Just when you thought you had it sorted, the Netherlands goes full empire expansion mode. It includes three special municipalities in the Caribbean: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, and Saba. These are islands with palm trees, not windmills. And they are fully part of the Netherlands, not just colonies.
Map Holland Vs Netherlands at Stella Eleanora blog
So you can stand on a beach in Bonaire, sip a coconut, and legally be in the exact same country as a guy in a wool sweater skating on a frozen canal in Friesland. That’s not a travel hack; that’s just the Netherlands being a chaos goblin with a flag.
Also, the country has its own islands that are autonomous countries within the kingdom (Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten). So technically, the Netherlands is a kingdom of islands and dykes. The bureaucracy must be a nightmare.
