Thread: A 3 weeks shopping tournee trough Western Europe

Hello there. In my first post I speculated I would take a 3 weeks holiday in Europe, to collect some shaving supplies. Well, here's a picture to sum it up:



What do we have here?

• Tabac in three types of packaging (at least every bigger shopping center like Karstadt and Kaufhof has them in Germany, I visited namely Dusseldorf, Cologne, and Berlin)
• German drug stores like Dm and Möller also hold soaps like Palmolive, Speick, Wilkinson Sword, hjm. Of these Möller has the biggest collection, also some brushes and for example a brush stand for about 1.5 eur (shame I didn't take it). A fun curiosity is that the Palmolive soap also has text in Finnish (my native language), but good luck ever seeing that soap (or any shaving soap!) in Finnish grocery or drug stores!
• The Dovo Best Quality is from Börgermann in Dusseldorf. The sellers there, two women, didn't know much about the details that go into the razors, but were friendly and had a big collection of razors, some brushes and couple of soaps as well. I later googled the model of the Dovo and it is 5/8 half-hollow. As a side not, though, I bought the razor in the beginning of the holiday, kept it in the original package all the time and tried to protect from moisture, but as I returned home the razor already got some black spots. Perhaps I should've added some oil (which I didn't have with me). Next time, and perhaps in the future from now on, it shall be a stainless razor for me.
• Col. Conk Lime and Bayrum, and Kent aka Mitchell's Wool Fat, plus tube of Dovo Green paste from The Different Scent in Berlin. This place had perhaps the best collection of shaving supplies I've seen, perhaps along with Planete Rasoir in Paris. Also, the two guys there were very friendly, and did their best explaining me the prices and other details of the items they are selling.
• Valobra and Vetiver from 1000 & 1 Seife in Berlin. Friendly service there.
• Dutch Vergulde Hand and Kruidvat soap from local supermarkets in the Netherlands (they're ~1-2 eur soaps both).
• In Amsterdam I bumped into a nice small shop called SYU (Strong Young Urban). I bought Small Muhle Silvertip (natural badger) for 49 eur and Proraso, Muhle & Edwin Jagger soaps. I can heartily recommend this place.
• Monsavon in Carrefour in Paris, price was something like 1.5 eur or less, so I bought as many I could carry... Carrefour is also one of the best grocery store chains I've seen in Europe.
• I also visited Planete Rasoir in Paris, but found all in the boutique to be very expensive. Soaps were like 2-3 times more expensive than I've seen in internet etc. Not to say that the owner wasn't friendly, on the contrary. And the selection of shaving gear was nice, too. I anyway recommend to visit it, especially as the area around is very nice, and even Moulin Rouge is nearby.

That's about it. As you can see, I stayed away of buying expensive razors, soaps, and brushes, so perhaps the next time I'll do the journey with a raised credit limit and we'll be talking about some Bökers, Wackers, Taylor of Old Bond Street, and what have you.

Nice haul you have there. Makes for a great shaving kit.

In my next life I'm going to come back as a no limit credit card and tour the world.

Nice haul. Your trip was rewarded handsomely.

Nice, always fun to stock up!
I guess you will be one of the few clean shaven men when the zombies are here...