Blog /Stinky.nl - Personal Odour in the Netherlands

November 26, 2012 22:08 +0000  |  Netherlands

This is one I've been wanting to write for a long time now. So, as part of my series on what it's like to live, work, and socialise here in the Netherlands, I thought I'd tackle one of my most grating subjects so far: stinky people.

Now let me be clear on this: Dutch people, on a personal level, are no more or less stinky than people from anywhere else. However, I have come to understand that in this country, for some people personal odour is just somehow not a priority. More importantly, and the reason why this observation is worthy of note, there appear to be more people here oblivious to their BO than anywhere else I've been.

Lets frame this up for you. You've spent the past week or so packing up your apartment in preparation to move all of your worldly possessions to another home some distance away. For the actual moving job, you've hired a few strapping young men to come to your house and do the heavy lifting. The men in question do a fine job of lifting and hauling for a few hours and when it's all over the driver comes over to you to have you sign a few papers and you get a whiff of a cloud of overpowering man stink. You're stunned for a second, and then you accept it as part of the business of lifting heavy objects for a living. You sign the papers, say thank you, and open a window for a bit when they leave.

Now imagine walking into a cloud like that on a near-daily basis. Most people you meet enter and leave your life without notice, but about once per day, you're kicked in the face by someone's armpit stink. Strangely enough, this has never happened to me on public transit, but rather it's people who sit next to you at the theatre, or stand in line with you at the grocery store. Often these are the same people who are covered in dandruff, and are wearing pants that clearly don't fit, and they have so far, without exception always appeared to be Dutch nationals who work office jobs for a living. These people spend their day lifting pens and paper, not couches or soil.

Now I don't pretend to understand it, and like I said, the vast majority of people I've met here have been non-stinky, but my experience (and those of others I've talked to) has been consistent: the ratio of stinky-to-not-stinky people in this country is markedly higher than in other cities I've lived in and visited. Admittedly, the deoderant here is pretty terrible, but that can't explain everything.

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