(no duh)the cultural baggage of countries now seems to include...er...bagging.
paper or plastic? - i'd never known it any other way. you went to shop rite, you bagged (or someone bagged for you) your groceries in either the yellow plastic shop rite bags or in the brown paper ones (or, if you're my mom, in both, wherein the paper bag goes into the plastic bag and voila! has spiffy, easy-to-carry handles).
my first year in germany, we lived in a suburb of stuttgart, a mere 20 minutes away. leinfelden was a small-ish town, with a town square that led off into the town u-bahn station. if you veered right after exiting our road instead of heading straight (in the direction of the square), you'd pass a row of small shops on either side of the main road. at the end, where the road curved and tapered off into farmland, there was a lidl, one of those small german grocery store chains that litter smaller towns (lidl and aldi were the smaller ones, real - pronounced ray-aal - was the larger model). to get to the lidl though, you first passed the bakery and the butcher shop, as well as a large walled area with a house attached to it (the wooden wall resembled the gates in "jurassic park," and when opened, revealed a large patch of vegetable garden). the walled area was the most interesting - it yielded fresh vegetables, which the owners then put in baskets outside the front of their house. the sign encouraged you to take what you like, and leave money in the basket by the door. it was a complete town honor system which everyone followed, and the dirt-encrusted radishes, dirt-encrusted potatoes, and dirt-encrusted romaine lettuce heads (with added tiny bugs) resulted in some of the most delicious salads i'd ever eaten.
but my first trip to the lidl was interesting, especially because i knew no german at the time (well, except for the basic "hello," "how are you?" and "where is the toilet?" phrases...none of which would have been of much help with the bored cashier). my mother and i walked in, bought a whole bunch of stuff and wheeled our shopping cart to the cash register. after ringing us up, the cashier asked us if we wanted to buy bags. we weren't sure what he was asking, until he said in broken english "ze small bag ist 50 euro cents, ze large one ist 1 euro." naturally, we said no - how preposterous! how laughable! we came from a land of abundance where bags were free and handed out to the masses! pay for our bags? surely you jest.
only, when he was done ringing us up, he proceeded to ring up the next customer, leaving us with an impossibly large pile of groceries, and without any bags.
the hilarity that ensued when we trudged home in the heat (this was mid-july) with armfuls of groceries is funny in retrospect, but dear God we hated it at the time. we thought these small German quirks were ludicrous - our neighbor telling us one day that we needed a compost, and that he had gone through our garbage and saw that we had separated our trash wrong; the street-side recycling stations with different slots for white glass, brown glass, and green glass; the ridiculously overpriced gas (quit complaining, the europeans have been over-paying for gas for ages); the horrendous customer service and stores that closed at 4 pm everyday (1 pm on saturdays, sundays closed completely)....
i don't know when we became accustomed to that style of living. it was a subtle and disingenuous process, and it hit us without our even knowing it. we gave in and bought linen bags the next time we were at lidl, and were also more careful of how much we bought. our fridge was tiny anyway, and could only hold so much, but food that had been bought only the day before seemed to taste fresher than food that's been lying in the fridge for a week, or in the freezer for weeks on end. in europe, the pace is slower, allowing for more people to buy groceries on a daily basis. in france, children seem to come with baguettes attached to their arms - they buy them from the bakery on the way home from school everyday. in england, there's the shop down the street where you can buy toast, but milk is still delivered fresh to the door by a milkman.
one halloween, my best friend and i were hosting a halloween party, and wanted traditional american candies to give to our friends. our neighbor worked as a civilian on the u.s. army base in heidelberg, and offered to take us to the american grocery store there. the base is a self-sufficient piece of quintessential americana, replete with kfc's and malls and high schools. stepping onto the base was like stepping out of germany and into a suburban american town. the introverted self-sufficiency was so complete, that once, while riding the #42 bus to class, i overheard an army wife, talking in english to her companion, telling her that though she had lived in heidelberg for 3 years, she had never explored the city, and had been afraid to even board a tram or a bus - and then proceeded to laugh and say she didn't need to anyway, seeing as they got all they could ever want on base (of course, this isn't representative - my friend eric, who also worked for the army, was constantly in town, and reveled in the different cultures he got to see while touring the world)
i still remember the surprise in my german friend's eyes when she saw that grocery store - pristine, bright shelves piled high with all kinds of packaged foods ("do they leave those lights on all night?" she asked, looking up), long checkout lanes, and most importantly, the baggers, efficiently bagging our groceries into plastic bags which we never paid for.
there's a thing called "expat syndrome" - the culture shocks of moving to a new country are great, and difficult to deal with, but when they subtly take over parts of your psyche and mesh with what you had been used to, coming back home is much more difficult. the adjustment is hard. if europe is all i talk about, it's not because i'm unjustifiably obsessed - i've settled back into american life quite comfortably, thanks very much. but i miss the air quality, the quality of foods, the effortless care given to families and environment, which are simply a part of european culture - they know no other way, because that's what they've always seen. similarly, if you've only lived in the united states and nowhere else, you know no other way but the one you've been used to for years. but expats seem to be an amalgam of bits and pieces they've taken from multiple cultures.
i went to shop rite the other day and saw linen bags for sale - and was pleased to see that lots of people actually bought and carried them to the store. it's annoying that ueber-celebrities have popularized the chic linen bags and the "go-green" mentality, and honestly, no change will be made unless plastic and paper bags and omitted from grocery stores completely (which ain't gonna happen) - but it's a nice step forward no?
paper or plastic? - i'd never known it any other way. you went to shop rite, you bagged (or someone bagged for you) your groceries in either the yellow plastic shop rite bags or in the brown paper ones (or, if you're my mom, in both, wherein the paper bag goes into the plastic bag and voila! has spiffy, easy-to-carry handles).
