Comment by mauvehaus
1 year ago
In heaven the cooks are Italian, the lovers are French, the mechanics are German, the police are British, and it's all organized by the Swiss.
(In hell the cooks are British, the mechanics are French, the lovers are Swiss, the police are German, and it's all organized by the Italians.)
Quote from Harry Lime character in The Third Man:
"...in Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace. And what did that produce? The cuckoo clock."
FWIW, cuckoo clocks originated in the Black Forest, southern Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo_clock
But it reminds me of the famous quote from Bertrand Russell
> My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.
(Bertrand Russell / 1872-1970 / Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization? / 1930)
http://atheisme.free.fr/Quotes/Russell.htm
Paraphrased from other Internet threads where that quote came up: Something about their mercenary army, the Swiss Guard, Euler, Einstein, the Bernoulli family, 28 Nobel laureates, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swiss_inventions_and_d...
I think Euler by himself competes pretty well with all that on behalf of the Swiss.
great quote
I think the food and climate of England were a huge driver of British Imperial expansion. The elite were desperate to get out and so the British always had a large supply of soldiers and administrators for their colonies (until they were decimated in WWI).
No. Swiss arw not good at organizing stuff. Source: I worked in a Swiss company. It was not well organized at all.
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Sounds like in hell you get your food cooked by Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver, with dessert by Mary Berry.
Could be worse.
James May bettered Gordon Ramsay in a practical cooking competition. The gearhead from TopGear baked the better fish pie. And on Ramsay's own cooking show no less.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwPmLwW1-PA
Have you actually tasted their food or just looked at pictures of it on the internet.
The best part of British food is that we're incredibly good at adopting all of the worlds cuisines' as our own. I remember being at the Belgian GP and literally you could have chips with various shaped sausage and one pizza place hiding at the back. At the British GP you could eat some variant (admittedly, probably not the best variant) of pretty much every cuisine you could imagine.
Even in our supermarkets if you want to make a Paella or Peri Peri chicken you'll find all of the ingredients you need. If you go to a Spain it's really hard to find Peri Peri and if you go to France you'll struggle to find ingredients for a Paella.
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Anyone complaining about British food has never eaten Dutch "cuisine". After having lived in both countries I'll always defend the Brits when it comes to food.
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I haven't done either. Which do you do?
“Hell’s Kitchen”