The Dutch are the tallest people in the world. As an outsider, you get used to it quickly. It’s something you’ll only notice when you:
a) first arrive in the country
b) visit or return to another, shorter country
or
c) when you see an otherwise grown international student ride a children’s bicycle, because the regular adult ones designed for the Dutch are too big for them.
It’s a funny sight for the locals.
I stand at about 6 feet with shoes, or 183 cm rounded up. Above average in California, but average height in the Netherlands. I’ve never faced too many issues with regular day-to-day life in either place. I can ride a grown-up bicycle. I can reach behind the counter, and I can reach that tea-cup in the dark corners of the cupboard. I can lie on a mattress without having to scrunch into the fetal position. It’s all good.
—-
Iris is tall in that she has to bend down if she wants to hug most people. Even in the Netherlands she says she’ll notice people inching towards her not to say hello, but to compare their own height to hers (usually by standing side to side and expressing amusement at how their forehead only reaches her shoulders, and then casually walking away without a word), and that back in school people would go up and ask if she was a lighthouse. That must be annoying, I said.
“Eh, you just have to get used to it.”
