The employees of Dutch supermarket C-1000 have compiled a list of the items that are the most difficult to find in their supermarkets and placed it on their hyve, according to personnel magazine, Club1000. Interestingly enough, in most stores, the same products are difficult to find.
Top 5:
1. Cocktail toothpicks
2. Toasts
3. Salt
4. Corn Starch
5. Eggs
A note to foreigners:
1. There are no signs in Dutch stores to give you a general idea of where products can be found.
2. If you ask the staff, they point, but won’t bring you to the product (In North America, they are taught to bring you to the product – it increases the chance of a sale).
3. Every store of the same chain has a different layout, as buildings differ greatly.
4. And stores stock up during opening hours (!), especially on Saturday when it’s busy, and cannot be bothered to help you then.
In a C1000 in Delft, I found sardines with the Indonesian products. Why? Because the sardines were from outside the EU. The ‘normal’ sardines were from Britain with the tuna and salmon, but the ones I found were from Canada. Very logical.
(Link: zibb.nl)
The Dutch never really warmed to the idea of the credit card, and generally consider it unsafe for online transactions. The new kid on the block, the iDeal system, is rapidly gaining ground, according to the organisation controlling several popular payment methods for the major Dutch banks, Currence, who also run the iDeal system (
Christian daily Trouw (translates to ‘loyal’) has an interview with Flemish writer 
