It would be a nice study for Rijkswaterstaat to see if the Dutch road surface on the routes from France is lower than the highway on the other side that goes to the South.
Because let’s face it, the car always comes back heavier.
You know, with the delicacies of the foreign supermarket.
It was also a hit for me.
I was on a short trip to France to see at least one day of Olympic music.
It was women’s water polo and we enjoyed, in combination with a minuscule Tour de France along country houses and funeral pyres of Claude Monet, Joan of Arc and Alexandre Dumas.
But it’s namedropping, I secretly didn’t come for that at all.
I have argued before that the foreign supermarket should be seen as an Ethnological Museum.
It gives an ideal and honest look at the culinary soul of a country and is also the ideal souvenir shop.
And it’s always nice and cool.
I never cross it.
In fact, sometimes it’s the mission, especially right before Christmas.
At fill-the-trunk distance, the German Rewe is a hit, Conad has mega chunks of Parmesan cheese and Valpolicella, the well-known Belgian Delhaize has unfortunately become too expensive and the British Waitrose has Steak & Guinness Pie and Newcastle Brown Ale.
But, oh mon Dieu, the gold goes to the land of the Monoprix, the Intermarché, Géant Casio and, the primus inter pares, the Carrefour!
Preferably a Hypermarché.
If Carrefour is Real Madrid, then Albert Heijn is Telstar, on a good day.
We’re talking about a triple sports hall full of the best of the region, great meat, fresh fruit, Christmas-worthy ready-to-eat meals, 32 types of mustard, three aisles of French wine, all of which are better than you’ll ever find in a Dutch supermarket.
They only sell us the corner, which gives Harold Hamersma an 8.5.
The Dutch know a lot.
But the best part is the huge French cheese department.
An exhibition of Epicureanism.
This is not a cheese department, but a maternity ward, with the best that cow, goat and sheep has to offer.
Usually I get down on my knees to take a closer look at what’s out there, as if I’m going to ask the Epoisses to marry me.
Or the Maroilles?
With a car full of delicious wine, Burgundian mustard, saucisses, olives and Marseillan soap, I drive bittersweetly back to the barren land of that sourpuss Calvin.
Where others want a country house in Provence, I want to live in the Carrefour.
