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Dit is wat er gebeurt zonder interculturele achtergrond :)

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Dit is wat er gebeurt zonder interculturele achtergrond :)

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Ridiculous Stereotypes About Different European Countries

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Today we will look at all the European Union countries and look at the most common stereotype about them! Don't be offended! This is just what we found online! Let us know if we are completely off!

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Why people think Germans are so efficient.

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Why people think Germans are so efficient.

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In summer 2011, I was working at a small Berlin travel agency and facing a conundrum: my clients literally held tickets to nowhere. Their planes would be taking off shortly, but their destination - Berlin-Brandenburg Airport - would not be open to welcome them. Six summers have since come and gone, but each year the same news, almost gleeful at this point, trickles out of that massive construction site south of the capital: the project has gone billions over budget and is nowhere close to opening. So whatever happened to German efficiency?

If the overdue airport weren't enough of a hint, I'll let you in on a secret: German efficiency is a myth, with roots in religion, nationalism, enlightenment thought and a few major wars. It may have reached its pinnacle in the 20th Century, but since then it's survived as a useful stand-in for everything that confuses the world about Germans - that in spite of a war that decimated them, a wall that divided them, a currency designed to weaken them and a financial crisis that could have ended them, they still seem to come out on top.

Just not where airports are concerned.

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Much like German humour, German efficiency (or the lack of it), is often a hot topic among visitors as they marvel at trains that follow their schedules to the minute, pristine autobahns where German-produced cars seem to drive at warp speed (while getting into statistically fewer accidents), and, perhaps every foreigner's favourite gripe, citizens who wait for the walk signal before crossing the street - and admonish you if you don't do the same.

Yet what they mistake for German efficiency is, in many instances, a German fondness for rules - a trait that leaves foreigners equally puzzled. While rule following may help in the seamless execution of everyday tasks, it doesn't really make a difference when it comes to big, symbolic projects of national significance. Berlin culture mavens waiting for the long-extended renovation of the Staatsoper (State Opera House) would concur; so would those in Hamburg who saw costs balloon for their new philharmonic hall.

Sooner or later, however, talk of German efficiency always points to Prussia. Known for its militarism, nationalism and ruthless work ethic, the kingdom spanned centuries, and, at its 19th-Century peak, much of northern Germany and present-day Poland. Supposedly, while the humourless northerly Prussians were busy marching around, coaxing potatoes out of arid, infertile land, the Bavarians were happily swilling beer in warmer climes.

The gulf between the two was further widened by Prussia's adoption of Lutheran Protestantism. It was Martin Luther who had imagined a new kind of German Christianity far from the Catholic confines of the Holy Roman Empire, and his writings further shaped the image of Germans as hard-working, law-abiding and authority supporting (by no coincidence, the same characteristics Hannah Arendt would observe during the Adolf Eichmann trials when she coined the term 'banality of evil' to explain how Germany could have allowed Nazism).

What is mistaken for German efficiency is, in many instances, a German fondness for rules

Prussia not only laid claim to these characteristics; it also helped them become national traits. Up until the mid-19th Century, Germany had been little more than a cluster of disparate kingdoms banding together once in a while for border disputes with the French or Slavs. Prussia changed all that when it fought off Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and steered the country towards what begins to look like modern-day Germany.

In fact, according to James Hawes, author of The Shortest History of Germany (2017), it was this victory that really cemented the image of German efficiency. To the British in the early 19th Century, "Germany [was] this kind of backward country... Then suddenly, seemingly overnight, they crushed the French... the premier military power in Europe. It seemed like a kind of weird, black miracle at the time."

Gone were the images of lush romantics and wine-drinking philosophers, of dark forests and rolling hills and lone travellers overlooking hazy vistas à la painter Caspar David Friedrich. All of Germany - or at least the most that ever had been - was now captive to militant Prussia, and all of Europe knew the Prussians were a people to watch out for.

All of Europe knew the Prussians were a people to watch out for

By the start of World War I, this was more than just a fear of the 'other', Hawes explained. "If you're going to make the world safe for democracy... it's handy to be able to say that your enemy is almost alien in its weirdness... its superhuman cunning." WWI propaganda posters, some of which can be viewed at Berlin's Deutsches Historisches Museum (DHM), upheld this myth, superimposing the face of the German Kaiser on a spider's body, and generally promoting the image of Germans as all-knowing, all-seeing and omnipresent.

