A break in proceedings …

I just was published on a website.  I won’t make any money from it, but hopefully some notoriety!  I wrote an article for International Almere on the perils of shopping in Holland – you can find the link to the article here – “Grocery Shopping – Dutch Style”, but I’ve also placed the article here for you to enjoy.  It was my first foray into this style of writing for a long time, so be gentle with your criticisms :).

It’s actu­ally a bless­ing in this coun­try that there is some sort of com­pe­ti­tion between super­mar­kets with­out dom­i­na­tion by two major play­ers. I have to say that gro­ceries here are much cheaper com­par­a­tively to Aus­tralian prices, although fruit and veg­etable vari­ety is a lit­tle more lim­ited, with a much heav­ier incli­na­tion toward the sea­sonal, rather than all year availability.

Any­way, I thought I would share my views on super­mar­ket shop­ping here in my expe­ri­ence. Please note these are my views, and do not reflect the views of many sane peo­ple out there who prob­a­bly enjoy the whole gro­cery shop­ping experience.

When you walk into your local super­mar­ket – whomever out of the many choices we have here, you are greeted by the stan­dard and usual things you’d expect to see – the trol­ley stand (usu­ally full, you must get that 50 cent invest­ment back should you need use one!) and the always empty bas­ket stand, the tobacco/post office/flower desk that also mas­quer­ades as “cus­tomer ser­vice”, and the usual pro­mo­tional mate­r­ial adver­tis­ing the lat­est “bonus” buys, spe­cial “kort­ing” and of course, the free­bie with each 10/15 euros spent – more to come on that one.

If you value your san­ity, you avoid Wednes­day after­noons (early school fin­ish) and Sat­ur­day after­noons (OMG! It’s Sat­ur­day after­noon! We must SHOP!) as these seem to be the busiest times. The check­out queues are ridicu­lous, the shelves are empty and it seems that every unclaimed child in the city is lurk­ing, wait­ing to jump out unex­pect­edly in front of your trol­ley and force you to make manoeu­vres only seen in For­mula 1 racing.

Prod­uct lay­outs are a lit­tle con­fus­ing but I am get­ting used to it. If it means you find your eggs in the cof­fee sec­tion, so be it. After 6 months of liv­ing here, I’m now able to find most things with ease, but some still defy logic. Seri­ously, who puts sugar next to cof­fee?? It belongs with bak­ing stuff! And don’t start me on the miles and miles of cheese. As a reg­is­tered cheese-o-phile, I have taken it upon myself to sam­ple each and every vari­ety avail­able – much to the dis­may of my arter­ies and my posterior.

So once you con­sult your list at least 6 times, ensure you’ve walked every aisle in des­per­ate search of the basic items you need – locat­ing these in unusual places, and filled your bas­ket, you are now ready to take on the check­out, young Padawan.

At all super­mar­kets here, you bring your own bags. You unload onto the con­veyor belt, care­ful to spread your gro­ceries over as much of the belt as pos­si­ble so the per­son behind can’t unload just yet. If you can suc­cess­fully place the divider at the very end of the belt, you have done your job well. The scan­ner will greet you with some­thing that resem­bles ‘Hallo!” then pro­ceed to process your goods at high speed and send them fly­ing down the chute at the end where you can play a bizarre form of catch and stuff into your bag. (Best done with 2 play­ers — one to catch, one to pay). You then are asked if you want a receipt — hand over your cash, and then jug­gle the change whilst you’re try­ing to place the last few items (usu­ally stuck at a really odd angle or just out of reach) before the next person’s stuff comes fly­ing down at alarm­ing speeds.

Of course, you could have the joys of the “PINKASSA” lane – where either you are told sev­eral times that this is PIN only in tones that are not exactly dul­cet, or you get stuck behind the lit­tle old lady who has unloaded her entire trol­ley onto the con­veyer­belt, had every­thing processed and then tries to pay in cash.

After your pur­chase, you are then usu­ally asked if you are col­lect­ing “zegels” (Nee) and if you are col­lect­ing the – FREEBIE OF THE MONTH!!

Why did this get cap­i­tal­i­sa­tion and excla­ma­tion marks, I hear you ask. Never, in my life, have I seen any­thing quite like this sen­sa­tion. Most super­mar­kets, except those des­ig­nated as bud­get ones, have some sort of reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that if you spend a cer­tain amount, you will receive a small free­bie. Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen ani­mal cards, foot­ball stick­ers, mini gro­ceries … and that’s just a few. See­ing the ani­mal cards “dierenkaart­jes” are the cur­rent pro­mo­tional prod­uct, I’ll focus on those as the sam­ple, how­ever, it’s much the same as all the rest.

To earn your dierenkaart­jes, you must spend 10 euros. For each 10 euros you spend you receive 4 cards. Of course, there are spe­cial pro­mo­tions that get you extra cards, and the oblig­a­tory album that you can pur­chase to hold your well earned prizes.

Here comes the scary part. Peo­ple are crazy for these cards. I’m not just talk­ing kids, I’m talk­ing grown adults. As I write, I’m look­ing at my desk and see­ing spe­cially des­ig­nated piles of cards I’m hold­ing onto for var­i­ous peo­ple. But that’s not the only thing. Adults hold swap meets to col­lect the cards they haven’t got­ten. Kids stand out­side the super­mar­ket ask­ing peo­ple for their dierenkaart­jes as they leave. I’ve seen check­out oper­a­tors cop mouth­fuls of abuse for for­get­ting to ask if their cus­tomer is col­lect­ing dierenkaart­jes. There is a national obses­sion over whichever col­lec­table is in store, and most peo­ple will not rest until they are the proud own­ers of a com­plete collection.

There must be some level of pres­tige asso­ci­ated with a com­plete col­lec­tion, judg­ing by the snatchy-grabby behav­iour of the locals when it comes to the free­bie of the month. I am yet to see some­one decline cards at the check­out, because I’m sure that if that hap­pens, a hush would fall over the entire store, per­haps some toma­toes hurled, maybe even a neon sign from the roof ques­tion­ing the person’s intel­li­gence, or maybe even those sirens we hear on the first Mon­day of the month fired up, warn­ing us that some­one just said no to dierenkaart­jes, and now, the world really will end …