During my basic education years, I picked up a few facts about what would one day become my adopted home—the Netherlands. Tulips are Dutch (or so I thought, until I later learned they originally came from Turkey), Rotterdam is Europe’s biggest port (and from 1964 to 2004, it was the busiest in the world), and the Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam is named after Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, one of the greatest scholars of the Renaissance. I learned about Rembrandt and Van Gogh—Van Gogh later became my favorite—and about PSV Eindhoven, Ruud Gullit with his wild hair, and Marco van Basten (my brother was a diehard fan). Read more
