Real

It’s the name of our “super” market (and I use that term loosely). Pronounced in Germany as “ray – al” as opposed to English “reel”.

As is our routine, Saturday is grocery shopping day. As we went through this most mundane of tasks, I could not help but observe a few “vignettes” that I thought I would pass along…

· German men must be quite self-confident.
I counted 6 men (all ages, shapes, and sizes) carrying very charming wicker baskets over their arms while shopping for produce, or using them to sack their groceries. Don’t know about you, but I am not sure I know any Texas guy who would be caught dead sporting the wicker hamper slung across their arm or shoulder.

· Weigh your own fruit and veggies or else!
I continue to be the person who gets the surly scowls, hears the sighs from fellow customers standing behind me in line, or witness the “oh, come on, can’t you speed it up?” looks because I can’t figure out to weigh my produce. Nowhere in the US or Asia was I ever required to weigh my fruit and veggies, and operate some little machine that spits out a bar code label with the price listed on it. Apparently, I committed a major faux pas the first time I put all my produce on the check-out counter, expecting the check-out clerk to weigh the produce, calculate the price for me, and add it to my bill. Well, thankfully the machine has pictures that a third grader could figure out (thus, no real need to read German), but invariably there is some machine malfunction, or operator error on my part. I start breaking out in hives as I enter the store just thinking about whether I will be able to master this simple task.

· Mustard in a tube?
We must be careful when brushing our teeth, or we just might grab the tube of mustard by mistake. Yes, you read correctly…mustard comes in a tube (or at least most of the brands in Germany). For that matter, so does ketchup, mayonnaise, ketchup/mayonnaise swirl (whatever that is used for). It tastes pretty much the same but I am still not used to the packaging…

· Rent a cart
I suppose it is to cut down on grocery carts mysteriously disappearing from grocery stores. Bottom line, if you want to use a grocery cart, you’ll need a 1 euro coin (about US$1.20) to insert into the coin machine that will unlock a cart for your shopping use. The first few times we went shopping, we were downright indignant. “What a crock!”, we would say. “I can’t believe the Germans have to pay to use a grocery cart”. Finally, some kind soul showed us that when you return your cart to the cart section, and re-lock it, your euro pops back out. “Ah, I see…it is kind like a deposit”. OK, I feel a bit dumb, but somehow better….

· Bring your sacks or pay the price
Now, this is not a new concept, as we saw this in Taiwan as well. If you want to use the grocery store shopping sacks, you’ll pay a few pennies equivalent per bag. Hence, the reason for all the women (and men) with their cloth shopping bags, wicker hampers, etc.

· “Irv, cleanup on aisle 9” (Yes, thank you…movie reference from Mr. Mom)
I still don’t understand why all the glass bottling for beer and water…I think it is more cultural rather than environmental but I cannot confirm this. And yes, no canned soft drinks or beer, etc….It is all 1 liter bottles, and often in glass. Well, today, we heard a crash of gargantuan proportions…yes, four cases of several stackable cases of German bear (a cases has 10 bottles a piece…so that is about 40 bottles) crashed to the floor. No, we were not the culprits who knocked the beer over….”Irv, I was nowhere near aisle 9!”.