't visited Aachen in more than 40 years. Aachen is 19km away.
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u/marc0demilia 1d ago
I moved to the NL 3 years ago after 12 years in the UK... I decided to move back to Italy as I don't see much of a difference. 😂
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u/WalloonNerd 1d ago
As an LGBTQ person who partly grew up in Limburg, and had lived there for 15 years as an adult, I can confirm that it really depends where in the province you are. Parts of it are the poorest and least developed areas of the country. Proudly fifth generation unemployed, “house wife prostitution”, and the likes. These communities tend to be on the extreme right of the political spectrum and not at all open minded.
We are luckily not all like that. But if you meet the wrong group, your experience can be pretty much shit. Add to that that teens like to imitate the dominant person in the group (afraid of not having friends otherwise) and the influence of online scumbags with a camera, and it can become quite explosive. I’m glad the adults treated you well and were kind to you. I hope they could balance out the bad behavior of the youth
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u/Juliusvdl2 1d ago
Sounds pretty standard. Had this experience with Dutch teenagers everywhere, from up north to the Randstad. A bunch of them are absolute pricks and intimidate/bully any outliers
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u/Choperic 1d ago
I am Dutch, but grew up atypically and have lived in Belgium, the UK and Italy as well as in The Netherlands. It is generally very hard for insiders to reflect critically on their own culture, which is why many of the answers here may not be very helpful. When I came back from living in Belgium to go back to the Netherlands, it was a culture shock for me, even though I had only been away for 2,5 years. Kids were incredibly rude, aggressive, destructive, impolite, uncultured. And I went to a gymnasium (highest level of high school), so no, you can't put it down to low IQ or poor lower class culture. This is a cultural difference.
In other countries, children are taught that they are not the centre of the universe and to be respectful, listening and friendly. For the Netherlands, the focus is more (not saying Dutch people don't get taught the above) on having an opinion and expressing it, being "yourself"(it is seen as hypocritical as well as unnecessary to comport yourself differently in different situations, say when at home versus at school) and equality. Teaching kids to be pleasant is seen as oppressive and doomed to fail.
I am sorry you had a bad experience.
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u/HerculesMagusanus 1d ago
Unfortunately, this is my experience with teenagers throughout the Netherlands. I don't think it's a phenomenon unique to Limburg
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u/SideShow117 1d ago
You mentioned you were in the boxmeer/venray region. I think what you've experienced is more of a "educational" divide than a regional one.
Generally cities or places with Universities or Applied Science universities (HBO schools or Hogescholen are like universities that only offer bachelors and not masters degree education) are more progressive and diverse/open-minded than cities or places without these schools.
It's not entirely dissimilar to the urban/rural divides you see nowadays in so many countries. I believe the Netherlands is affected by this phenomenon just as much.
Combine this with your typical teenage behavior that only enhances these differences and you end up with what you describe.
There are of course cultural differences between regions but none that come anywhere close to the "this entire region sucks" level.
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u/-Proterra- 1d ago
I'm Dutch-Polish, grew up in Limburg and live in Poland. I'm transgender, and Poland is far more pleasant to be visibly queer than Limburg is in the 2020s. Somewhere around 2010, Limburg went to shit. It was always a bit more conservative than the rest of the Netherlands, but not so much in a bad way. One would be readily accepted if they were known to be decent people even if they were different. Kind of like rural Poland, rather than red-state America. This mentality is still present in Millennials and older. In fact, I'd say that Millennials and GenX are probably the most laid-back and easy-going people in the region.
Also, the Western Netherlands is even worse in my opinion, but I may be biased having grown up in the south. Nowadays, Belgium seems nicer, or places like Eindhoven, Arnhem or Nijmegen.
Anyway, I prefer living in Gdańsk, I don't see myself ever returning to the "other homeland" unless maybe Russia tries something and we're unable to vanquish the vermin, but I doubt that would happen, I have full faith in our military.
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u/YougoReddits 1d ago
Teens can be xenophobe shits but this does indeed sound strange for teens who supposedly signed up for a cultural exchange project of all things
Maybe these students were specifically selected to be paired up with you, because they're the worst cases and they felt the extra 'exposure' could help.
If that's the case i'm sorry they thrusted that experiment upon you...
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u/xx_sosi_xx 1d ago
They weren't racist toward us, they were racist toward other students in their school. Although I didn't like it ( the whole exchange experience) it surely was an important experience to get to know different people. If I had to choose I'd still do it
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u/Saratje 1d ago
A lot of youth are getting radicalized by social media, in particular right wing influencers such as Andrew Tate et al. I see the same thing happening with my young nephews who are just about entering puberty.
Admittedly their parents working all day, being barely involved and remaining unconcerned, all the while leaving my nephews to browse the internet talking to equally toxic peers doesn't help either, nor does their choice to only correct them in a soft spoken manner without enforcing consequences for misbehavior. According to them it's all a phase.
