The Flying Dutchman and Other Folktales from the Netherlands

Copyright © 2008 by Theo Meder

Soccer club Ajax was having serious problems. The team couldn't manage to score and was losing one game after the other.

One day, one of the scouts came up to the coach and told him that he had made a study trip to Iraq, where he discovered a fabulous soccer talent. Since the coach had hardly any other options left, he decided to have this sixteen-year-old talent come over to Amsterdam.

During the first training the coach was so impressed by the young talent's play that he offered him a contract right away.

During the first match, the coach put the young player on the reserves' bench, but at half-time Ajax was already behind 4-0 and seemed unable to score, so in the last half hour of the game the coach brought in the Iraqi boy. Within thirty minutes he scored five goals, and Ajax won the game.

The boy left the field feeling mighty proud, and the first thing he wanted to do was call his mother. He took his cell phone, called his mother, and told her of his magnificent performance, but he noticed that his mother was unable to react enthusiastically.

Finally, he asked his mother, "Mother, I scored five times, aren't you happy for me?"

"Of course I am," his mother replied, "but there are terrible things happening over here. Your father got killed, and they have tried to rape your sister and me. It's a living hell out here."

"But mother," the boy answered, "you can't blame me for this?"

"Of course I can, my son. You made us move to Amsterdam!"

This joke was sent to me bye-mail on October 16, 2003, during the war in Iraq. The storyteller is Danny Plugge (born in Vlaardingen in 1961), who works as an office manager in Rotterdam. In a way, the joke deals with the rivalry between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, the two largest cities in the Netherlands. Rotterdam owns one of the largest sea harbours in the world and is proud to be a city of hardworking common people. The people of Amsterdam think of Rotterdam as a dull city without any culture or civilization. Amsterdam considers itself to be a centre of tolerance, history, and art, while the people of Rotterdam think of Amsterdam as a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah, where chaos and abuse rule. The capital of the Netherlands has the reputation of having a high crime rate, but for years now the statistics prove that the highest crime rates are to be found in Rotterdam. The joke is a direct translation of the e-mail; it has not been published before, but can be found in the Dutch Folktale Database of the Meertens Instituut.