Cultural acclimatization at 20,000 steps per day

I'm definitely becoming settled here and a bit more like the locals.  I know where to find the "good stuff"  (wine, cheese, meat, produce).  But it takes a lot of walking to operate this way.  We don't have a car, but many of these I wouldn't drive to anyway.  About half are further than I typically walk in Palo Alto, but parking would be such a hassle that I would walk (or perhaps take the tram if the weather were really bad) anyway if I had a car.

Here were my trips the last two days.  Yesterday

• downtown, supposedly to pick up a pair of glasses (a friend asked me to order them for her, as she wanted a specific pair of frames that she saw in Germany last year).  I forgot the receipt, so I didn't get the glasses (the Germans are very picky about this -- even with better language skills, I doubt I could talk my way into getting something without a receipt), but I also needed to get the good loose tea from the downtown farmer's market, which is only open Tuesday and Thursday.  There was also a "farm bakery" at the farmer's market, so I got my breads there.
• on the same trip, to the department store downtown to get a gift for my German teacher
• Jay texted that he wanted to go to the wine store, and I didn't have enough bags for that, so we met at the apartment, where I deposited these things and went out again
• to the wine store (about half the distance to downtown) to restock our supply of wine. Four bottles of wine is heavy, so back home immediately
• to the local shopping area to get cash from the money machine (just about everything requires cash, so regular withdrawals from our German account are a necessity) and to the fruit stand to get veges for dinner (spaghetti and a salad).  Back home with a full load.
• to the supermarket (the one close to us re-opened yesterday, but it was a zoo, so back to the further one) to get yogurt, pasta sauce, and a few other things.

25000 fitbit steps

And today:

• back downtown.  On the way I stopped at a bakery we like and got the day's pastry and bread.  I picked up the glasses, looked for a book as a gift (they would have to order it, so on to plan B), got some Lebkuchen as a gift for the lab and a humorous postcard to send to my German teacher in the US.
• on the way back, stopped again at the vege stand (needed mushrooms for the schnitzel and some brussels sprouts) and at the butcher's to get the pork for the schnitzel.
• second trip was to the post office to mail the postcard to the US (just a small local branch -- I used the machine to buy a stamp.  Unlike in the US I could put in any denomination and get a stamp out of that value) and then to the grocery store to get some muesli that we had just run out of

15000 fitbit steps (but the day isn't over)

(I was going to go for a walk in the woods, but it's dreary and windy, and I need to catch up on this blog)

You can see why shopping takes a large chunk of my time.  

Other ways I have adapted.

• I am starting to take the good quality of the produce and the meat for granted.  I think the produce is similar in price to what we have (which in a sense makes it cheaper, as this time of year, a large fraction of it is imported from Spain and the Middle East, and we Californians still have a lot of local produce).  The meat is very high quality, and so much cheaper -- I paid less than 2 Euro for enough pork loin to make two generous schnitzels.  If I could get pork this good regularly (even at Dittmers), we would eat schnitzel more often.
• I buy bread daily at a real bakery (not the one in the supermarket or one of the German chains) every day.  I swear there is a bakery on every block in the commercial areas, though more than half are chains.  That gives you some idea of how important bread is to Germans.  I need 1) breakfast pastry, 2) lunch brotchen (roll) for my sandwich (with meat from the chicken I roasted Monday), and 3) some days dinner brotchen, because the whole-grain bread here is so good we are firmly entrenched in the habit of eating brotchen with dinner.  All of these are significantly better within 24 hours of purchase, so I need to get them every day.  We've tried about 6 or 7 different bakeries, and the one I like best has a branch in the train station, which I wouldn't have expected to be an indicator of quality (though I suspect it means they have been around for a long time).
• I don't bundle up as much as I did when I first came -- the weather seems less threatening, even though it is objectively more wintery.  All the locals are out without hats or gloves and so am I.
• My coin purse is a true necessity.  If you get less than 10 euros in change it will almost always be as coins (there are 1 and 2 Euro coins).  And people appreciate exact change and are willing to wait till you dig it out.  I sometimes have as much as 20 Euros in the purse.  So for most purchases, since a credit card is not welcome and I am buying in "one day" units, I use my coin purse, not my wallet (till I need to break another 50).
• I never go out without a cloth bag to put things in, 2 or 3 if I know I am going to buy a significant amount.  I do something somewhat equivalent at home -- I have a bunch of canvas bags in my car, but it doesn't seem quite the same.