What These Expats Do While on Vacation in a More (Gastronomically) Americanized Country than The Netherlands
Why doesn’t Holland have Oreos? And more than 4 kinds of cereal (not counting the 27 different kinds of muesli)? And should one have to go to Spain to find condensed Cream of Chicken soup (Campbell’s nonetheless!)?
Dan and I made 4 trips to the grocery store and 1 trip to Wal-Mart-esque Carre-Four while we were in Spain. We indulged on Golden Grahams (one box in two days), Oreos, Mt. Dew (it was still the gross Spanish kind, but worth a try), “normal” bacon, decently priced romaine lettuce (instead of sponge-like sla), and cheddar cheese. Dan even found a lunch meat that wasn’t of the pork variety and Chinese noodles directly from his childhood.
We ate at restaurants, too, that didn’t charge us EUR2.50 for 200 milliliters of water. Breakfasts were served with hot food, not just bread and cheese and chocolate-hazelnut spread. I ate 2.4 kilos of strawberries fresh from the market (and it’s only May).
In our suitcase, we stashed 2 cans of cream of chicken soup (Dan’s fam – you know what it’s for), 4 boxes of Oreos, and 4 bags of Chinese noodles. I would have had to leave some clothes behind to make them fit, but I did entertain the thought of including Cheerios. Since I could only find Honey-Nut and Multi-Grain, I opted for the clothes.
P.S. In my continuing struggle to sort out my bits and pieces of English, French, Chinese, Dutch, Romanian, Russian, and Finnish, I resorted to Romanian while in the Spanish market. Where did THAT come from? Right now, sitting at my docking station, I can barely remember how to count to two in Romanian. Yet, there in the Spanish market, I was struggling NOT to speak Romanian.
Dan and I made 4 trips to the grocery store and 1 trip to Wal-Mart-esque Carre-Four while we were in Spain. We indulged on Golden Grahams (one box in two days), Oreos, Mt. Dew (it was still the gross Spanish kind, but worth a try), “normal” bacon, decently priced romaine lettuce (instead of sponge-like sla), and cheddar cheese. Dan even found a lunch meat that wasn’t of the pork variety and Chinese noodles directly from his childhood.
We ate at restaurants, too, that didn’t charge us EUR2.50 for 200 milliliters of water. Breakfasts were served with hot food, not just bread and cheese and chocolate-hazelnut spread. I ate 2.4 kilos of strawberries fresh from the market (and it’s only May).
In our suitcase, we stashed 2 cans of cream of chicken soup (Dan’s fam – you know what it’s for), 4 boxes of Oreos, and 4 bags of Chinese noodles. I would have had to leave some clothes behind to make them fit, but I did entertain the thought of including Cheerios. Since I could only find Honey-Nut and Multi-Grain, I opted for the clothes.
P.S. In my continuing struggle to sort out my bits and pieces of English, French, Chinese, Dutch, Romanian, Russian, and Finnish, I resorted to Romanian while in the Spanish market. Where did THAT come from? Right now, sitting at my docking station, I can barely remember how to count to two in Romanian. Yet, there in the Spanish market, I was struggling NOT to speak Romanian.
posted by Beth at 2:40 PM
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