Holland is one of the countries of the European Union, its official name is the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Netherlands is bounded on the east by Germany and south-west with Belgium, the coasts of the North Sea to the northwest separates it from Great Britain. It has an area of more than forty thousand square kilometers, but a significant percentage of this surface is occupied by water and also much of its territory lies below the North Sea.

The water is contained by levees monumental and all water resources have an efficient control. For example, when the plane lands you travel from Schiphol Airport, the runway is more than four feet below the North Sea.

The climate is temperate maritime. In summer the average is 16 degrees centigrade and in winter only 2, the rains over 70 inches a year. In the months of June, July and August temperatures exceed 25 degrees Celsius. The Kingdom of the Netherlands is a constitutional monarchy whose head of state is Queen Beatrix since 1980, political authority is exercised by the President of the Council of Ministers. The government is in Den Haag, The Hague and the capital is Amsterdam. The country is divided into twelve provinces and has over five hundred municipalities.

The official language is the Dutchman or Dutch, the language of northern origin with Germanic roots.

The official currency is the Euro, the monetary unit shared by most European countries. The holidays can look them in the calendar of events.

The City of Amsterdam
Amsterdam means «Amstel dam», is the constitutional capital of the Netherlands and from the seventeenth century an important cultural and financial center. The University of Amsterdam was opened in 1632. Agricultural production nurseries with the famous tulips and windmills that today surround the city, the cards are typical of the country. Plus the economy throughout the Netherlands Amsterdam and is consolidated in energy companies, financial services, technology and various commercial activities.

Legend has it that two fishermen arrived at the estuary of the River Amstel in a small boat with a dog, these anonymous people were the first inhabitants of Amsterdam and remain immortalized in one of the symbols of the city. The truth is that in 1280 there was already a village on the site now occupied by the Begijnhof, «The Novitiate. A research conducted in 1994 by archaeologist Jan Baart, brought to light in the center of the city, the foundations of a fort, a small castle, built in the late thirteenth century.

Amsterdam is also known as Mokum (in Yiddish, city, place) name still popularly used as a middle name of the city. This name comes from the Ashkenazi Jews who arrived from the Iberian peninsula in the seventeenth century to settle in Amsterdam. Today Amsterdam is settled in the tens of hundreds of islands linked by bridges, every building has its foundation supported by piles or wooden stakes, now replaced by the iron and concrete, buried tens of feet deep through the peat and sand down to the clay substrate. The canals of Amsterdam are a way of controlling the water dividing the river Amstel in numerous waterways and in turn are an excellent form of transportation and communication network.

Amsterdam’s architecture retains the brick houses and some seventeenth-century mansions and the architectural avant-garde of the twentieth century to today. More than 7,000 buildings and structures in Amsterdam declared historic monuments. Everything is in use and well maintained, but it is not unusual to find a church converted into a cultural center or a factory in theater.

The History of Amsterdam has many dramatic chapters, most recently was the five-year Nazi occupation during World War II. In that period were deported tens of thousands of Jewish citizens from Amsterdam to concentration camps and death camps, few survived, and few returned to the city. The Anne Frank House has been a witness of the Holocaust.

Bon voyage!