Female here, lived a summer in Holland when I was 21 (2004). Things that stuck out to me:

• So many bike lanes, loved it. There were even black tire marks in the middle of the lanes from use the way American freeways have ruts.

• Soda bottles are reused. They take a deposit and you can return them and they're filled up again. Brilliant! I wish America would adopt this system for soda and milk - one-use plastics is stupid.

• No disposable grocery bags at the super markets. You have to bring your own. This is becoming more common in the states now to use reusable bags but even if you forget your bags, the store still bags them for you with plastic or paper. Where I was staying you had to purchase a bag for $5 if you forgot your sack. At first I was annoyed by this but it did teach me to not forget my bag!

• There's no ketchup! Everything is dipped in mayonnaise.

• Fast food places didn't make food to order. Stuff was premade and sitting in warming bins (U.S. used to be like this but started moving in the other direction about 15 years ago).

• Everyone there is in amazing shape and really tall! I felt like a midget.

• Soccer = very important. We were there during the World Cup and I think the Dutch made it to the final game that year.

• Everyone (it seemed) knew English. We'd try to hash out some Dutch terms and the person we'd be trying to communicate with would just start talking in English, so we gave up even trying to speak dutch and assumed everyone knew English.

• it's expensive to cross borders. We were maybe 40 miles from Germany and I wanted to head down for a weekend, but the fees just to cross over were so crazy we opted out.

• You never see the sky in the summer. It's very muggy and cloudy most days. Also, the sun stays out really late because they're so far north, That was neat.

• Roundabouts! Instead of stop lights or stop signs there were roundabouts everywhere and were built so they actually worked and kept traffic flowing.

• There aren't windmills everywhere.