[lodi90]

A long while back LA Raiders caps/hats/beenies were all the rage over here in the Netherlands. I bet none of them knew what NFL was though so lots of people just buy them to look a certain way too.

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They knew. It was a fashion connected to American rappers wearing Raiders gear. NWA in particular. I saw a guy wearing a Long Beach hat in Utrecht and struck up a conversation about it. As a near native Californian it was amusing to me. Then there was the guy I met on a train in NL who had played baseball at a college in Illinois and named his dog “Kirby Puckett.” Dutch folks are very connected to American pop culture. Much more so than most parts of Europe in my experience.

[knighthawk]

Used to live close to Utrecht over 20 years ago (a town called Culemborg), moved back to the south though were things are more relaxed.

[familyop]

"Then there was the guy I met on a train in NL who had played baseball at a college in Illinois and named his dog 'Kirby Puckett.'"

That's funny. An old woman relative of mine was named Hilda. The reason for that was a secret shared between her and her father. An ancestor of theirs, you see, was from Hesse-Kassel and landed in early America in the early 1700s.

Her son-in-law named his dog after her. Yes, Hilda. ;D

She was very much into ethnic identity concerns, secretly reveling in her German-hood while holding herself forth as being 100% English.

I had a sow as a Future Farmers of America project. With consideration for my older, acerbic female relative with her attitude of false superiority and condescension, I named that sow Gertrude on the advice of her son-in-law. Gertrude grew to be well over 600 pounds. ;D