Having found a place to live only recently, I was overdue for buying some basics and left it too late on Saturday evening. Like in the UK many years ago, shops (winkels) here close around 5/6 on Saturday, are completely closed on Sunday and don’t open again till Monday (late Monday often here). I understand why they do it but personally I see no harm in opening shops on Sunday. After all, it only benefits the shopkeepers and everyone else who also has to work has to rush around like crazy on Saturday. Anyway, that’s another subject altogether.
So yesterday I found another supermarket called Vomar. Many tourists think that Albert Heijn is the main supermarket that everyone goes to in Holland. Maybe it is, but it is damn expensive. It reminds me of Waitrose in the UK, a so-called up-market place with high prices that looks very presentable but does not represent value. We (my flatmate and I) are still looking for an Aldi or a Lidl (I personally think these places are too “cheap”, if you see what I mean) but in the meantime I found a place called Vomar. In my view, this is a regular supermarket and I’m going to try to do most of my shopping here from now on. Still, I am yet to find a HUGE supermarket like you get back in the UK. Maybe, living in Oost, I am simply too close to the centre to find such a place. Perhaps you need to be on the Metro line for that? Ik heb geen idee.
So having not had a proper bowl of cereal in a while, I bought myself some and needed the milk to go with it. I surveyed the shelves. Now I already knew that they had something here called “half-volle” which I am guessing means something like semi-skimmed. But I actually prefer my milk to be skimmed.
I saw the regular milk, the half-volle milk and all that was left was a red-labelled milk called “karne melk“. I had no idea what this meant but I bought it.
So I get home and pour the milk into my cereal, it sure doesn’t look like skimmed milk. It looks very thick and I thought perhaps that it was condensed milk. I took a taste and it was rancid! It was as if you had accidentally drank some milk that close to two days old. Only just drinkable but preferably not.
Turns out that karne means “churned”. Basically, this is some kind of intentional sour milk. God only knows why someone would want to drink this stuff?? Maybe it goes well in tea or coffee, that’s my only guess. I did finish my bowl of cereal and it actually wasn’t too bad but I won’t be buying this stuff again, that’s for sure. Yuck!
Today I put out the rubbish (trash). My flatmate and I had no idea how it works here. There are some tiny bins that look like they’d hold no more than a single sack of rubbish??? So I tried it today and basically it uses a kind of single sack one-way rotating thingymijig that I’m guessing leads to some kind of pit below. An ingenious invention that saves space above ground and eliminates the fly infestations you normally get around bins. I wonder if this invention is seen throughout The Netherlands or just where I live? Anyone know?
6 responses so far ↓
1 sd // Jun 23, 2009 at 8:56 am
Ik gezien restafval kanen met een plek onder in een paar van stads (Den Haag, Vlissingen, Houten). Er zijn ook kanen voor glas en plastiek. Het is veel cool waarom de vrachtwagen komen.
2 Chris // Jun 25, 2009 at 7:25 am
Yes I will have to see these things when they empty them. Indeed there are also other bins for glass and paper. But it surprised me not for plastic. Maybe they are separated mechanically elsewhere.
Dude your Dutch is fantastic, mine is a result of watching a lot of TV met ondertitels. So on a basic level of conversational interaction, I’ve surprised myself lately at how well I can do.
BUT….I suck at constructing long sentences because my vocabulary is so limited. Still….I’m learning some more words now such as de bon (receipt/ticket) and de tas (bag).
3 Ramses // Jun 27, 2009 at 4:07 am
Karnemelk (yes, one word) is horrible. It’s actually a by-product of butter instead of the ‘normal’ milk which gets directly processed from the cow’s milk. Here the Wikipedia article on karnemelk:
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karnemelk
It’s mainly popular in the summer, because it stays good for pretty long time.
Abount the Albert Heijn; only people that can really afford it use to shop there. I like it to get exotic things that they don’t sell in other shops, but normally go to ‘cheaper’ shops (Lidl is pretty good the last few years, so it Aldi). Alternatives are Dekamarkt, Vomar, Dirk van de Broek (can be really cheap, but GOOD!), and some other supermarkets.
If you’re looking for the BIG supermarkets you’re going to get disappointed. There are some of the superstores, but not many. They’re mainly located just outside the city and are mostly… Albert Heijn’s.
4 Chris // Jun 28, 2009 at 5:12 am
Thanks for the lowdown on the melk and supermarkets. Yes, I prefer Vomar too. I also found a Dekamarkt near me, I really like this place a lot. Still looking for Aldi/Lidl although even in the UK I don’t visit them much. I’m amazed that Tesco has not made a big move into The Netherlands. Maybe they already analysed it and decided against it. They are huge in the UK – in some parts of the country they turnover 50% of all money spent! I know they have also expanded into many other European countries too.
5 Ramses // Jun 29, 2009 at 12:47 pm
I used to work in a supermarket and also used to read all the magazines related to supermarket work (I know, I’m pathetic
). So far I know Tesco has some shares in the big supermarket companies, and until recently they were planning to enter the Dutch market with their own format.
The problem is, however, that there are MANY supermarket formats in the Netherlands. It’s just damn difficult to get big there.
6 Art Meinema // Jul 20, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I Looove Karnemelk!! – the best drink (cold) possible in hot weather.
shame I can’t get it anywhere in the UK.
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