Shopping Trolly Bliss

It's been ages since I have blogged. Sorry. I know it is ages from the date of the last blog, but it feels to me like months have passed and not days since I last sat in the dusty warm internet cafe (or excuse for one) in Ban Lung, only dreaming of my imminent departure to the Netherlands.

Well, we are here. We arrived almost exactly 6 days after we left our little wooden house, which is a story in itself, but I won't write about that now. Travelling with toddlers deserves a whole post of its' own.

Ah the Netherlands. My father refers to it as "The Fatherland" with a whistful far away look in his eyes that makes us all laugh. Indeed, this country has both part of my ancestral history, and my immediate history all rolled into one. My Opa, on leaving the great land over fifty years ago to migrate to Australia would probably not have dreamed that one of his grandchildren in years to come would marry a Dutchman and return often. Life is full of surprises.

And return we have, once again to one of the most beautiful spots in the world. I always find the Netherlands both alluring and predictable. I love it for both. Its order and system, its history and progression. It will never be my home, but there is certainly something in me that is connected to this place.

After living in Cambodia for three and a half years, and in a backwater provincial town for eight months, I cannot being to explain to you how magnificent the simplest things seem to be.
I have been to the shopping center to buy groceries every day since we arrived. It's not necessary, since I could buy the whole weeks worth in one shot. But I love to go there. Any casual observer would think I was really a bit strange, strolling down the aisles as if in a theme park, oohing and aahing at least every thirty seconds at some marvelously delectable thing on the shelves, busily converting my euros into American dollars and then on to Australian ones, and buying it anyway! I think it took me over fifteen minutes to choose my vegetable yesterday. I mean one sort. How anyone could find the act of grocery shopping anything but thrilling is, at this moment, beyond my comprehension.

What awes me, at least this week, is the sheer variety, detail and beauty of absolutely everything that is for sale. Coming back to the vegetables for a moment ... lets say tomatoes -firstly there are about 5 varieties and then in each collection, all the tomatoes are the same shape, all amazingly smooth and firm, even in colour. Really, I have to wonder if they didn't pop right out of a tomato machine! And the same can be said of any number of varieties of fruit and vegetables.

And then there's the bakery section. The smell alone is enough to convince me to bring a pillow and blanket next time and just camp out there for a few days. There are no less than about fifteen types of bread. And that doesn't include the sweet things, the buns, croissants, the fruit loaves. Ah ... my mouth waters just thinking about it.

I won't go into the details, but I also feel compelled to admit that I purchased a bottle of minced garlic rather than the real thing - just because I could.

Actually - this post may seem amazingly boring to the majority of you who do your shopping weekly, and with some measure of duty, and live happily in a place where you make your own bread for the pleasure of it and not out of necessity.

I promise to make it less boring next time.

Now I'm off to cook a lamb shoarma for my dinner, and by the way, the lamb came in a prepared packet, already cut and with the spices marinating happily for a day or two. We're going to have it with fresh Turkish bread (I bought from a genuine Turkish store) and a Greek salad, complete with feta, black olives and red onions! Ah! Red onions!

Right now, nothing gets better than that!

Bon Appétit.