Going Shopping

Shopping in Munich is a little different than shopping at home.  The shopping carts are chained together and you have to put in one euro, or something the same size, to unlock one.  The coin stays in the cart and you don't get it back until you return the cart and chain it up to the row of carts.  Then your coin pops back out.  Sometimes a quarter will work, but not at all stores.  I now have a round piece of metal the same size as a euro with a hole in the middle that I can hook onto my keychain and take off whenever I need a cart. 

The two grocery stores we go to most often are very small and have a limited, sometimes different selection of food and other items.  They always have bread, milk, eggs, and all the essentials (including a huge selection of chocolate) but then other things are there only when they've acquired them.  At one of the little stores they have a separate butcher shop and bakery inside the building.  When I need a lot of household goods along with groceries I go to a store called Real, which is more like a Fred Meyer.  It's a little more expensive than the other two mostly grocery stores, but more convenient when my list is long.  It also carries all the varieties of things so you can have a bigger choice. 

If you buy fruit or vegetables that have to be weighed, you usually have to weigh them and print out a sticker to put on the bag before you take it to the checkout.  I didn't know that at first and I tried to buy bananas.  The checker held them up and started talking and I didn't understand a word.  Luckily a lady behind me spoke English and told me what the problem was.  I didn't buy them that day and I have avoided buying anything that is not prepackaged for a long time.  I've finally figured out how to do it and which stores I have to do it in.

The checkers sit on a chair while they're scanning and they are fast!  They don't bag for you and in fact they don't provide bags for free.  If you want you can pick up some bags and buy them each time you go, or you can bring your own.  There's usually not a very big area of counter after the scanning place, so you have to be putting your stuff in bags pretty fast to stay ahead of the checker.  If they have to stop and wait for you to clear the area before they can scan some more they are not happy.  Sometimes I have so much stuff that I'm not even finished putting it all on the conveyor belt out of my cart before they've had to stop scanning and wait.  I have to hurry and get my cart down to the other end and start putting everything back in.  There's no way I could bag it right then so I always put it back in the cart and then bag it at the car. 

The carts have all four wheels that can go in any direction.  So you can slide it sideways just as easy as push it forward.  At first I thought this was great, but it turns out they're really hard to maneuver when they get full. You're trying to turn a corner and the back wheels are sliding out the other way.  It has taken me this long to get the hang of how to maneuver those carts.

One time I was in the baumarkt (Home Depot) checking out.  I had bought some little hooks that you put into a bag yourself and just buy how many you need.  I couldn't find anything to write down the bin number so I memorized it.  When the checker got to that I told her what the bin number was.  She said "Nein, nein" and rattled off a long explanation.  I finally figured out you had to weigh the bag back where you got the items.  So I had to leave Miles in the cart in the checkout line and go back to where I got the hooks and find the scale and figure it out.  A nice man who spoke English showed me how you put the bin number in the scale and then it tells you how much it costs.  So I memorized that number and ran back to the checkout line.  I told her the price and she said "Nein, nein" and pantomimed printing a sticker and putting it on the bag.  So I paid for everything else, left my cart nearby and took Miles with me back to the scales to do it again and this time wait for the sticker to print.  I guess that man wasn't so nice after all since he didn't show me that part of it.

Some other different things:  milk comes in liters, eggs come in packages of 10, cream and sour cream come in plastic containers that look like yogurt containers, there is no cheddar cheese except at the big store in slices, I can't find any Cream of Chicken soup.  Some things look so different that I can't recognize them.  I'm constantly using the handy program on my phone to look up German words in the grocery store.  (By the way, the word for cell phone is Handy.)  One thing they do have is lots and lots of mix packets for sauces and soups, a much bigger selection than I usually found at home.  So I have been able to create good dinners with some meat, cream or water, a sauce mix and a vegetable. 

(One time I got a packet for a chicken sauce and went to the butcher to get the chicken.  I didn't know how big a kilo was in relation to a pound so I guessed.  Since a liter is smaller than a gallon and a centimeter is smaller than an inch, I assumed a kilo was smaller than a pound.  So I asked her for 3 kilos of geflugel (which means poultry and I thought it meant chicken) and pointed to my sauce packet which called for 1/2 kilo (I didn't notice that at the time).  She looked really confused!  But after pointing at the chicken and reaffirming that I wanted 3 kilos she weighed the chicken out  and put it in three huge packages.  It was enough chicken for at least three meals!  It turns out a kilo is much bigger than a pound.)

It seems like every time I go out to do something I run into something that is done differently and I've done it wrong.  Most of the time people are very nice, but not all the time.  It's been frustrating and exhausting and I've had to fight the urge to say to myself that the way we do it in the US is so much better and why don't the Germans do it the way we do it.  I have so much more empathy for the people who come to Kirkland from Asia or Latin America and don't understand the language or the customs.  I hope when I come home I can be more aware and more helpful.