Shopping

There's always something new to learn about shopping, even in a new city in the same country.  Here in Germany shopping has been an interesting window to the culture.

First, grocery shopping.  Between our tiny, dorm-sized refrigerator and my frequent discovery of things we need to survive (today it was a sponge with a scrubbing surface), I seem to go to the grocery store every day.  My first cultural lesson was about shopping carts.  If you want to use a shopping cart, you need to put a coin -- euro or half euro -- in a slot on the handle.  This pushes out a piece of metal that connects the cart to the next cart.  When you finish with your cart, you replace the metal piece and get your coin back.  That means you always need a supply of coins with you (or only shop for what you can carry in a hand basket). Oh, and when you get to the checkout line, you provide your own bag (or pay for one -- which we have in Palo Alto already) and you bag things yourself.

Initially I thought this was a theft deterrent, but after pondering for a bit, this wouldn't deter the typical homeless person looking for something to hold their belongings.  They can easily find a coin, and if they need the money more than the cart, they can just return the cart and get the money back. (Not that I've seen any homeless looking people here yet)  The point of this device is to get people to return carts to the cart stands, rather than leave them randomly in the parking lot. Seems to work well for that purpose -- there never seems to be a shortage of carts by the door, as there often is in US markets. Interesting use of technology to replace employees (I suspect the Germans think of it as a way to get people to do the socially responsible thing).

The place I have been shopping (an Edeka store) is definitely a well supplied market.  Lots of lovely looking fruit -- not everything I would expect in near-tropical California, but blueberries, strawberries (the baby ones we never get in the US), bananas, apples, plums, figs and more.  My surprise was the selection of vegetables.  Lots of potatoes, onions, garlic, and cabbage.  No surprise there. And a reasonable selection of winter veges -- carrots, rutabagas, tunips, kohlrabi. brusell spouts, cauliflower.  But not the veges I depend on.  No asparagus, snap peas (did find some high priced snow peas), kale or other cookable greens, limited beans and brocolli.  Those are the easy to cook veges that we eat on a daily basis.  Even the salad veges were limited -- much more limited selection of greens (I found the salad mix I typically use in a package under the label "California mix"), plenty of tomatoes, some peppers, found cucumbers once.  Even the mushrooms are just boring button mushrooms (I did score a box of chanterelles, which I think of as the national mushroom of Germany, but they aren't there regularly),  I'm having to rethink how we get our vegetables.

This store has a fresh meat counter, but it's easier for me to deal with the packaged meats, since the fresh ones are still in large pieces and my German isn't good enough to explain how I want them cut.  Chicken seems only to come in packages. There is a larger selection of turkey than chicken.  Lots of processed meats in the fresh meat counter (sort of like an upscale deli).  The store has a fresh fish section; the fish is all very inexpensive (less than $5/pound), but it's perch and farmed salmon, and others that I can't translate, not the tuna, wild salmon, halibut and swordfish we get regularly at home (at much higher prices).

Interesting factoids: they sell wine as in California, but it's all very low end; the candy/cookies section is at least as large as it would be in the US; healthy cereal is on an aisle called 'Cerealen', but the sort of thing we call kids' cereals is on the 'Cornflakes' aisle; frozen pizza is very popular.  As near as I can tell, almost everything is cheaper than it would be in California (discounting the occasional avocado or artichoke that I come across that is probably imported from far away).  Things are somewhat more local, which maybe accounts for what is available.  I do see labels on fruits that say they are from Spain or Turkey, so it's not all from farms down the road

I have also found a separate bakery (Sliced bread in the grocery store is sold as 'toast')  German bread is
too good to waste calories on commercial stuff.  And a fruit and vegetable market, though he has no better selection than the grocery store.  There is also a butcher, who sells only red meat and sausages of various types, but I haven't ventured in there yet.  All of these are on a street of little shops, including jewlery stores, droggeries (for the random stuff you get in drug stores in the US, like tooth paste and makeup), apotheke (for things with medicinal effect, such as aspirin and anti-itch creme), a variety store, etc.

I recently discovered a farmer's market-like setup available most mornings.  I came upon it as it was closing up, so I haven't actually made use of it yet

The wine store is worth a separate mention.  It has wines from reasonable price (5€ on up) to very fancy wines.  The biggest surprise is that you are allowed to taste many of them, at least the mid-priced ones, kind of like a winery tasting.  We go once a week (remember, we are only here 4 days of the week), try 3 or 4 and buy a couple bottles.  It's a great idea and I wonder why US stores don't do this.  I suppose there would be enough freeloaders they would have to charge for it, and that would in some way defeat the purpose.

This place reminds me a lot of when we lived in Pittsburgh (PA).  A similar lifestyle of many small stores with somewhat personal service.  I am loving it, while I hated the setup in Pittsburgh.  To be fair, at the time, I said that if I didn't have an infant to truck around, I'd love this kind of shopping, and now that I am child-free and have more time, I do like it.