As you probably would have guesthouse, I'm not American. Nor am I Australian and neither British. I speak English, but I am not it. Not even a little, as in the way I speak it. Just take a look at my name (Salvatore Cocco) and you will see, that I'm niether that nor Russian, for that matter. No, I am Dutch. O yes! I'm from "the country with many names". The Netherlands, Holland, The Low Lands, and so on and on and on.
But even as tiny as our land is, it's been all over the place. In many country's over the whole world the names of those places remember us, that the Netherlanders (as we call ourselves) were there.
So there is for example New Zealand, wich is called after the Dutch state (now province) Zeeland. In fact, Zeeland is the old Zealand and New Zealand is the new Zeeland. And just for knowing little facts, Zeeland means sea-land; land in or by the sea.
In Australia we have the region Arnhem Land, witch is called after Arnhem, a Dutch city. The city wich was a bridge to far for the aliens in World War part Two. (I ment allies, but the automatic spell checker could not know that. Excuse him. Or her, probably.)
We, the Hollanders (as we also call ourselves sometimes often), also owned New York for a short period of time in a certain period of time! O yes! And we called it New Amsterdam, the name of our capital city, Amsterdam. It was ours to keep. But we traded it for Suriname. Seemed a nice thing to do back then, for the invading English and Irish.Many many many names of boroughs, neighborhoods, streets and buildings in New York are Dutch-based. Like there are Brooklyn and Harlem, named after the Dutch city's Breukelen and Haarlem. And then there is the Holland Tunnel, named after our whole country.
But the least known thing that proofs we, the Dutch, really were there, is probably The Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn. It was build in 1652, so I think Pieter himself is dead allready. But his house is still standing. Cheerio!
And of course I ment this to be educational intentionaly. I am not a sort of a Sit-Down Comedian, am I.
With friendly little greets,
Salvatore
P.S.: Post Scriptum