Shopping in Germany

Thinking back to the move to Fayetteville, finding resources here has not been much more difficult than with moving from FL to NC. Except for having to learn all new vocabulary for everything I need, from baby food to trash cans.

Buying baby food means having to learn the names of fruits and vegetables... I now have a cute little vocab spreadsheet for this. With fresh foods, I don't need it (a tomato by any other name...), but with packaged foods there is more to learn. I took food labeling for granted in the states, but here, it is hard to tell how much salt (?), sugar (zucker) and fat (fett) is in the packaged foods. I guess I always intended to eat more fresh foods, right? They seem to use a lot more SALT in the meat and cheese.

Without a basic knowledge of household vocabulary (names of rooms, for instance), cleaners (reineger) here are a nightmare to figure out. Even at home, I hate the endless variety of cleaners that promise to make every surface in your world sparkle with little effort. At least here I don't have to read the marketing crapola. It is a little unnerving though to not know for sure whether you've bought dishwashing tabs or laundry tabs. I know what you're thinking... but the pictures can lie, ok? Just ask Anna Cigolini... she understands. I do have the choice to go to the PX (or WILL when I have a car and a driver's license... minor details... ). But I am trying to learn all I can here, and this goes with it.

Marius Benson (see title link) doesn't seem to like Germany much, but I will have to agree with much of what he says about grocery shopping here. German shopclerks seem to be in a great hurry to get you out of the store, and seem aggravated, almost angry, if you are not fast enough with getting your items out of the cart for scanning, then back into the cart yourself (without bags), simultaneously juggling your wallet to get them paid quickly. They never say it, but inside, I know they are screaming, "SCHNELL, DUMKOPF!! SCHNELL!!"