“Welkom in Gelderland” — No, it’s not spelled wrong!

It’s what the road sign says when you drive across the border from Germany into the Dutch province of Gelderland, from which we get the name of our local town Guilderland. On a recent trip to the Netherlands, I had an opportunity to spend time with relatives who live in Gelderland, and this got me thinking about how our homes and lifestyles are both similar and different.

The best-known example of Dutch homes is perhaps the luxurious town homes along the canals in the center of Amsterdam. These were built by wealthy merchants and traders during the country’s “Golden Age” in the 17th and 18th centuries.

These “McMansions” of the day embody the key notes of elegance and practicality, as they served as both residence and warehouse. Built up rather than out due to city ordinances intended to make the best use of space (always a concern in a densely populated area), the houses have tasteful living quarters on the first and second floors, and storage spaces on the top floor, where goods were winched up by pulley from the outside.

Several of these early mansions are now museums, i.e., the Museum Van Loon and the Museum Geelvinck, and, behind their facades, you can get an idea of how the other half lived in those early days, with furniture and artifacts imported from the various ports around the world where the Dutch traded.

Behind the houses are landscaped gardens precisely manicured in an orderly European style quite different from our sprawling suburban gardens.

Riding my bicycle around my own neighborhood in Westmere, I can see a mixture of modest homes built during the 1950s and 1960s, and, a few blocks farther away, more luxurious houses that might be thought of as our local version of the Amsterdam mansions; however, instead of warehouses, huge garages that may hold three vehicles compose a large portion of the total structure.

In describing contemporary Dutch homes, two key words come to mind: orderliness and gezelligheid, which is often translated as “coziness.” These concepts are emblematic of the Dutch lifestyle as well as their homes.

Orderliness is evident in the way traffic moves in the capital city of Amsterdam, where motor vehicles, trams, cyclists, and pedestrians keep to their designated lanes with the expectation that others will do likewise. It is also evident in the neat homes, usually smaller than ours, that sit side-by-side on uncluttered streets.

Gezelligheid refers not only to the neatness and coziness of one’s home, but also to less material matters. It is gezellig to sit down and have a cup of coffee and a cookie (a word of Dutch origin) with a friend and catch up on their news. It is gezellig to have a less hurried lifestyle than ours: The Dutch are a practical and hard-working people, but they seem to know better than we how to slow down and enjoy life. A walk in the park or a bicycle ride in the countryside is also gezellig.

Dutch relatives who have visited me in my home have remarked about how large my yard and garden appear in comparison with theirs. Our house sits on a corner lot of about a quarter of an acre, which gives us space for a turf lawn (weedy as it is!), a variety of perennial flowers and shrubs, and a tiny wooded area.

In contrast, I saw fewer turf lawns in the Netherlands, and more flowers and shrubs, as well as vegetable gardens. Since the surface area of their property tends to be smaller than here in our suburbs, the Dutch make use of every inch of space, often including fruit trees in their gardens as well as flowers.

This must have been an idea that my Dutch grandparents brought with them from the Netherlands many years ago, because I recall in my earliest childhood plucking grapes and apples from the fruit orchard in the lot adjoining their house in Albany.

In both Zaandam and Ede, where I have stayed with relatives, I noticed that, since the homes are often quite close to each other, many have privacy fences, which prevent you from seeing what your neighbor is barbecuing on any given evening.  There are fewer garages than in our neighborhoods, more likely a shed to keep the bicycles that are a typical means of transport in the Netherlands.

In order to get an idea of the population density of the Netherlands, picture a country with twice the surface area of New Jersey and about twice the population as well; thus, according to the World Almanac and Book of Facts for 2015, a density of 1,210 residents per square mile for New Jersey and a slightly higher density of 1,290 per square mile for the Netherlands.

However, I did not experience a feeling of being crowded in my cousins’ homes or yards; a garden or a small patio, sometimes overlooking a nearby canal, gave us ample room to sit and chat. The overall impression was indeed “gezellig,” pleasant and homey.

Moving indoors into a Dutch home, one difference that an American might notice would be the absence of window screens. Perhaps due to the higher latitude, there appeared to be fewer insects wherever I was in the Netherlands (except perhaps in the countryside), so the Dutch apparently do not feel the need for screens.

I recall that, during a visit to Albany in the 1960s, my mother’s cousin Geertje told her that it was customary to paint window and door frames blue, which was believed to discourage flies from entering. However, I doubt that the younger generation of Dutch people subscribe to this belief!

One custom that does appear to still be in force, though, is that of leaving your curtains open in the evening. I noticed this when I took a walk one evening around my cousin’s neighborhood in Ede, when I discretely observed families watching television in their cozy living rooms.        

Other than the absence of window screens, Dutch interiors are much like ours: living room, dining area, and kitchen on the main floor, and bedrooms upstairs.  Modern homes have all the conveniences and amenities that we expect here in the United States: wireless internet, cable TV, fancy coffee makers, and so on.

However, there are still some traditional old-style farmhouses out in the countryside. In fact, I enjoyed visiting an old farmhouse with my cousins, which has been re-purposed as a pancake restaurant.The gables and shutters reminded me of the house in Loosdrecht where my grandmother was born.

So architecture in the Netherlands is a mixture of the old and the new, always interesting, and always gezellig!