Last month we [1]My family and I. went to my home town in Northern Bavaria [2]Franconia.
In the past we used to take the ferry from Hull to Rotterdam, an easier drive [3]Without packing you travel 1 1⁄2 days, but recently this ferry got really expensive. We have neither too much time, nor too much money, so deciding wasn’t easy, but in the end we went with the cheaper option: going through Dover to France. This option was much cheaper than what the ferry we used to take costs now, but the drawback is that it involves two whole days of travelling (driving from North West England to South East England, then taking the ferry to France and then driving through Belgium and the Netherlands into Germany (driving through four different German states. Bavaria for example is more than twice the size of Belgium, but within a country there usually isn’t much variation, so there aren’t too many new things to discover, compared to driving through another country. Saying that, there was a new part of the motorway in Germany which was quite nice. On the side of the motorway you can see all the ‘trees of the year’ from the previous decades and a sign showing the name and the year for that tree.).
Well, it’s a little adventure that, as an added bonus, contains the opportunity to buy cool stationery and other items I can’t get in the UK or Germany (except stationery this was mainly caramel tea and flavoured Perrier).
So here’s a mini blog post about a visit to a Belgian supermarket: Carrefour, a French chain that is present in many countries. They used to sell their own Rhodia clones, but I haven’t seen those in recent years anymore.
This being Belgium the main attraction was to stock up on Atoma style notebooks – and the Belgian supermarket didn’t disappoint.
They also had a surprising amount of retro video game hardware. I found that very cool as I used to collect retro video games. I did/do have an interest in this: Fifteen years ago some friends from Singapore and I were running the biggest Gameboy web site at that time (called EAGB) [4]I still have an interest, but no time – my free time is mainly spend on stationery now..
There was also a great choice of Lucky Luke comics. A big proportion of German shops selling magazine will sell Lucky Luke comics, but you wouldn’t get the choice you got in this supermarket – unless you go to a specialist shop. The photo I took on the day was blurred, so I’ll just skip adding it to this blog post.
…and finally: flavoured sparkling water. In the UK flavoured water has sweetener in it, basically making it lemonade, but in Belgium you can get Perrier with all sorts of flavour. Nice. I know these from Shanghai, but in Belgium they are much cheaper.
I can’t recall having seen Atoma clones in the French Carrefour supermarkets, although it’s a couple of years since I’ve visited, so it’s possible that they aren’t exclusive to Belgium 🙂 Visiting at this time of year is great for the stationery afficionado, with most places having a large stock for the rentrée – is that the same in Belgium?
I also wanted to comment on the Caramel Tea, as a friend of mine at work absolutely loves it – no one can visit France without being asked to bring back a box or two 🙂
I went to a French Carrefour near the Belgian border and they didn’t have Atoma-style notebooks. It’s a shame that they don’t get more appreciated outside Belgium.
The stock in the Carrefour wasn’t any better than in December 2013 when I went to another Carrefour in Belgium, but maybe it was too early for Back to School (I assume that’s what rentrée is).
The good thing about the caramel tea is that you can order the Lipton version from Amazon.fr or the caramel vanilla version from Amazon.de. Polish supermarkets in the UK have a different version (was it pear caramel? I can’t remember), but that one is (to me) much worse, I think that one wasn’t based on black tea, but I can’t remember.