> Behalf Of J. van Baardwijk
>
> <sigh>
> Time for a rerun of the Dutch Geography Crash Course I gave here
> in the past.
>
> Calling this country "Holland" is WRONG WRONG WRONG! The country is known
> as "The Netherlands"; the only "Holland" we have are two of our twelve
> provinces (only two provinces, named with a great sense of originality
> "North Holland" and "South Holland").
>
> Can anyone explain why you foreigners keep calling it "Holland"? It's
> annoying has hell. Oh, and saying "Because it's easier" isn't good enough
> as an explanation...
>
Sorry Jeroen, a bit of brain fade there. Mea Culpa.
As for why we call it Holland more often than The Netherlands is because
when I went to school that's what we were taught was the country name. I
used to wonder why stamps from what my Stamp book labelled Holland all had
Nederlands written on them instead.
It's a bit like, what do we call Cologne (Koln) or Munich (Munchen) or
Bavaria (Bayerne) or Norway (Norge) etc
I said:
>
> >Amsterdam's airport - actually, I guess it must be the only
> >airport in the Netherlands ;-) - is Schipol
>
> Schiphol the only airport? You'd be surprised...
Sorry, was supposed to be a joke. Aussies have a surfeit of space.
snip
>
>
> >It's possible that my
> >cousin's Lancaster that went missing in 1945 will one day turn up
> >in a paddock there, although his plane could be anywhere from
> >Yorkshire to Leipzig. Just disappeared, no trace.
>
> There's a good chance he's buried with his plane, somewhere in The
> Netherlands. But if it's any consolation: if we ever find him,
> we'll see to
> it that he is brought home for proper burial.
>
Oh yes, every so often we hear of Australians being found and buried in
different parts of the world. There was a WW1 soldier identified in Belgium
a few months back, and a few WW2 airmen in Papua New Guinea and Bouganville
very recently. We still occasionally turn up missing aircraft in northern
Australia (I think a US plane and its crew were found only about 1 year
ago).
Also, the Australian tradition is for our military dead to be buried near
where they died, in Commonwealth War Graves. It was only the Vietnam war
that had Australian dead returned to Australia. And personally, I think that
is a much better way of doing it, if the local population is willing to
donate the land. In the same way, Japanese dead from the Cowra prison
outbreak are buried in a beautifully maintained cemetary at Cowra, in New
South Wales.
Cheers,
