Sep 17, 2026
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Tracing Your Dutch Ancestry
A practical guide to finding your Netherlands roots and planning a meaningful heritage journey from New Zealand.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
There’s a version of the Netherlands that tourists rarely find. It’s in Jordaan on a Saturday morning, where the Noordermarkt smells of fresh bread and old cheese. It’s in Utrecht, where canal-level wharfs have become the most beautiful cafés in Europe. It’s in Delft, where Vermeer’s light still falls across the same brick walls.
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Photo by Göksu Göktepe via Pexels
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In today’s email:
- Discover Your Dutch Roots in New Zealand: A Heritage Guide for Dutch-New Zealanders
- At The Café — Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
- Around The Web — How Much Does It Cost to Retire in the Netherlands? (2026 Budget Guide for Americans), 7-Day Dutch Heritage Itinerary: Trace Your Roots Across the Netherlands, The Love Netherlands Guide № 004: Dutch Jenever + more
- From Love Netherlands — Volendam Day Trip from Amsterdam: Your Complete 2026 Guide
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
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Discover Your Dutch Roots in New Zealand: A Heritage Guide for Dutch-New Zealanders
👉 Read the full story
Your grandparents crossed fifteen thousand kilometres to start a new life. They packed their whole world into a few suitcases, boarded a ship, and sailed away from the Netherlands forever. Now you want to know where they came from. Dutch New Zealand ancestry is more common than many people realise. Around 100,000 New Zealanders carry Dutch heritage. Most arrived between 1950 and 1975, during one of the most organised mass emigrations in Dutch history. This guide helps you trace those roots, find the records, and plan a journey back to the land your family left behind. Why Dutch Families Came to New Zealand The Netherlands in 1945 was a broken country. Five years of German occupation had left cities damaged, families fractured, and the economy in ruins. The government still rationed food. Families with four, five, or six children could not find enough space to live, let alone enough work…
👉 Read the full story
Have you been there? Do you have a memory of this corner of the Netherlands? Hit reply and tell us — we’d love to hear your story.
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At The Café
Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
Café Chris on the Bloemstraat opened in 1624 — making it, depending on whom you ask, the oldest continuously operating bar in Amsterdam. The bell-pull next to the urinal is still wired to the bar, so the bartender knows when to flush. The walls hold framed Ajax memorabilia from the 1970s, and the regulars are mostly Jordaan locals who have been coming since their fathers brought them in for the first jenever. It’s small, it’s loud on Saturday nights, and it’s one of the most authentic brown cafés left in the city.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Thirty kilometres north of Amsterdam, the fishing village of Volendam sits quietly on the shore of the Markermeer, its painted wooden houses stacked tight along a crescent harbour that has barely changed in a century. For travellers wanting a day away from city crowds, Volendam delivers something that few Dutch destinations manage: genuine village character, exceptional waterfront food and a visual spectacle you will remember long after you…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo: Shutterstock
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
Every spring, a Dutch ritual unfolds on the streets of Amsterdam, The Hague, and Scheveningen. Herring stalls put out the year’s first catch — the Hollandse nieuwe — and locals queue to eat it raw, tipped back by the tail, sometimes on a soft white roll with onions. It tastes of the sea and of brine and, if you’re lucky, of nothing at all in the best possible way. Foreigners tend to grimace the first time. The Dutch laugh gently. “Three bites,” they say. “Then you love it forever.” They are usually right.
👉 Read the full story
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