Groceries

Yes, I finally succumbed to the desire to take pictures, and completely embarrassed my family today by taking pictures of the cheese section at the local Albert Heijn. I love seeing all the round yellow cheeses lined up, one row next to the other. Although I probably hate grocery most of all the chores hubby and I share (it’s second on the list, right behind ironing), I simply adore going to a grocery store in another country. I realize that Holland is where I come from, but it truly feels like another country, a notion that was confirmed today by my visit to the local Albert Heijn.

First, the carts threw me for a loop. I remember a long long time ago, when husband-dear and I were still dating, and he would visit me in Holland, he used to complain about the shopping carts kicking his behind. He provided a lengthy and complicated explanation about front-wheel and back-wheel drive and turning points to explain his inability to turn corners, which, needless to say, I just laughed at. Until today. I think I can safely say I did not make any friends at the grocery store today. It took me at least ten minutes to figure out how to turn the cart, at which point we had passed through a very busy produce section, and I had run into at least ten different people. Of course, I smiled and apologized, but I’m not sure if it made any difference, since we're no longer in the south where people say things like "Oh honey, you're fine, don't worry, these are really old shoes anyway, and I love getting my ankles bashed, I've heard it's great for your circulation".

Moreover, I found myself stopping and exclaiming at the most mundane products, such as the afore-mentioned cheese section. I think I positively scared the girl behind the counter when I got excited at the low price of cheese. I also loved the vla-section (a cross between pudding and yoghurt, used as dessert). The US has really lost an opportunity to embrace dairy when it failed to introduce vla. This specific store had rows and rows of vla; vanillia, chocolate, caramel, strawberry-vanilla, lemon-vanilla, peach and strawberries, the options were endless. Of course, I was enamoured by the candy section, and was overall amazed at how everything was just really small. No gallons of milk, pounds of coffee, supersized boxes of cereal, no, everything was medium-sized, and would barely be enough to feed my family for a week. Now it’s all fine and good to get excited over things like cheese, liquorice, and vla when you’re talk like a foreigner, but not when you speak the native language. I’m pretty sure people thought I was slightly off my rocker as I said something about Conimex Indonesian products in a volume a little louder than acceptable in a local Dutch supermarket.

Now I really liked being in a Dutch grocery store; the products were fascinating, the store did not go on for miles and miles, and so it did not take forever to double back and pick up some mustard, and I even found myself getting used to the carts. But I have to say that the whole checkout procedure was a bit of a letdown. First, the registers, all six of them, were all squeezed together in a tiny little area. Customers were pretty much standing on top of one another, and lining up in the aisles adjacent to the registers. Then there was no friendly checkout-person asking you how you were. And worst of all, there were no baggers! All your groceries are placed on a tiny little belt which fills up almost right away, thus leaving your lettuce, eggs, and other fragile purchases to be squished by items such as milk and vla. You’re expected to place your groceries into your cart at the speed of light, since the checkout-person will not slow down just because your chips are fighting for their lives. Then while you’re loading up, you’re expected to pay, deal with a dazzling options of requests about “zegeltjes” and “lege flessen”, and make way for the next customer immediately. It was frazzling, yet none of the locals around me seemed to struggle with it, and some of them were dealing with screaming toddlers while loading groceries, paying, and accepting several forms of “zegeltjes”. I vaguely remember being able to do all that too (minus the screaming toddler), but to be honest, the skill eluded me today.

So what happens when a duck can no longer walk or talk like a duck? Is it still a duck?