Canal in Amsterdam in October
[Don’t let the picture above fool you! Even thought it is only October it is already really cold. When I woke up today it was 1 degree Celsius! Yowza! I froze while riding my bike to work this morning.]
When first moving here, you make all kinds of little mistakes when shopping because you aren’t quite sure what things are. I had almost forgotten this phenomenon until my parents recently visited and bought all sorts of random things while at the local grocery store. The memories flooded back of me almost adding baby peas into a recipe that called for capers.
When my mom said she had bought some hot chocolate, I naturally assumed it was chocomel, a very lekker (tasty) and popular Dutch chocolate milk. She disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later and asked me if the carton she had purchased was hot chocolate, because she didn’t think so. She had purchased vla , a thick pudding-ish type of dessert that is popular in the Netherlands. Never fear – she was determined she could thin it out with milk to make a tasty hot chocolate.
She returned a few minutes later with steaming mugs of hot cocoa for my dad and her. They both took one sip and quickly realized it was decidedly not enticing enough to drink. Come to find out that she mixed it with karnemelke. Karnemelke is a very popular type of milk that the Dutch like to drink at lunchtime, and is served at all lunch events. To Americans, it is better known as buttermilk and not fit for consumption. It is no wonder the hot cocoa did not taste right!
These types of mistakes are not uncommon for folks who don’t read Dutch. For my birthday earlier this year, some German friends of mine (Marcell, Irka, & Markus from earlier posts) came to visit. They went to the store to buy milk and came back with geitenmelk. I am not sure why they thought this was normal milk, but I think they thought that “geit” sounded like cow. Whatever the case, it was goat’s milk that we were then forced to drink over the upcoming days.
I think any expat living here has a million stories like this that they have encountered. Let’s hear about yours!
Comments (3)
i am not an expat, however, when i visted amsterdam i was treated to a michelin restaurant meal courtesy of our amazing hostess and it all tasted mighty lekker to me!
Posted by schmoops | October 24, 2007 3:51 AM
Posted on October 24, 2007 03:51
Oh man! This is funny, and boy, can I relate! As a fellow A'dam expat I have made a few (ok, more then a few) "understandable mistakes" myself.
Your story reminds me of the first time I went to the market for groceries after moving over here. Luckily I had read somewhere that you must bring along 50 cents if you plan on using a shopping cart and also be prepared to pack your own groceries. So, I was ready to brave Albert Heijn or so I thought.
First, I couldn’t believe how packed the market was. I happened to arrive right as people were getting off from work, so apparently it was rush hour. Despite the feeling I had that I was in everyone’s way no matter where I stood in the aisles, I tried to relax and take my time to enjoy myself and also make sense of the packaging and new (not to mention foreign) selection.
When I finally fought my way to a register and started to put my things on the belt, I got the evil eye from the women scanning my goods because I hadn’t weighed my bananas. Opps, rookie maneuver. When the checker totaled the bill I realized that I had been very careless in keeping track of how much I was spending. Long story short, I didn’t have enough cash, and of course, we didn’t have a Dutch bank account set up yet, so using debit was not an option. I quickly grabbed the most expensive item and asked her if she wouldn’t mind running it back through the register. She ran it back through, but her evil eye became even more evil! Wouldn’t you know it but I still didn’t have enough cash to cover the total! Panicked I looked over my left shoulder to see about a dozen native Nederlanders glaring at me and looking extremely irritated by the holdup.
I confess I crumbled, put my hands up in the air and said out loud, “Oh, never mind I don’t want any of it!” Then I ran out the door and left all my food on the belt! Needless to say, I never went back to that Albert Heijn!
Yea, these "understandable mistakes" happen to the best of us!
Posted by Stephanie | October 30, 2007 1:35 AM
Posted on October 30, 2007 01:35
Yeah, I confused the goat milk with regular milk. Why? Well, I remember we were in the grocery store looking for regular milk. We ended up at a shelf with just Geit milk. I didn´t see any other milk around so I got it thinking it was cow´s milk. I must have been in the specialties corner, I guess. A picture on the container would have made the selection much easier.
By the way, the story from Schmoops really cracked me up.
Posted by Marcell Hüttner | November 19, 2007 7:43 PM
Posted on November 19, 2007 19:43