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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dioltach" data-source="post: 4746070" data-attributes="member: 21843">I'm British, but I've been living in the Netherlands since I was four, and having both British and Dutch nationality I fall under Dutch national service rules.Until the mid-1990s the Netherlands had the draft for men (or alternative national service for conscientious objectors, like Mustrum Ridcully described for Germany). Around your 18th birthday you'd be summoned for a physical and mental check-up, and if you passed you'd be drafted. You could get the draft postponed if you were still following some form of education, though, and since most forms of higher education are virtually free here, most men would keep studying for as long as possible.Of course there were all kinds of protests in the early 1990s, mostly to do with the fact that it was considered unfair that men had this obligation and women didn't, and in the post-Cold War era it was felt that the draft was no longer necessary. Toward the end, a lot of people simply refused to show up when they got drafted, and eventually it was abolished, just before I graduated university.My check-up was scheduled for 8 am on the morning after the last day of Carnival, and in the southern -- predominantly Catholic -- provinces of the Netherlands Carnival is a big deal: basically five days of drink and dissipation. Needless to say, most of the lads at the examination centre (and to be honest most of the staff there too) were severely hung over and desparately short on sleep. I have no idea how I passed: my eyes were so blurry I could barely make out any of the letters on the eye chart and my ears were ringing so hard that I couldn't hear any of the beeps.</blockquote>

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