Suna in Wonderland

Dutch people say they do not believe in superstition. As a Korean and personally, I am bit superstitious. When I break dish, I try not to go outside (in order to avoid any potential accident), I close all the wardrobe door when I go to sleep and I don’t pile up the dishes when I am eating.

When my Dutch boyfriend discovered about my superstition belief, he laughed and mentions that Dutch people generally not believe in those superstitions. However I did not believe that, try to give him little revenge, I decided to look for Dutch superstition.

Turned out to be there are bunch of Dutch superstitions and in fact I could observe some of the movement through my boyfriend and other Dutch friends.

1. If you don’t look into eyes during toast, you will have 7 years bad sex or no sex at all!

Every time I had drink with Dutch people, they all told me this. As being Korean, looking into eyes directly (especially to someone who is older than you) generally means to challenge or be rude. Plus girls are bit too shy to look into guy’s eyes in the beginning of date.

And that was me.When I was first dating my boyfriend I really had problem with eye contact. I was too shy to look at his eyes but he thought I was hiding something from him. (he told me later ) He said, if someone does not make eye contact, he would feel either ignored or opponent is not a honest person.

Like this, Dutch people think eye contact is one of most important gesture when it comes to communication. So I guess this superstition is bit obvious to them. I have feeling that someone must become angry by a person who did not make eye-contact that come up with curse word as ‘you will have 7 years bad sex, if you don’t look at me!’ haha where does this superstition origin, I have no idea.

2. Broken dish means Good luck

Last summer, I was invited to my boyfriend’s parent’s house. Together with his family, we went to France for summer vacation. It was really new experience for me, since we stayed in France camping not staying in hotel. So time to time we took a turn to do dishes.

One day, right before depart to next destination, I accidently broke a dish while washing up and I totally freaked out. In Korea, breaking dish would mean bad luck or there is going to be some trouble ahead that day. Since it was not my dish, I still had to inform this to my boyfriend.

He said don’t worry but when we return to his parents he told his mom that I broke a dish. OMG I could not believe my ears. I was shocked and stared at him with bit of haterism. But soon, i was relieved. Instead of frown face, I saw smiley face from both him and his parents. Turned out to be in the Netherlands, broken dish means good luck and the more pieces the more good luck to come. If it was Korea/or my family, we would have postponed the travel or continue traveling feeling uncomfortable.

3. Knock on the wood

I have noticed several times when Dutch people say something bad, they would knock on the wood or knock on somewhere hard about three times.

If you say bad things such as; “if someone die’ or ‘If accident happens..”, Korean people would usually get angry since we have proverb saying “ words become seeds” which means what you saying can really happen so be careful what you are saying

I did bit of research on this superstition, but I could not find orgin of the Netherlands instead i found origin of their neighboring country, Germany. According to Wikipedia, Knock on the wood probably comes old German traditions of spitting over your left shoulder three times for the purpose of warding off the Devil. Perhaps when this superstition came to Netherlands, it transformed into knocking on the wood. However, according to my boyfriend, this action is to show that what he saying is not an intention.

Some superstitions are very similar and some are totally opposite. Interesting to see find out the different/ same belief. I found tones of other Dutch superstitions; I will be sharing bits by bits next time.