Studying the history of Holland for a few days now. not so exciting. they have spent thousands of years doing what is known as ‘reclaiming’ land from the ocean so they can live in all these towns close to the sea. When in fact they have this huge piece of land more inland that they wouldn’t even have to worry about the oceans waves. Millions and millions of acres of it, but they persist in spending billions of dollars on trying to take back the land from the ocean by building all these dykes and rivers and dams etc. Really weird. Cities like Amsterdam should be completely underwater by now, but the people persist in trying to fight the flow of nature. Lots of cool stuff in this. Not as an exciting history than say England or Italy, but lots of cool stuff. Rembrandt and Van Gough of course. And for a very brief time they ruled the entire western world, but that didn't last long.