One of the nicer aspects of living in a city is the availability of shops, restaurants and entertainment.  I have never felt the need to have these things on my doorstep before and now that they are here I am finding that I quite like it.  I do enjoy going to the cinema for the 10pm showing of a movie, knowing that it is relatively safe to walk back from the cinema late at night.  The only other ‘real’ city I have stayed in was Glasgow, which is not exactly known for its safety at at 1am…  Most cities that I frequent are very busy during the weekend and this is especially true of Den Haag.  I have never felt comfortable in large crowds of people, I have always found it very stressful especially in narrow street where people are thinking more about what they are wanting than about where they are going and who they are about to walk into or over. 

One of the shops that I like to go to in Den Haag is Media Markt.  Media Markt is a german chain of electrical shops (much like Future Shop and Best Buyin north america).  It is the busiest shop in Den Haag, it is packed with people and electrical goods (an unsafe mix I feel).  It sells everything that can be plugged in, charged up, turned up and tuned in.  It is, as they say, ‘a true paradise for computer nerds’.  If you are lucky you can see nerd offs going on in the place.  Most of the people that I know and have been into Media Markt with find the shop quite traumatic.  They hate the way that you can’t move between the aisles due to the other shoppers, the fact that the place is always too hot, that there is alarms ‘going off’ all over the shop, that there are massive lines at the checkout and that if you have to return something there is a whole separate department for this.  And let me tell you, if you thought you were in line for a long time purchasing your item, man you are in for a real surprise when you return something.

Although it sounds like hell on earth to most people, including admittedly me, I actually like the place.  I have always wondered about this, as going by what I usually enjoy (open spaces, quietness, cold temperatures) it strikes me as odd that I enjoy browsing through Media Markt.  I have often wondered about this and my theory is this;  I think that I actually makes the other shoppers disappear when I go in.  As a person that loves the nerd end of consumerism I appear to have the ability to make my mind shut out all the bad things about Media Markt and focus only on the obscene amounts of nerd equipment that is available.  My mind is so focused on consuming new information, prices and statistics of information that everything else cannot find a way into my mind.  My hope is that I can take this power and apply it to other areas of my life.