Albert Heijn.
Dirk Van der Broek.
"Who are these weird dutch men?" you ask
"Are these new men in Rani's life, vying for her attention and love? Are they her neighbours? Her colleagues? Did she meet them in a bar? Are they the dutch equivalent of Cheech and Chong?"
No, no,no, no and no.
They are 2 chains of supermarkets here in the Netherlands.
Dutch people shop almost daily. Small apartments due to high density living in old buildings = small bar fridges as the norm.
I hate Albert Heijn. Since I got here, I've hated them. They pretty much monopolise the grocery chain market here, and they are shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
AH are generally open until 10pm every night but anything fresh is gone by noon. 3pm might see a broken baguette stick sitting all lonely like in the bread section. Maybe a lone orange alongside it. They do have good instant coffee machines though. Closed on Sundays. Actually most supermarkets are.
For some reason the name sounds like the name of a dirty old paedophile, with saggy pyjama pants (to me anyway.)
Dirk is cheaper. The kids that work there have better looking uniforms. They don't make generic and equally expensive brands of everything and pull the real brands. But they are few and far between. In general, this brand has more character.
For some reason the name sounds like the name of spunky young drummer from a Calvin Klein ad.
The competition between the 2 brands (in Amsterdam at least) doesn't really exist (not like Coles and Woolworths or Tesco and Sainsbury's) - Albert Heijn wins on a 8:1 ration or something random like that.
There's also Albi and C1000. Even fewer of these outlets.
More musings on grocery shopping later.
Meanwhile, someone has actually started a blog about how much they hate Albert Heijn.
Funny? or Sad?
http://ihatealbertheijn.wordpress.com/
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