Lidl and Me: an update

After writing about my relationship problems with Lidl, the german supermarkets chain, I experienced some weird emotions. Expressing my deepest feelings like that, in front of everybody, made me feel naked and vulnerable, and I swore to myself that I wouldn’t have written one more word about it.

But then hundreds of you wrote to cheer me up, give me relationship advice and ask me how things with Lidl were going, so I figured the least I could do is give you a short update on the situation.

lidl and me

I’ll be completely honest with you: we went through tough times.

Couple therapy didn’t seem to work, Lidl started to get obsessively jealous of Jochen Schropp Rewe and there was a constant unhealthy tension between the two of us. Furthermore, everything seemed lost on the day the Lidl in Oranienplatz introduced the new bread display windows.

lidl bread display

Ok, I get it, it’s impossible to stick your hand in it and touch every single broetchen before choosing yours (which I might or might not have done several times) but this is also incredibly time consuming! The retrieving area is now so narrow that only one person at a time can access it. The only way I can think of to make this more impractical is a mechanical bread catcher

bread catcher

So yeah, my hopes were really low and I honestly thought it was over between us.

Luckily, sometimes miracles happen and Lidl won me over again by declaring the italian week: seven days in which it sold delicious italian products  from the most popular and loved italian food brand in Italy Madagascar and Ethiopia.

Italiamo (that’s the name of the brand) fakes incredibly well all my favourite cookies from home and perpetuates the myth of recipes that nobody has ever heard of but that also sound very italian like Pizza alla Parmigiana.

pizza alla parmigiana

I think we’re good now.

Thanks everybody for your support and prayers.

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Filed under: Expat in Germany

About the Author

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Federico is a human love letter to the internet. His favourite activities include: hypochondriasis, a tragic vision of the future and lowering his life expectancy one pastry at a time. You can stalk him on TWITTER / FACEBOOK / INSTAGRAM

9 Comments

  1. ebe

    Did you photoshop that mechanical bread catcher? Because I WANT to believe it’s real. I can imagine getting so taken trying to “catch” my bread I stand there for days before eventually succumbing to starvation, ironically still within the Lidl.

    And glad you’ve found success with their fakey Italian brand. The fakey American brand, McKennedy is a horrifying look at what Germans think the Americans eat.

    • Fede

      Unfortunately the mechanical bread catcher doesn’t exist: it could be a valid ally in the war against carbs everyone of us is constantly fighting. But who knows, maybe Mr Lidl will read this and develop my idea… I completely lost the american week, what kind of food were they selling? Fried butter? ;-P

  2. ebe

    Fried butter isn’t far-off with American cuisine, but Lidl usually has such elegant specialties as marshmallows, pop-tarts, pancake mix in a squeeze bottle, etc. Everything comes with extra sugar.

    Good luck selling your mechanical bread catcher. Clearly, I would be the first customer.

  3. Adele

    I really loved this post! You made my day! Danke!

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