living in a country in Northern Europe

As a social psychologist, I like the idea of testing stereotypes.
When I told people that I was going to The Netherlands, most of them would say: now, that is a civilized country! You will be amazed with the differences comparing to Portugal.

Well, after two weeks here, here are a few remarks about this northern Europe country

On the negative side:

- They throw their cigarettes or joints to the floor as much as Portuguese do.
- they step on grass and jaywalk as much as Portuguese do.
- they have as much respect for pedestrians crossings as Portuguese (and that says a lot on why this is on the negative side). However, they do stop on yellow light (which in Portugal means: Show us you can still make it!)
- the names of the streets are even more conspicuous than in Portugal (it's really hard to understand the street that you're in)
- ATM's are very rare. When I asked a collegue where the ATM was he said: well, there is one on Campus (it should be mentioned that this campus is as big as a giant shopping mall). And even in the center, it's not that common to find an ATM

On the positive side:

- people are very nice in general
- the english general level is very good (though some are not very eager to use it, even if you talk to them in english, most keep answering in dutch). Specially in the university, I am very impressed with their english, even at the undergraduate level. It's just amazing. And here, it is not even allowed to write a PhD thesis in other language than english (this is at least true for the Psychology Department).
- the facilities of the university are really good. I saw some of the Chemistry and Biology labs and I was really amazed. And obviously, I saw the Behavioral Science Institute Lab, namely the Virtual Reality Lab andb it's just incredible.

One other curious thing here, that is not positive nor negative, it's just the way it is, is that they don't use a lot of curtains here. You stroll on the street and all the ground floor houses "expose" their living room to the pedestrians and for those who are not used to it (like myself) it really brings up the "voyeur" in you and it's hard not to look. But I'm getting used to it.

All in all, it's a very interesting country and I'm very eager to learn more about dutch society and dutch people