I am not a city person. It's not sure if I ever been one although I spent many years living nearby ("underneath the smoke of" like we call it) Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and Arnhem. Three cities, capital cities of different provinces. The way people talk in Rotterdam feels home to me, next to Utrecht/Amsterdam. I never got used to the dialect in Arnhem although many speak Dutch without an accent. The cities I mentioned are completely different from the ones in the North, East, and South part of the country.
North and East have a different way of communicating. Only a few words are used and some might even sound unfriendly although it isn't meant that way. Somehow I never got used to it although I was born there, lived in that area for a while but it's not home. Might be because it was too short. The imprint wasn't long enough or during the wrong age? Many people are closed in the North and East, are or act like introverts but they are not as hostile as in the South.
They say people in the south are warm, attentive, you are always welcome, etc but I can assure you it's not true. Not if it comes to outsiders. The worst years in my life I spent in a city in the South. My last year at school. A Catholic school where teachers were extremely hostile to those who were not born and raised in the area. Hostile and rude, discriminating pupils who spoke Dutch instead of the dialect. Those they kicked harder, even taught in dialect, something which is forbidden by law. The principal was born and raised in the west (province Noord-Holland) and warned me. "You will have a very hard time here", he told me as I introduced myself. While I thought it was a joke he spoke out of his own experiences, he knew the sick mentality of the people, the teachers. Apparently, he couldn't fight it, only warn those who concerned it. To those who think this was only the school, they are wrong. The whole city, each shopkeeper, the servants at restaurants all behaved this way. They totally ignored you if you wanted to order something. If so it was safer to speak German.
Somehow I still find it sad the principal turned out to be right. Sad as well is the hospitality those people brag about (mainly based on eating, drinking, partying, celebrating carnival, being drunk) turns out not to be true. There's no hospitality, neither a " knock and you will be answered". The most friendly and helpful people you find in the cities in the west and Utecht. Cities where religion doesn't rule, people are flexible, willing to move, and embrace others once in a while without any exception.
Hmmm.... I'm speechless