Tea Ceremony?
April 19, 2005 at 10:19 AM
by Ashleigh
Whenever you buy something in the Netherlands that requires a sit-down or an appointment of some sort, like buying a kitchen, buying a bathroom, talking to the bank, discussing with the mortgage advisor, going to the lawyer, any of these sort of things; all require coffee as the social lubricant.
Until recently Brad would refuse a coffee and the result was a stilted to-ing and fro-ing on the part of the coffee offerer. Something that went like this:
I think part of it is that the salesperson or advisor wants a coffee too and feels they can't have one without the client having one too, but also that its so deeply ingrained as a custom that any refusal leaves the person somewhat bereft.
'Would you like a coffee, sir?''No thanks'
'Tea, fruit juice'
'No thanks, I'm fine'
'Are you sure?'
'No, really, I just had a drink'
'Ok, then we'll get started ... are you sure you don't want a coffee?'
Recently, we've sussed this out and now, Brad will drink a coffee just to appease the majority - even though it leaves him leaping around for the rest of the day ;)
A bit of research led me to this rather interesting page on coffee and its history where we see that coffee came later to the Netherlands than to the rest of Europe. Dutch coffee nowadays is a fierce brew, almost as strong as an espresso and served in smaller cups than the usual British/American coffees. Its so strong as to be virtually undrinkable (depending on which cafe you visit). In the cafes in Amsterdam (not usually in the suburbs) you can get 'American' coffee, which is weaker than Dutch coffee, but the smart tourist asks for a 'koffie verkeerd'.
wikipedia translates this as:
And in English:Koffie verkeerd is de benaming voor een kop koffie met qua volume meer melk dan koffie. Verkeerd dus, want "normaal" zit er meer koffie in dan melk.
Het is de Nederlandse naam van de Franse café au lait.
De gelijkenis met de Italiaanse cappuccino is beperkt tot de verhouding koffie/melk. Een koffie verkeerd bevat over het algemeen geen kap van opgeschuimde melk.
Koffie verkeerd (wrong coffee) is the name for a cup of coffee with a greater volume of milk than coffee. 'Wrong' then because 'normal' coffee has more coffee in it than milk.So, what's your coffee situation?It is the Dutch name for the French café au lait.
The similarity to the Italian cappuccino is restricted by the proportion of coffee to milk. A 'koffie verkeerd' generally has no cap of frothed milk.