I know that it's been a while since my last update, and I'm sorry about that. I think that Twitter is slowly killing my appetite for blogging, but I promise to keep this one open for good, updating from time to time.
I thought that I might take a minute to talk about branding. It may not be obvious to those of you who haven't tried to build a life in a foreign country, but product brands play a big role in how your life works.
I'm one of millions of men who literally spent years looking for the one right stick of deoderant, and the toothpaste that tasted like it was doing a good job. I know the best stores in which to buy everything from towels to shoes to underwear, to hard drives, and this knowledge took A Very Long Time to accumulate.
None of that information is useful here.
Suddenly I'm faced with a myriad of dermatological choices: deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, hair gel, soap and shaving cream: you buy one for €5 and it dries your skin, another makes everything oily. It's trial and error of everything I've ever purchased, and it's all in a foreign language too.
It gets especially exciting when you introduce pharmaceuticals (the leagal-in-Canada, over-the-counter kind). That pill you used for hayfever? Nope. The only brand of cough syrup that works for you? No one here has even heard of it. Sometimes you get lucky and the brand names are the same on one or two boxes, but the logo is different, and there's a good chance that the dosage/effect is different too. Differing legislation and markets means that products you love in one country might be unavailable in another, or worse, they're available, but taste/act different.
For example, Oreos exist here, but they taste like dust, and Reese's Peanutbutter cups are unheard of. Kellog's Corn Flakes pretty much taste the same, but the variety of cereals I can find in the local grocery stores is limited to 6 choices.
Some days it feels as if no one here has ever heard the cautionary tales of what would happen if the Big Scary Communists ever took over: abolition of consumer choice, one supplier for everything... it's not quite that bad, but let me tell you, Albert Heijn completely dominates the grocery market here, and strangely, the locals seem to think it's the Best Store in the World. Contradicting them on this point of view is not advised.
But yesterday, was a Great Day. Yesterday, I was introduced to a tiny little shop in Amsterdam called Eichholtz. It's a privately-owned store that sells imported brands of food... the stuff unavailable in the Netherlands for whatever reason. There must have been twenty kinds of breakfast cereal there, and another twenty brands of chocolate bars. Peanutbutter, popcorn, and all sorts of stuff. It was glorious. I bought a tiny box of Golden Grahams (American), two cans of A&W root beer (Canadian), and one 3-cup package of Reese's peanutbutter cups (UK). Total cost: €15! Yes, I was that desperate.
Christina, my Greek/British friend who introduced me to this wonderful little shop, tried some of all three purchases and approved. Now if only I can get more people on board, maybe, just maybe I can create demand... that'd work right?