Shopping Blues

Today was a dreary, rainy day. So I went shopping.

Now, I do not like shopping - even in English - even for things I really, really want. As I hand over money, I feel like I am handing over a piece of my life (I sat in a meeting for 20 minutes to buy that thing). Kristine doesn't like it either.

Well, I had no choice today. There was a little BBQ and game night planned at the church and we planned to bring good ol' American chocolate chip cookies. I was lacking a few ingredients though - butter, flour, vanilla, eggs, baking soda, and chocolate chips.

I could have gone to the local store. It's only a block from our apartment. It is one of the good old fashioned grocery stores with four, maybe five, aisles. Unfortunately, I knew they wouldn't have vanilla extract and I strongly doubted they'd have chocolate chips.

So, at about 10:30 this morning, Silas and I set out in the rain to Albert Hypermarket. After a long, slow walk, with Silas wet up to his knees from splashing in every puddle on the 1.25 km (0.8 mile) trip, we arrived at Albert. I must admit some disappointment. With a name like "Hypermarket" one expects a little more. It isn't small, but it was not as big as Kaufland and not even comparable, so I hear, to Globus.

The store is in a mall. Just a little ways from the women's underwear store. Of course, all stores here are just a little ways from a women's underwear store. We tried to get a cart, but they were all connected by a chain from one to the next. I couldn't figure out how to get them apart (Kristine later explained that you need to insert a 5 Kč coin somewhere). I figured I'd get a basket, but couldn't find them and didn't know how to ask for one. So, between Silas and me, we would just carry everything.

We started up and down the aisles. Silas quickly found some corn flakes, which were not on my list, but as long as he carried them, I was fine with buying.

We found the flour next. There were two brands, all 1 kg packages. Unfortunately, each brand had four types of flour for sale: hruba, polohruba, světla, and špeciál 00 (though eventually I figured out that the last two are the same and just had different names on the front and back of the package - presumably one is the Czech and the other the Slovak terms). I had no idea which I wanted. I didn't have a dictionary with me. I had no chance of getting my question understood and even less of understanding the answer. As I was trying to figure this out, Silas kept dipping his finger into the small piles of spilled flour on the shelf and licking it off. I kept telling him to cut it out cuz I figured we looked pretty pathetic. Then, I realized he had the key to knowing which flour to buy. I too tested each pile and then tried to get a little to fall out of the top of each package to verify. It turns out that there are different textures of flour. Shortly, I held in my hand a kilo of the finest mouka světla that money can buy.

We looked for vanilla and baking soda. No luck. Butter (maslo - I know that word) and eggs (fairly obvious) were easy.

Then on to the chocolate. There were no chips, but plenty of bars. I am no stranger to making my own chips by chopping up bars, so this was going to be no sweat. Except, I couldn't remember the proportion of cocoa in semisweet chips. So, I tried to compare packages and figure out what would be good. This was harder than I anticipated (I was hungry now and Silas kept pulling every bar off the shelf and asking if he could have it). In the end I took home 3 - 200g (7 oz.) bars of milk chocolate and 3 - 200g (7 oz.) bars of baking chocolate (just over 2.5 lbs. of chocolate) and left a mess on their shelves.

Throughout this experience I couldn't help but feel like some kind of idiot. Maybe next time I'll get our friends' 5-year old to take me shopping.

Speaking of shopping...Kristine spent the whole week school shopping. It's all kind of tricky here because the stores have more limited hours. They may open at 9:00 and close at 5:00 or 6:00. The big stores may be open to 8:00. There are some businesses that are "Nonstop", but they tend to be bars. They may also be closed for an hour at noon. Also, the small stores that are nearby did not have everything. The big store is a big walk away - you really don't want to forget your list. Then there is the whole unfamiliarity of where things are at in the stores. Finally, some things are out on shelves, others are behind the counter, and it's hard to guess which way it will be.

Also, the materials may be rather particular. Notebook #442 is a certain size with lines and 40 pages - not to be confused with #444 which is the same size, has lines and 20 pages. Of course there are different sizes and some without lines. There are plastic textbook covers (the texts are typically softcover), pencils (this being the home of world famous pencil maker Koh-i-Noor they take their pencils seriously), compass, protractor, etc., etc.

Well, the kids got a list of supplies they would need on Tuesday. And some more things on Wednesday. On Thursday there was another list and why don't you have everything from the Tuesday list yet? So, truly, Kristine went school shopping every day this week.

This may sound pretty whiney.

Peter