Between two pieces of bread lies infinite space. Flexible space. Space that can expand and contract as you please. Between two pieces of bread lies imagination. Between two pieces of bread, anything is possible.
These possibilities have not been lost on the populations of most countries, where the sandwich is an important national food. The potential has certainly not been lost on the British, who have taken the empty space between bread slices to beautiful heights. Even we Americans are quite capable of doing legendary things between slices.
But then there are the Swiss. Although there are more kinds of bread in Switzerland than just about anywhere else on the planet, the Swiss just don’t seem to know what to do once they cut it up and lie two slices on the table. Unlike most exposed to the potential of the empty space, they take the bread and then proceed to make sandwiches of an undeniable mind-numbingly mundane standard.
The root cause seems to be that the Swiss just don’t get the idea that the sandwich is an expandable thing. They approach two slices of bread as if there were meant to stay close together, as if there was barely any room between them. To the Swiss, it would seem, it’s a lucky thing that you can even fit more than a bit of butter in there.
The butter, really, is where things start to go wrong. They slap the bread with butter on both sides, then press a limp pickle (gherkin) into the bread until it’s almost hidden, like a little surprise, then insert a very thin slice of egg that seems totally lost and misplaced and then…..then…perhaps a few slices of bunderfleisch. Or perhaps a couple of slices of cheese. Or maybe some of that chicken in the yellow curry sauce (if they are feeling really couragous). Then they close the sandwich. That’s it.
It does not seem to have occured them them that they could do so much more between those slices of bread. That perhaps you could put meat and cheese in there. Perhaps some lettuce. Perhaps some onions. Perhaps a pepper or two. Perhaps, thinking about it and now really getting the courage up, some mustard. There is plenty of room! Throw it all in. Bacon, anyone?
What is going on here? It may be that in a small country, the idea that space is infinite is difficult to accept. Smaller sandwiches just feel better when land is scarce. Or maybe it’s that meat and cheese living together in the same confined space is troublesome for a country struggling with diversity. Whatever it is, it deserves careful thought. For across the country, every lunchtime, millions of office workers stare into a sandwich cabinet, tearfully wondering why they can have a bacon sandwich, a lettuce sandwich or a tomato sandwich, but not all at once.
