der Kaufrausch

I think this post is going to be the first in my newly thought-up “Alltagslebensserie” or Everyday Life Series. Most of my posts are about large events that I attend or trips that I go on, but this sort of overlooks the other 90% of my time here, which is spent doing absolutely normal things, but of course with a German flair. Hmm, maybe that's poor word choice, I usually don't associate the German lifestyle with the word “flair.” Regardless, some everyday parts of my life are clearly different here in comparison to the states. Today, I'm going to talk about potentially my favorite mundane thing to do in Germany: going to the grocery store. Today's title word is that sort of high feeling you get from buying something you really want.

I hate shopping at home, and when I do go shopping I am methodical. Except for a calculator, I shop alone. I have to get “the deal.” This phrase, “the deal,” I picked up from my sort of grandfather. His penny pinching puts me to utter shame, something or other about living through the depression...He also says “the deal” when he can't think of whatever word he's looking for, which can make conversations about finding obscure things for a good price very hard to follow: “I went down to Dillon's, and they had a deal on that there deal, and so I asked the gal at the counter about the deal....” I should say that I love and respect this guy deeply, and I'm not trying to be mean by making fun of him. This man also introduced me to Aldi's in America, or as he likes to call it “that German outfit up behind Walmart.” And Aldi's is the perfect jumping off point for my comparison.

Remember, Germany does't have a lot of space and this is reflected in their “super”markets. I just looked up the county appraiser's information on Walmart in Topeka, and it is about 212,000 ft² (19,700 m²). That German Outfit behind said Walmart (Aldi's) is about 15,000 ft² (1,400 m²).

Our beautiful Walmart. I just noticed that the southern two entrances aren't shown in this picture, so it's actually even larger than it is here.

That's more than 14 times smaller, and Aldi's is the exact same size and layout of a typical German supermarket. To make up for this size difference, there are a lot more supermarkets around the city, and generally they have a smaller selection than you find at Walmart. If you want flour, you have one choice. Canned goods, maybe 15 feet of selection on one side of the aisle. Drinks, well you get the idea. This can be sort of frustrating when you need something sort of obscure. We were going to make pasta with a pesto sauce and had to check three different stores to find it. On the upside, because the stores are so small, there is always one within walking distance.

Netto is the closest market to my dorm.

This is the bread, condiment, pasta, seasoning, jelly, coffee, tea, and baking aisle.

Shopping in German (the language) is also very interesting. It makes every trip educational, and it also seems to make me more curious about things. I stroll through the spice aisle (it's really only a 3 foot section) and end up buying some sort of wildly interesting spice and think “oh the things I could cook with this!”, then I get it home and find out it's actually parsley. Another interesting thing about shopping in Germany is that, for some reason, English words and American-themed packaging on products are “hip” and “cool”, but a lot of times they either make no sense at all or are used in a weird context. I'll give a couple of examples. I was at Aldi once, and they were having American Week, so I went and checked out what German grocers think my country boils down to. The American section was marshmallows, Texas-style curry chicken, and a sort of waffle iron device that made muffins instead of waffles, but all of it had stars and stripes and the Statue of Liberty on the outside. The next example is more recent. I was in Rewe looking for Worcestershire sauce (and I actually found it!), but next to that I found several very interesting sauces, and took pictures. Let's pause and enjoy the weirdness:

Reports indicate this sauce is sort of a sweet and sour sauce with a hint of pineapple.

Somehow "hamburger sauce" is not ketchup.  Nearest I can tell, it's similar to mayonnaise, but not mayonnaise...somehow.

This sauce translates as "Gypsy Sauce", which is somehow not offensive to the Gypsies (actually called  Romani) who do live in Europe.

Ok, this one has nothing to do with misused English, but I still giggle at the word "weiner"

The final strange thing about German grocery stores is the thing the causes me the most stress when I'm there: check out. It's god awful. You have to pay for each grocery bag (about 6-15 cents depending on the size), which means that no one actually buys the bags and just tosses all of the goods willy-nilly back into their cart on the other side of the register. You also have to pay a deposit on the cart, just like at American Aldi's. The cashier herself, is typically as similar in appearance and disposition to a toad as a human can be. I made the mistake of asking her how she was doing once (and only once), she frowned at me for about 3 seconds, then said “fine”, and went back to scanning. The longest conversation I ever had with a cashier here is when one had to ask me what sort of fruit I'd bought so he could look up the code; it was a fig, so it's sort of understandable. Then comes my least favorite part, paying. I almost always pay with cash, and euros don't have paper bills until you hit the 5€ level, so I end up with ass loads of coins in my pocket that I need to get rid of. The problem is that doing math in German is really hard for me, since their numbers are backwards. So, when they say the total is 23.47€, they say the equivalent of three-and-twenty euros seven-and-forty cents, so it takes me a second to realize they don't mean 32.74€, which is the order the numbers were said in. This is precious time I don't have with a line of impatient Germans to my left, a scowling toad-faced cashier in front of me, and a chaotic pile of groceries without a sack to my right. It's like running a gauntlet.

Ugh, the shit I go through to get “the deal”