Imagine some of those perfect contradictions that make this world a better place—sweet and sour, fire and ice, kick and snare—the possibilities are endless.

Now imagine an actual city that works that way. That city is Amsterdam. The perfect contrast of order and disorder, organization and discord, beauty and dirt, righteousness and sin—Amsterdamers are not easy to classify.

To the uneducated outsider, one may easily mistake the Dutch for being incredibly laid back, grungy, and perhaps even a little wild. After all, this is the country known outside of its borders for marijuana and open-window prostitution. But spend 10 minutes talking to a local, and you’ll quickly see that your preconceptions couldn’t be further from the truth.

Here are your 12 tips to help you make sure you can fit in here in the Netherlands:

1. Be direct. Beating around the bush is not typically a part of communication here.
2. Respect everyone’s opinion—no matter what someone’s title or place on the hierarchy, everyone’s voice gets heard here.
3. Along these same lines, decisions are typically made in the spirit of group consensus.
4. In light of that, get rid of that idea that these are liberal people. Conservatism runs deep in many aspects of the culture here, and change is slow to come by.
5. They probably know more about your culture than you do about theirs. And they definitely speak your language better than you speak theirs.
6. Don’t be pretentious. It won’t make you friends here.
7. Of course the Dutch have a sense of humor, but refrain from trying out your new material in a business meeting.
8. You may be used to going to happy hour with your colleagues after work. They are not. There is actually a fairly strong separation between work and personal life.
9. You may be proud of your education, and that’s great. But they are probably just as educated as you.
10. If you are going to work here, don’t plan to hop jobs as one may do elsewhere. Continuing the theme of conservatism and slow change, Dutch workers tend to maintain loyalty to one company for a long time.
11. As such, employers are loyal to employees—Dutch labor laws make it difficult for them to get rid of unwanted workers.
12. Don’t let the conservatism intimidate you—it is common to address colleagues informally, by first name.

Now you’re all set to navigate a social or business situation in the Netherlands like a local!

Amsterdam.

If my fascination with Japan is based on the, well, contradictions, it’s safe to say that my fascination with The Netherlands is based on, well…contradictions.  When I first arrived in Amsterdam as a wide-eyed 22-year old, just 4 days into my first foray overseas, I was shocked and uncomfortable with the overall grunge and grit found around every corner.  By the time I got on the Deutsche Bahn train at Centraal Station headed for Koln, I truly believed that everyone in Amsterdam was dirty, high and paying for sex on a daily basis.

Left with this sour first impression, I was surprised when the next year I found myself working amidst Dutch people for the first time, and found them to be among the most business-focused, precise and organized people I had ever encountered.  Now having perception of the Dutch spanning two opposite extremes, by the time I returned to Holland a few years later, I found it to be a completely fascinating and different place.  In reality, it was comprised of the same grunge, the same 300-some “Coffeshops” that could legally sell up to five grams of soft drugs to each customer, and the same scantily-clad Eastern European (and other) women on display in the Red Light District.  The difference, of course, was in my own mentality.

Amsterdam is a breeding grounds for individuality, where strange and different is not merely tolerated, it is embraced.  Which pretty much makes the term “strange” irrelevant around here.  Quite simply, nothing is strange, rather…everything just is.  This can surely come as a shock at first to people raised on a particular set of ideals, norms and visions, but will always prove to be a lively and passionate breath of fresh air the moment one proves capable of breaking the shackles of “norms” and whets their palette for any adventure that may be lurking around the corner…