Experiences – Life – Inspiration 🇨🇭🇯🇵

I used to think cheese was universal. Like air. Or gravity. Something that would always be there. When I moved from Switzerland to the Netherlands in the 90s I never had to miss it. Cheese surrounded me everywhere I went. I took it so completely for granted that I never even noticed it.

But flying into the Netherlands now from Japan feels like stepping into a different world. Cheese is suddenly everywhere again. Walls of it. Mountains of it. Shining at me from every shelf. Meanwhile in Japan I sometimes feel like I need a magnifying glass and a bit of luck to find real proper cheese in a supermarket.

And cheese fondue in Japan is a whole separate adventure. The packages are tiny. Two hundred grams. And they claim to feed two or three people. I always imagine two or three people politely dipping a single piece of bread, smiling, and calling it a day. My Swiss blogging friend Rolf once wrote about his own hunt for fondue and raclette in Japan. I remembered his story today when my mother and I visited the Saturday market in Old Rijswijk. It is a small town between The Hague and Delft where I used to live.

At one stall I suddenly felt like I had discovered treasure. Swiss Emmi cheese fondue in six hundred gram packages. Price tag three euro fifty. And then I saw another small sign saying three for twelve euro. My brain immediately went into Swiss-cheese-euphoria mode. Numbers blurred. Logic collapsed. I was so excited I completely misread the arithmetic. I somehow convinced myself that twelve euro for three big packs was the deal of the century and that I should grab them before someone else did.

So I did exactly that. I grabbed three packs like I had just found a secret stash of fondue gold. My calculation brain was scrambled from excitement, and I didn’t question anything. I simply lined up to pay, clutching my twelve euro in cash like a happy cheese pirate guarding his loot.

After fifteen minutes in the slowest moving queue on Earth, I finally reached the cashier. I placed my three glorious Emmi packs on the counter. The cashier looked at them, looked at me, and calmly said “tientje graag”. A ten please.

I froze for half a second. Did she say ten? Ten for all three? My brain rebooted like an old computer. Twelve euro wasn’t the deal. Ten euro was the real deal. Even cheaper. All I managed to say was “ok” while handing her the ten euro bill like a proud but slightly confused Swiss man who had just discovered accidental savings.

I walked away feeling like I had struck edible gold. Real cheese gold. The kind you dream about when you live abroad. And I smiled because moments like these remind me that the smallest discoveries can bring the greatest joy. Today it just happened to be cheese.

If this story gave you a chuckle, you will love my fellow Swiss blogger Rolf’s quest for cheese fondue and raclette in Japan. His story is right here.