Tuesday, july 18, 2006

Vermin in France

I sit at the kitchen table. The windows are wide open. It is a warm summer night, the outside temperature is 24 degrees Celsius, but inside it's hot like an oven. We tried to ventilate the house as good as possible, but if you leave the windows open at night, all kinds of bugs will enter, and we've got enough flies inside as it is. Ruud bought such an electrocution device shaped like a tennis racket, but he swears the flies "are of a different race than those in the Netherlands" because after half an hour of nervous chasing, he had not caught one.

This week, I saw on the window frame in the bathroom in the lurking dark a multi legged monster crawl. I think it was a rare cross breeding between a spider and a grasshopper. I jumped back a meter and gave a cry. Ruud came directly running and switched on the lights. But the animal was already gone, so I will never know weather it was an imagination of the mind or a real monster. We'll have to get used to this, like so many other things.

For instance the lack of various kinds of food, which are available everywhere in the Netherlands. Today in the local supermarket we finally found chocolate sprinkles: two spice jars of 3 euro a piece, which are ample sufficient to cover two sandwiches.

Two spice jars with sprinkles

Well look, although we think that French bread is delicious, the children really don't agree with that. They want brown bread. No not the Pain de Campagne, but plain Dutch Casino brown from the supermarket. Luckily for us they sell it here too (at least we thought) when, after a frantic search, we found it in the well known supermarket packaging. Jeehaa! We bought six packs straight away and hop, into the freezer.

Only the taste... that’s very weird. Sweet, buttery with an aftertaste of rubber. And when you press an ultra light mobile phone in it, the imprint will remain visible for hours. Who knows the tyre industry of Michelin has some side earnings in the food sector. Whatever, the kids will have to get used to the French bread from the bakery.

Sandwich with mobile phone imprint

Now I don't want to over praise the French bread. I think it's not so easy to find that delicious olden days French bread with a hard crust on the outside and a feather light inside. Even the French bakers have a busy time doing other business and want to bake a large quantity for all those tourists within ample time.

posted by Ruud at 3:20 PM

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