But why does this obsession with German efficiency still exist today, even though it should have rightfully been quashed by Allied victory in 1945? Markus Hesselmann, local editor at Tagesspiegel, has an idea, though he's not too keen on admitting it: "In Britain... there is a very strange kind of fascination (I have to be very careful how I phrase this) of Nazi Germany. There is this wish to strip away all the bad things [about the Nazis] and leave only the things you respect..."

Members of the former Allied powers, the US and UK chief among them, like to marvel at how the Germans were hobbled by reparations after WWI yet still emerged to fight a second war - though those sanctions were partly responsible for that war. They like to believe the Wirtschaftswunder or 'economic miracle' of the 1950s and '60s was due to a ruthlessly efficient work ethic, ignoring just how much money was being pumped in to bolster West Germany against the Russians. As Hawes points out, the myth "has nothing to do with history and more to do with fantasy". In making a myth of the Germans, we make a myth of ourselves.

Perhaps no-one knows this better than non-German Germans; those who have settled here from elsewhere and encountered stringent rules and unending bureaucracy in daily life, even as public works like Berlin's airport languish.

In a delightfully ironic twist of fate, though, the much-maligned airport now offers guided tours. So, in addition to Berlin history museums like the DHM, brazen battle monuments like the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory Column, and the chilling Holocaust memorial, visitors can now add Germany's latest folly to their itinerary.

In making a myth of the Germans, we make a myth of ourselves

According to Joseph Pearson, however, who explores German idiosyncrasies on his blog The Needle and in his upcoming book Berlin, the delayed airport shouldn't be denigrated but celebrated precisely because it contradicts the long-held myth; a sign of history correcting its course.

When things like the airport don't work out, "It humanises the Germans; it shows that they don't fit easily into useful stereotypes that foreigners might have about them," he told me, adding, "Nearly every example of German inefficiency makes me as happy as it does frustrated."
If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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Why people think Germans are so efficient

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In summer 2011, I was working at a small Berlin travel agency and facing a conundrum: my clients literally held tickets to nowhere. Their planes would be taking off shortly, but their destination - Berlin-Brandenburg Airport - would not be open to welcome them.

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Wat te doen in een interculturele situatie?

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Wat vinden jullie ervan?
Hoe ziet jullie profiel eruit?

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I'd only been living in Amsterdam for a year when we met my husband's friends in one of the many cafes and bars in the city's famous Vondelpark.

We chose our seats and waited, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen. When he finally materialised, seemingly out of nowhere, he didn't ask 'What would you like to order', or 'What can I get you?'. He said 'What do you want?'. Maybe it was the fact that he'd said it in English, or maybe he was just having a bad day, but I was shocked nonetheless.

My Dutch teacher later explained that the Dutch are very direct - and nowhere are they so direct as they are in Amsterdam.

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Ben Coates, who wrote Why the Dutch Are Different , moved to the Netherlands from Great Britain eight years ago. He recalls similar experiences, specifically one situation when he got a haircut and a friend immediately pointed out that it didn't suit him at all.

"I think the Netherlands are a place where... no-one is going to pretend . [For example], when you say something in a business meeting that is not a very smart suggestion, people will always point it out," he said.

No-one is going to pretend

To Coates, the differences between his native Britain and the Netherlands were immediately noticeable. In Great Britain, he says, people tend to communicate and behave in a way that minimises offense to other people.

"You don't talk too loudly on the train because it's not too nice for the people in your compartment; you don't play your music too loud in your apartment because it's not so nice for your neighbours; there is this constant calibrating of your own behaviour," Coates explained. But in the Netherlands, there is "the sense that people have the right to say whatever they want and be as direct as they want. And if other people don't like that, it's their fault for getting offended."

To many foreigners, this give-it-to you-straight mentality can come across as inconsiderate, perhaps even arrogant. One time, I found myself at the supermarket staring with disbelief at the groceries that had spilled out of my hands onto the floor. Within seconds, I was surrounded by no fewer than 10 Dutch people, all of them giving me advice on what to do. But not one lifted a finger. To me, the situation was obvious: I needed help immediately. But the Dutch saw it differently: unless I specifically asked for help, it probably wasn't necessary.