my first year in germany, we lived in a suburb of stuttgart, a mere 20 minutes away. leinfelden was a small-ish town, with a town square that led off into the town u-bahn station. if you veered right after exiting our road instead of heading straight (in the direction of the square), you'd pass a row of small shops on either side of the main road. at the end, where the road curved and tapered off into farmland, there was a lidl, one of those small german grocery store chains that litter smaller towns (lidl and aldi were the smaller ones, real - pronounced ray-aal - was the larger model). to get to the lidl though, you first passed the bakery and the butcher shop, as well as a large walled area with a house attached to it (the wooden wall resembled the gates in "jurassic park," and when opened, revealed a large patch of vegetable garden). the walled area was the most interesting - it yielded fresh vegetables, which the owners then put in baskets outside the front of their house. the sign encouraged you to take what you like, and leave money in the basket by the door. it was a complete town honor system which everyone followed, and the dirt-encrusted radishes, dirt-encrusted potatoes, and dirt-encrusted romaine lettuce heads (with added tiny bugs) resulted in some of the most delicious salads i'd ever eaten.
but my first trip to the lidl was interesting, especially because i knew no german at the time (well, except for the basic "hello," "how are you?" and "where is the toilet?" phrases...none of which would have been of much help with the bored cashier). my mother and i walked in, bought a whole bunch of stuff and wheeled our shopping cart to the cash register. after ringing us up, the cashier asked us if we wanted to buy bags. we weren't sure what he was asking, until he said in broken english "ze small bag ist 50 euro cents, ze large one ist 1 euro." naturally, we said no - how preposterous! how laughable! we came from a land of abundance where bags were free and handed out to the masses! pay for our bags? surely you jest.
only, when he was done ringing us up, he proceeded to ring up the next customer, leaving us with an impossibly large pile of groceries, and without any bags.
the hilarity that ensued when we trudged home in the heat (this was mid-july) with armfuls of groceries is funny in retrospect, but dear God we hated it at the time. we thought these small German quirks were ludicrous - our neighbor telling us one day that we needed a compost, and that he had gone through our garbage and saw that we had separated our trash wrong; the street-side recycling stations with different slots for white glass, brown glass, and green glass; the ridiculously overpriced gas (quit complaining, the europeans have been over-paying for gas for ages); the horrendous customer service and stores that closed at 4 pm everyday (1 pm on saturdays, sundays closed completely)....
i don't know when we became accustomed to that style of living. it was a subtle and disingenuous process, and it hit us without our even knowing it. we gave in and bought linen bags the next time we were at lidl, and were also more careful of how much we bought. our fridge was tiny anyway, and could only hold so much, but food that had been bought only the day before seemed to taste fresher than food that's been lying in the fridge for a week, or in the freezer for weeks on end. in europe, the pace is slower, allowing for more people to buy groceries on a daily basis. in france, children seem to come with baguettes attached to their arms - they buy them from the bakery on the way home from school everyday. in england, there's the shop down the street where you can buy toast, but milk is still delivered fresh to the door by a milkman.
one halloween, my best friend and i were hosting a halloween party, and wanted traditional american candies to give to our friends. our neighbor worked as a civilian on the u.s. army base in heidelberg, and offered to take us to the american grocery store there. the base is a self-sufficient piece of quintessential americana, replete with kfc's and malls and high schools. stepping onto the base was like stepping out of germany and into a suburban american town. the introverted self-sufficiency was so complete, that once, while riding the #42 bus to class, i overheard an army wife, talking in english to her companion, telling her that though she had lived in heidelberg for 3 years, she had never explored the city, and had been afraid to even board a tram or a bus - and then proceeded to laugh and say she didn't need to anyway, seeing as they got all they could ever want on base (of course, this isn't representative - my friend eric, who also worked for the army, was constantly in town, and reveled in the different cultures he got to see while touring the world)
i still remember the surprise in my german friend's eyes when she saw that grocery store - pristine, bright shelves piled high with all kinds of packaged foods ("do they leave those lights on all night?" she asked, looking up), long checkout lanes, and most importantly, the baggers, efficiently bagging our groceries into plastic bags which we never paid for.
there's a thing called "expat syndrome" - the culture shocks of moving to a new country are great, and difficult to deal with, but when they subtly take over parts of your psyche and mesh with what you had been used to, coming back home is much more difficult. the adjustment is hard. if europe is all i talk about, it's not because i'm unjustifiably obsessed - i've settled back into american life quite comfortably, thanks very much. but i miss the air quality, the quality of foods, the effortless care given to families and environment, which are simply a part of european culture - they know no other way, because that's what they've always seen. similarly, if you've only lived in the united states and nowhere else, you know no other way but the one you've been used to for years. but expats seem to be an amalgam of bits and pieces they've taken from multiple cultures.
i went to shop rite the other day and saw linen bags for sale - and was pleased to see that lots of people actually bought and carried them to the store. it's annoying that ueber-celebrities have popularized the chic linen bags and the "go-green" mentality, and honestly, no change will be made unless plastic and paper bags and omitted from grocery stores completely (which ain't gonna happen) - but it's a nice step forward no?
2 comments:
Its a nice step forward --
if they did not have those tacky slogans making the people who walk with them have an extra bounce in their step, all because they are following the next fashion fad. No, I respect the few brave souls who go shopping, holding old, beat-up, unflattering burlap bags that previously held potatoes or onions or some other non-glamorous vegetable.
agreed. i no like tacky slogans neither. the ones in germany were hardly stylish, but they were functional, and not meant to be arm accessories.
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