Author: bbr

Hello, I am Beate Brinkman, the bbr.harlekin. I am editor and author for Harlekin.Blog e.V. and my “main job” is support coordinator in an international IT company. So far I have worked in German, Dutch, American and Indian companies and have acquired a great deal of experience of multicultural cooperation. I have been living in the Netherlands as a German for many years and have discovered that the cultural differences between Germans and Dutch alone could fill entire books. For professional and private reasons, I am particularly interested in multicultural (mis)understanding. Whether it’s about food, language, official conference calls or the organisation of funerals – when the cultures of several countries collide, things get lively. And that leads to sometimes unpleasant, often very funny, but always instructive situations.

Beschuitjes met muisjes

New frontier experiences on my gastronomic journey through the Netherlands

When a baby is born, this happy event is of course duly celebrated, and in Germany there are numerous possibilities for this. In my homeland, the Ruhr area, where things tend traditionally to be rather robust, fathers often buy a round in the pub and let “the baby pee”. I’ve also heard of the grandmothers’ huge cake creations, but I don’t know of any nationwide tradition of celebrating the arrival of a baby across state borders.

In the Netherlands it’s different: in the whole country when the baby is born, there is almost the same culinary variant to which people are invited -beschuitjes with muisjes. “What’s that?” – you will ask yourself.

Kartoffelklöße, Flädlesuppe and Soleier (aka potato dumplings, pancake soup and soused eggs)

On unsettling Dutch experiences of the culinary kind in Germany

Fairness obliges me in the second part of my series on the differences between Dutch and German food, to give the Dutch their chance to marvel at the peculiarities of the German cuisine. In my experience this mostly occurs with regional specialities.

When my husband first set eyes on potato dumplings he asked why anyone would want to grate something as perfect and tasty as a potato into a sort of dough only then to shape it back into something that looked like a potato! He thought that was completely inefficient – and I have to admit he is not absolutely wrong.

Croquettes und Bitter Balls

After the appearance of my article “Food – a Test of Courage” I was asked by German travellers to the Netherlands to go into more detail on the peculiarities of the Dutch cuisine. Some of the host country’s culinary offerings are very confusing for German guests.

That applies the other way around too, of course. My Dutch husband, who, like all honest people who don’t like cooking, rarely gripes about the food prepared by others, once said quite horrified: “Well, I just don’t understand the German health department ever allowing this!” The subject of this comment at the time was potato dumplings – but more on this in the second part.