A widower in his nineties was terminally ill and the doctor suggested that he go to a hospice. There was room for him in The Hague. The Hague? He had to go The Hague? No matter how sick he was, he didn’t want that. He was born in Nootdorp, he had lived his life in Nootdorp, he would die in Nootdorp. “And that’s how it happened,” says the woman who tells me. “He was a real Nootdorper, so he died in Nootdorp.” She herself is in her early sixties and she always finds it difficult when people ask her if she is a real Nootdorp resident, because then she has to admit that she was born in Voorburg. “Housing shortage,” she says. “My parents lived in Voorburg for three years and only then were they able to return.”
A medieval church of which only the tower still stands, surrounded by some old houses. And around that: extensive new housing estates on what used to be farmers’ and gardeners’ land. In 1945 a few hundred people lived there, in 1991 there were five thousand, now there are 19,000. Nootdorp is located in the middle of what is administratively called the Rotterdam The Hague Metropolitan Region. Just add the A4, the A12 and the A13 and you have the picture.
Almost a third of Nootdorpers voted for the PVV in the elections in November 2023, even more than in the places surrounding Nootdorp – Pijnacker, Zoetermeer, Rijswijk – where the PVV has also become the largest. The woman who, to her sorrow, was born in Voorburg, voted for “what’s her name again, the Turkish one?” It could just as well have been Wilders. She can’t really explain why, but in the few hours I’ve been talking to her and her husband I’m starting to get an idea.
And no, they are not concerned about the newcomers. Many of those 19,000 people in Nootdorp are not even newcomers. These are the children and grandchildren of Nootdorpers who have remained in Nootdorp. Besides, this woman and this man have nothing against newcomers as long as they don’t make a mess, hold up their hands and work hard, as they always have. At the age of 12 they were peeling bulbs and carrying potatoes, later starting their own business, until they could no longer do so due to broken knees and a broken back. What is it about? I think: in a world that is changing faster than it can keep up with, they cling to who they are: a Nootdorper. Will Yesilgöz or Wilders help them? They think it’s a funny question. Politicians helping them? That would be something.
Then this. On Saturday I asked passers-by in the Nootdorp shopping center, the Parade, what they thought of politics now that there is still no government. One of them, a woman in her early thirties, holding a bicycle and a son in the seat, started talking about Omtzigt: “Who does that running away? Then you were not raised properly.”