I LOVE your article!! There are so many things which resonated with me. One of your statements: "Dutch people don’t see directness as confrontation", brought my entire childhood back to me. I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan where that is the way people communicated. My parents decided to move to Chapel Hill, NC in 1963 when I was 10. My mother was from Virginia, and a Southerner in every sense of the word and therefore never at ease in the North. In the South, directness IS confrontation. The difference between the two worlds was stark, and, for a child, incomprehensible. Ironically, as life would have it, I've ended up in Charleston, SC for the past 42 years -- a city which has been voted "The Most Polite City" in the U.S. for almost all of the last 10? 20? years. It is now I who find the directness of Northerners to feel rude! So strange... (Vermeer is my favorite painter, so I like that part of what you wrote, too!) I spent some time in Saba -- and if you haven't been there, you haven't ever truly lived! I'm referring to the runway at their teeny airport. The people were all red-headed! My husband is a sherpa, from Nepal. I have had some adventures with him, but no desire to live in Nepal. You are a fascinating person, living a fascinating life!