OT: Holland

Just theorising - but it's a flat country, so more likely that the population is better spread.

UK towns and cities tend to be over-crowded because the hilly / mountainous nature of the UK means were much more restricted as to where we can build towns.

That might be it. A byproduct of how housing's developed is that most of the best farmland has been built on... The germans aren't very far behind us in terms of population density either though. I think we also tend towards having a "mega whatever" in England that you have to drive to, whereas when I've been to Holland you're never very far from a supermarket, but they're Aldi or Lidl sized rather than Tesco Extras...

It's referring to IQ.

I always thought that was Belgium.

I think you must have been in Holland at a quiet time or a less populated area. While Holland has an excellent and cheap public transport system many do drive and Dutch friends of mine say the traffic jams are bad at peak hours, also I have been in many shops in Utrecht and other places in the more populated areas of Holland and wouldn't say the crowds are any different to those in the UK. I don't know where you have been in Holland but the main population is mostly the upper left quadrant IIRC, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Rotterdam, Den Haag, and that sort of area, much of the rest of the country being more rural.

I've been to Rotterdam. Maybe England just feels more crowded because people manage to avoid walking straight into you. My experience has been that a trip into town and parking in Rotterdam takes about 10 minutes by car on a Saturday, whereas the same thing in Sheffield would be 30 mins for the same distance.

The Dukes of Holland live there!