Portal:Netherlands
Welcome to the Netherlands Portal
Welkom bij het Nederlandportaal!
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The Netherlands, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a North Sea coastline to the north and west. It shares maritime borders with the United Kingdom, Germany, and Belgium. The official language is Dutch, with West Frisian as a secondary official language in the province of Friesland. Dutch, English, and Papiamento are official in the Caribbean territories.
The Netherlands has been a parliamentary constitutional monarchy with a unitary structure since 1848. The country has a tradition of pillarisation (separation of citizens into groups by religion and political beliefs) and a long record of social tolerance, having legalised prostitution and euthanasia, along with maintaining a liberal drug policy. The Netherlands allowed women's suffrage in 1919 and was the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2001. Its mixed-market advanced economy has the eleventh-highest per capita income globally. The Hague holds the seat of the States General, cabinet, and Supreme Court. The Port of Rotterdam is the busiest in Europe. Schiphol is the busiest airport in the Netherlands, and the fourth busiest in Europe. Being a developed country, the Netherlands is a founding member of the European Union, eurozone, G10, NATO, OECD, and WTO, as well as a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. It hosts intergovernmental organisations and international courts, many of which are in The Hague. (Full article...)
Selected biography
Rienks won the gold medal in the men's double sculls at the 1988 Summer Olympics, alongside Ronald Florijn. At the 1996 Summer Olympics, he repeated his gold medal performance winning the eight with coxswain event with the Holland Acht (Holland Eight). He also competed at the 1984 and 2000 Olympics but finished outside the podium.
With Henk-Jan Zwolle he won the gold medal in the double sculls competition at the 1991 World Rowing Championships. He also won three silver medals at the world championships in 1989 (double sculls), 1994 and 1995 (eights).
Did you know (auto-generated)

- ... that Turkish migrant workers living in a residential complex in Amsterdam refused to eat the Dutch food for two weeks after the kitchen's only Turkish chef was fired?
- ... that the Dutch edition of Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival was recalled?
- ... that the 1961 Indonesian census was the country's first since 1930 and the first since gaining independence from the Netherlands?
- ... that two American officers bribed Japanese troops with their watches to have Dutch medical officer Henri Hekking allocated to their prisoner of war camp?
- ... that Harald Hasselbach, the only Dutch Super Bowl champion, lived in four continents in his youth?
- ... that in March 2022 Sonja van den Ende was the only Dutch journalist to report from the Russian-occupied Donbas on the war in Ukraine?
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