Culture shock? What culture shock?

So when I visited some websites dedicated to year abroad people I've laughed at pages on dealing with culture shock. I mean, I was going to Netherlands. It's in Europe. It's not a Third World country. And I've been here before a few times. What culture shock could I possibly get?

And then it turns out it's not so simple. The culture shock somehow has happened. Maybe not so much as it might have if I went to some exotic country, and yet.

First shock came about when everything progressed really slowly. If time is money, the Dutch must be very rich. It might be just my bad luck, but I've encountered one of the worst customer services ever (apart the one in the Town Hall, they were absolutely brilliant).

Another shocking thing was that everyone looks the same here. I mean the natives. The guys all wear the same kind of clothes and excessive quantity of gel on their shoulder-length hair. This looks really ridiculous. And the girls also wear the same sort of clothes. In Oxford you can meet people with green hair, blue hair, wearing something hippie, or dressed completely in black, or wearing some sort of traditional outfit. Nothing like this appears here. This is really strange for me. And it makes me unnecessarily anxious about what I wear.

And then there is a fact that everyone speak Dutch, which is sometimes rather intimidating, because I can only understand single words. When I've arrived in Rotterdam a week ago, I stopped in the middle of the station hall and hearing all those unfamiliar sounds I though: 'Kat, you're completely mad, what are you doing here, honestly.' And I still feel like that, though I'm trying to pull myself together to actually use some of the Dutch I know, limited as it is. But it's hard.

One last thing: everyone drives and cycles on the right. You think that it shouldn't be a problem for me as a Pole, but believe, I got so used to the left side traffic, that I actually did try to cycle on the left (not a good idea when there are other bikes and cars approaching from the opposite) and still need to keep shouting at myself that I'm supposed to look LEFT not right.