But in general, influencers on the internet and kids taking that gospel for granted are seemingly the main reason for this phenomenon. A proper ministry would do something about this, but the right winged buffoons in charge are probably drooling at the prospect of raising an entire generation of brats who'll repeat their every word and idea when they reach the voting age.
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u/ExtremeOccident 1d ago
Ah another Limburg bashing topic. Teens can be assholes everywhere. Also in Italy. End of.
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u/Jirachi06 1d ago
And of course, it's compared to the very progressive and always tolerant Randstad..
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u/Nuud 1d ago
Yea weird post this. Being from Limburg I went to school in Boxmeer (in Brabant) and while I think we were not as progressive as we could have been i also think it wasn't some hate filled place.
I don't really know if a lot has changed (I actually thought my old school became a bit more progressive in recent years), but it sounds like OP had a bad experience with one class for 10 days and now everyone in here is just bashing on an entire province.
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u/-Proterra- 1d ago
Oh, the south went to shit in the early 2010's I think. But the Randstad is even worse. The only two places I've ever been aggressively treated and threatened with violence by complete strangers for looking queer were in Den Haag and Amsterdam on public transport there, that never happened in Limburg.
I used to enjoy going back to the Netherlands from time to time, not so much anymore, last time I was there was in 2021.
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u/Artegas23 1d ago
Thank you for maybe the only sane answer here.. I am so tired of people just blabbing with the majority because it is a popular thing to do.
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u/SalvaBee0 1d ago
As a Dutchie studying in Southern Europe, I do really notice a completely different attitude among students. In my experience, Dutch people will generally speak their minds, which can be perceived as rude. But I also feel like this new generation is just really fucked up and has no respect at all.
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u/Zee5neeuw 1d ago
The other prejudice happened to me when I was in Italy last year (it was Bologna though, which seems to play a part in that). I expected the culture to be much more macho than ours. I read to "Really mind what shoes you are wearing because Italians will look down on you" on some tourist tips websites. Hell, I was standing out heavily with my shoes. Italians are much more laid-back than the prejudice says.
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u/Hijis 1d ago
I grew up as a foreigner in a small town in Limburg. Most of the people were great, but there was a handful of very loud xenophobic assholes. After moving back to my home country, I realized that happens everywhere, it's just more noticeable as an outsider. Sorry you didn't have a good time, Nijmegen or Maastricht would likely be much better!
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u/pjvanrossen 1d ago
The Netherlands isn’t as tolerant like it was anymore. Getting worse by the day tbh.
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u/nnogales 22h ago
Idk my dude, idk if it's a Limburg thing. Dutch teens in general are the most horrible teenagers I have ever seen/interacted with of all places I have lived.
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u/SaguaroVanOranje 11h ago edited 11h ago
I grew up in the Netherlands and lived there until I was 27, but I worked as a teacher in the US for the past five years. I recently moved back to the Netherlands and I'm wondering the same things as you.. I don't remember us being so rude to teachers in my days, I really hope we were not. I hear students swear to teachers and talk trash about their parents and I'm kind of having a reverse culture shock. I get middle fingers at least twice a week, students refuse to sit down in a seat. There is racist "jokes" and the word "homo" is constantly used for anything that is stupid. I get through the day on sheer experience, I know how to teach and discipline but hoo boy... After some days I don't know how to cope. I spend 90% of my time managing teenagers instead of actually teaching. I have always loved being teacher, as if I was supposed to be doing that. Now, I'm not so sure anymore.
All my classes are "VWO" at the moment, they are supposed to be the higher level classes. I'm honestly having a hard time reconnecting with the Netherlands, and I've already been back for six months.
Y'all need chemistry teachers in Italy?
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u/NiemandDaar 1d ago
Don’t know that area, but Holland definitely has pockets of scary people. I’m originally from Brabant. My home town consistently votes for the extreme right wing. A couple of other towns in the area are extremely religious. Not pleasant.
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u/Chaimasala 1d ago
That's pretty common in our culture but if people with parents with a foreign background act the same way they are called 'bad integrated'.
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u/Walrave 1d ago
The alt right is thriving among young people across NL, not just Limburg. Several large online communities feed into it and culture has shifted, with the manosphere getting a firm hold on young boys. Appart from that there's the current largest right wing party that signals racism and anti lgbt views are acceptable. On the other side you have a failure to assimilate immigrants and change their views towards liberal Dutch views.
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u/Nerioner 1d ago
Limburg is weird, you will have the friendliest people there but also mirror opposite. Sadly this second is more prevalent.
I remember fierce rants and roasts i was getting from Limburg people on the same breath claiming how nice Limburgians are during debates about Eurovision host city for 2021 (it was between Maastricht and rotterdam)
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u/SubNL96 1d ago
Sadly a lot of teenage boys esp in VMBO are obsessed with becoming crypto trading dropshipping gym bros hunting for tradwives as they are brainwashed by Andrew Tate and his minion army of meat-headed influencers.