I lived in Amsterdam for two years and now in Edmonton for 6 months.
So I have seen some striking differences.
Allan:
- Dutch are direct, could be taken as rude. Canadians are polite, could be taken as annoying. One clear example is in a restaurant, in a Dutch one, you wait for the waiter and once your order is ready the waiter will be back, and probably you won’t see the waiter again until you ask for the bill (and probably you don’t need to give a tip). In a Canadian restaurant, the waiter asks you how’s your day is going, if the weather is fine, then takes your order, comes back again saying sorry if it’s taking long (maybe it’s not even taking long but still they will be sorry), after your started eating the waiter will ask you how’s everything, if you need something else, and then this cycle repeats until you ask for the bill, when the waiter will ask you once again if everything was ok, and will ask if you have any plans for later, etc. (and you need to add at least 15% tip).
- Canada is huge and usually, there is a lot of space. This means very big (extended) cities where having a car is almost a necessity; cars and fuel are not that expensive. The Netherlands is a tiny country, space is very constrained, having a car makes no sense in most of the cities and it is very expensive; bikes are the way to go in the city.
- Weather is another big difference. Except for Vancouver, most of Canada has real cold winters, with temperatures below zero and lots of snow. In the Netherlands having snow during winter is common but not every day, below zero temperatures happen at night, but during the day it is above zero (so people can still bike in winter). Another difference is that days are very grey in the Netherlands, most of the days even in spring, summer and autumn could be rainy and cloudy. Having a sunny day it’s almost a celebration day in the Netherlands and you can probably leave work early (it’s real). In contrast, summers in Canada are very bright with lots of sunshine.
- Shopping is very different. In the Netherlands, Saturdays are shopping days; you can do groceries on the weekdays but that’s it because most of the shops close early (5 or 6pm). In Canada, stores are open every day until 8 or 9pm and people can go shopping after work. Even on Sundays there a lot of things open, they just close early (5 or 6pm). In the Netherlands there are no big malls, you probably go downtown where the little shops are located. In Canada, there are lots of malls. In Canada, you can find Costco, Walmart and buy these huge packages of food, soap, whatever you can think of, in the Netherlands (since apartments are small and people usually don’t have cars to transport things) packages are smaller.
That’s what I can think of, for now, most other differences are the same between any European and North American cities.
