“After I was about 11 years outdated, we had an American boy stick with us for every week, an trade pupil,” she recalled. “And my mom instructed him, simply make your personal sandwich such as you do in America. As an alternative of placing one sausage on his bread, he placed on 5. My mom was too well mannered to say something to him, however to me she mentioned in Dutch, ‘We are going to by no means eat like that on this home.’”
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In school, Ms. Verkoelen realized from pals that the American youngsters of their properties all ate the identical means. They had been shocked and a bit of jealous. On the time, it was mentioned within the Netherlands that placing each butter and cheese in your bread was “the satan’s sandwich.” Select one, went the considering. You don’t want each.
Constructing the earth’s greatest crusing yacht and taking aside a metropolis’s beloved landmark? That’s the satan’s all-you-can-eat buffet.
The streak of austerity in Dutch tradition will be traced to Calvinism, say residents, the most well-liked non secular department of Protestantism right here for a whole lot of years. It emphasizes virtues like self-discipline, frugality and conscientiousness. Polls recommend that most individuals within the Netherlands as we speak aren’t churchgoers, however the norms are embedded, as evidenced by Dutch attitudes towards wealth.
“Calvin teaches that you simply’re given stewardship over your cash, that you’ve got a accountability to handle it, which implies giving a number of it away, being beneficiant to others,” mentioned James Kennedy, a professor of recent Dutch historical past at Utrecht College. “Work is a divine calling for which you can be held accountable. It’s thought of dangerous for society and dangerous in your soul should you spend in ostentatious methods.”
There are billionaires within the Netherlands and an enormous pay hole between chief executives and workers. Statista, a research firm, reported that for each greenback earned by a mean employee, C.E.O.s earned $171. (The determine is $265 in america, the widest hole of any nation.) The distinction is that the wealthy within the Netherlands don’t flaunt it, simply because the highly effective don’t spotlight their cachet. The Dutch as soon as ran one of many world’s largest empires however there’s a sure pleasure right here that the prime minister of the nation rides a bicycle to pay visits to the king — sure, the Netherlands has a royal household, which can also be comparatively low-key — and locks the bicycle exterior the palace.
