And yes it stinks of "we'll live with the hard part of telling other people what to do".
You clearly haven't dealt with German managers at their companies operating in Eastern Europe ;)
Jokes aside, "behaving badly abroad while showing their best behavior at home" is basically yet another proud colonial tradition, isn't it?
I wish this didn't ring so true. It is so prevalent that for those who were raised locally and who went through said university schooling it is still painfully easy to distinguish from which student union in which city these guys originate based on how they treat each other, even when they graduated decades ago. Which ironically means that they are guilty of the kind of primitive tribalistic nonsense that they project onto other cultures.
... actually, now that I wrote that out, I guess that could partially explain a few things as well.
(and I'm well aware that this is not a problem unique to the Netherlands, but it still sucks)
I was working for a major Dutch electronics company and it was interesting to watch how whenever colleagues from their US/German brach would come visit the Dutch managers would treat them like equals and invite them to drinks and dinners but whenever colleagues from their Czech/China/Singapore branch would visit, the Dutch managers would politely pretend they don't exist.
As an Eastern European immigrant, I can think of worse things you can be called in the West than Maestro!. You have no idea how good you have it.
Oh man, the amount of Dutch "we're going to build a knowledge economy" news articles I've seen in the last decade that barely hide their colonial mindset is staggering, and the implied assumption that "we" are smarter than "them" is so blatantly racist that I'd almost feel offended if I didn't know that they'll reap what they sow with that attitude soon enough.