“I’m not letting you do this alone. I’m coming with you.” - My girlfriend and soon to be fiancé when I had to put down my elderly cat three days before Christmas.

We went to the vet and she watched me bawl, we both cried our eyes out, and even still after that she let me grieve at home for an hour. She brought me a coffee, and everything to make sugar cookies from the store. She came back and she said she couldn’t fix it, but she didn’t want me to be alone.

So we played Christmas music, made terribly ugly cookies, and we weren’t okay; but we were together.

That’s when I saw what real, unconditional love looked like.

I worked the front desk at a yoga studio/spa for a while. I loved it; interacting with all of the people that would come in gave me life. I didn’t realize how extroverted I actually was until I started working there. I got to know all the regulars, remembering everyone’s name and trying to make them all feel warm, welcome, and special. One day, one of the older regulars came in and handed me an envelope. He had typed me a letter that brought me to absolute tears, talking about how big my light was and how truly transformative my weekly welcome to him had been, as a person who had rarely felt welcome anywhere his whole life. At the time, I was struggling with a lot of my own darkness and the fact that I had any ounce of light was genuinely news to me. My heart needed that.

The Netherlands here.

When we greet someone, we give each other three kisses on the cheek.

Normally, we have a calender with people's birthdays in our bathroom.

We actually celebrate second Easter day and second Christmas day, and we're working on the third.

On work and school days we bring our own lunch with us from home. Usually a slice of bread with cheese, or Nutella, or peanutbutter or chocolate sprinkles. A slice of bread with peanutbutter AND chocolate sprinkles is also an acceptable lunch.

We cycle everywhere.

When it's about 15 degrees Celsius outside, we'll wear shorts.

When we celebrate our birthday with the family, we sit in a circle.

We eat dinner at 6 o'clock.

In the summer we flee to foreign countries to escape our shitty weather. The locals go out, the tourists come in.

We’re mad about iceskating. We try to skate on, for example, the canals and the lakes every winter, even if the ice is still too thin and there’s a real chance we’ll fall through and die.

Flevoland is a province of the Netherlands we made ourselves. It used to be sea.

The Netherlands is so flat the Gods can use it as a pool table.

When someone has their birthday, we don’t only congratulate them, but also all their friends and family.

…Don’t get me started on Sinterklaas, the absolute weirdest thing we Dutchies do.

Apart from partying on the canals in orange on the king’s birthday.

We’re very tall, and we even have the tallest average height of the world! Dutch guys are 183 centimeters on average, and Dutch women 169. I am 1.80m myself (5′11″ I believe). I don’t notice this much back home, but in other countries I’m a literal giant.

We're bicycle crazy. We have about 22.5 million bicycles for 17 million people. My family is especially bicycle mad. We have 10 bicycles for 4 people. My dad has a station bike, a short distance bike, a mountainbike and a race bike; my mum has a bike you can fold, a short distance bike and a long distance bike; my sister has a bike in Amsterdam and a bike at home, and I just have my one bike. We put kids on bikes when they're about 3 years old.

The nieuwjaarsduik (the new year's dive): In the morning of the first day of January, the Dutch join each other on the beach and run into the sea to greet the new year. I have to be honest, I've never even been on the beach on January first, let alone in the sea. It's just too cold. Thousands of people do this though and a lot of people I know do too.

Our houses usually have very big windows, but we rarely close the curtains. It is rude to stare or peek in though, however tempting it may be.

Among thousands of Indian families, young girls are either prohibited, prevented or at least discouraged by their parents from even talking to or socially interacting with boys. Then one fine day, (or rather night) she is expected to go to bed with a perfect stranger. This was normal in our country for centuries, but today, things are changing. —

Menswear. I love a good 3 piece suit; I look so hot!

I love having sex, I loved sleeping around when I was single, I am super sexually liberated and I have no shame about it.