We think truthfulness goes before empathy

"Others may think that we don't have empathy. And maybe that is so because we think truthfulness goes before empathy ," explained Eleonore Breukel, an interculturalist who trains people to communicate better in multicultural environments.

In the end, it all comes down to differences in communication patterns, said Breukel, who is Dutch but has lived all over the world. She believes the Dutch tendency to be very direct has to do with straightforwardness, which in turn is connected to the historical prevalence of Calvinism in the Netherlands (even though, according to , the vast majority of Dutch people don't associate with any religion today).

After the start of the Reformation in the 16th Century, Calvinism spread to France, Scotland and the Netherlands . But it only had noticeable impact in the latter, where it coincided with the fight for independence against Catholic Spain, which ruled over the Netherlands from 1556 to 1581. In 1573, the Dutch prince William the Silent (called Willem van Oranje in Dutch), the founder of the Royal House of Orange that rules the Netherlands today, converted from Catholicism to Calvinism and united the country behind him. As a result, the Calvinist religion had a large impact on national identity because the Dutch associated Catholicism with Spanish oppression.

From that moment on, "Calvinism dictated the individual responsibility for moral salvage from the sinful world through introspection, total honesty, soberness, rejection of 'pleasure' as well as the 'enjoyment' of wealth," writes Breukel in an article on Dutch business culture published on her website.

This straightforwardness is so intrinsic in Dutch society that there's even a Dutch word for it: bespreekbaarheid (speakability) - that everything can and should be talked about; there are no taboo topics.

In fact, directness and the idea of transparency that goes with it is a highly desirable trait to the Dutch. Many of the older houses in the Netherlands have big windows, allowing visitors - if they so wish - to peep inside.

"There is a totally different concept of privacy ," Coates said, noting the tendency of the Dutch people to discuss intimate topics in public.

"You sit in a restaurant with a friend and they will happily, in a room full of strangers, talk quite loudly about their medical problems or their parents' divorce or their love life. They see no reason to keep it a secret."

There is a totally different concept of privacy

In fact, from an outside point of view, it seems that every topic, no matter how difficult, should be up for debate. The Netherlands is unique in the way it treats topics such as prostitution, drugs and euthanasia. The latter is fully legalised but highly controlled, while the Red-Light District is a famous part of Amsterdam. While marijuana is no longer entirely legal, authorities have a so-called tolerance policy where coffee shops are not prosecuted for selling it.

But Breukel disagrees with the premise that the Dutch don't have taboo topics. "We don't discuss salaries, we don't discuss pensions. Anything to do with luxury. We don't talk about how beautiful our house is. We don't discuss how big our car is," she added.

Moreover, she said that the Dutch don't want to acknowledge anything that might hint at inequality or power relationships. This is because of the so-called poldermodel , the Dutch practice of policymaking by consensus between government, employers and trade unions. The word 'polder' refers to pieces of land reclaimed from the sea. According to The Economist , to make the building of polders possible and to guard the country from the ever-present threat from the sea , the Dutch had to cooperate and work well together. This seeped down to family life where children's voices count almost as much as those of the parents.

"We have an egalitarian culture. And in that egalitarian culture, we don't want to make a difference between the boss and the employee," Breukel said. In other words, there are rules of behaviour that everyone has to follow, and that, again, is visible in language. Proverbs such as ' Doe maar normaal, dan ben je al gek genoeg' (just be normal, that's already crazy enough) or ' Steek je hoofd niet boven het maaiveld uit' (don't put your head above the ground) are there to remind us that we are all the same.

As for me, I am learning to communicate better in the direct, Dutch way. Breukel advised me to start with the subject - for example, 'I would like an appointment' - instead of listing all the reasons why I should see the doctor. I've also learned to ask for help, instead of expecting it to be offered. And although I may complain about Dutch directness, I'm grateful to live in a country that allows me to be just that.
EDITOR'S NOTE: A previous version of this article incorrectly spelled the Dutch word 'Steek'. If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital and Travel, delivered to your inbox every Friday.

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I'd only been living in Amsterdam for a year when we met my husband's friends in one of the many cafes and bars in the city's famous Vondelpark. We chose our seats and waited, but the waiter was nowhere to be seen.