Dutch supermarkets

One of the things that shocked my partner S— the most after she moved over to Amsterdam were the supermarkets, which just couldn’t hold a candle to the ones she was used at home. Even our “national pride”, Albert Heijn, she found to be second rate. She is not the only one, it seems:

Freshness, novelty, seasonal – these concepts have no meaning here, where goedkoop!
(cheap) is the only the battle cry. The stores are staffed by rowdy teenage boys stocking the shelves
between chatting up the cheese girls, with nasty middle-aged women working the cash registers.

Just try getting bread after 4pm on a Saturday afternoon. You didn’t plan ahead for bread? Well, then, you probably don’t deserve it. At the Swine, things like coffee, cola and crackers can suddenly take on the mystique of rare goods. It’s like Poland, circa 1975.

How can a supermarket run out of Coke? Ask Albert Heijn, the market leader in this bizarre off-the-shelf stocking technique.

Plentiful, however, is the produce, a rapidly decaying mass offering little more selection than your corner store back home. You wanted that kind of lettuce? Too bad. The Swine must be the last stop on the banana boat — stuff goes off as you’re leaving the store, if not sooner.