I may owe some people an apology. There's probably not many of them, but still. The thing is, I distinctly remember using the word Holland for the country with Amsterdam as its capital. But in reading stuff after Stephanie and Sarah left, I ran into this. So apparently, "Holland" and "the Netherlands" are not interchangeable terms. Holland is merely a province (nowadays 2 provinces, South and North) of the Netherlands. Oh and to think that here in the Balkans we just about kill each other over names... [Shudder]. 

So Holland (the province) used to be the most developed province and the name just caught on. It seems as if a number of important cities (Rotterdam and Amsterdam included) do fall into the South/North Holland province. I would imagine though how someone from a city in another province (say, someone from Utrecht, Maastricht or Groningen) would be less than happy with me calling their country Holland. Or maybe not so much? Maybe it is only here, in this crazyland called the Balkans that we take things this seriously? Oh perhaps not, because the ministry's website says: "This website used to use ‘Holland’ instead of ‘the Netherlands’ to make page and menu titles shorter, but we received emails from Dutch visitors who objected." Oddly, this makes me feel a bit better, in a weird way. Of course, it bothers me that in Macedonian the only way I can refer to this country is Холандија (Hollandia)...as I am sure in other languages as well.

To make up for past mistakes (and against my original urge to talk about Rotterdam and Amsterdam), I'm dedicating this post to the other 10 provinces of the Netherlands and sharing with you photos found on Flickr from non-Holland places in the Netherlands. Enjoy!

Oh and also, in case you missed the news, the CouchLog is now also on Facebook. Come and join our family!