Everyday Living

Thinking back to when I first moved to Germany, I vividly remember being exhausted at the end of each day. Our first week here has reminded me that this is not entirely an artifact of changing time zones, but the effort that goes into everyday living. 

Imagine you want to make dinner. Risotto perhaps. You go to the grocery store (but not on a Sunday) and try to pick out the ingredients. You get to the store and try to grab a cart only to find that it is chained to all of the other carts. After an initial inspection you find that the chain can be removed by inserting in a 1 franc coin that you will get back upon returning the cart. After digging and finding a coin (which you promise yourself you will remember to bring the next time you go) you enter the store feeling triumphant. Not only have you caught the correct bus and found the store - now you have a cart. Well done. 

You are immediately greeted by the produce section, in which all of the prices are given in kilograms. How many kilos are a bag of onions? Mushrooms? A butternut squash? What is a good price in kilos? You decide that these are questions for another day, you decide just to buy the amount of ingredients you know you need. After selecting the perfect squash you notice that everyone is weighing their produce and sticking the printed price on their bags. No worries; you did that when you lived in Ithaca. All you have to do is enter the item number, set the food on the scale and press print. But there is no number. Perhaps you just search for the item number from a list at the scale. No. The scale has 133 buttons. You know this because there are 132 numbered buttons and "print." No list. You return to the squash and search for a number and can find nothing. Time to enter surveillance mode. You start watching the people who so confidently walk up to the scale, place on a bag of carrots, and press "23." Perhaps it is simply common knowledge that carrots are 23; something you learn in swiss schools, along with riding scooters and applying tasteful amounts of makeup. After deciding this is unlikely you go in search of the carrots yourself and discover that, yes, in the corner there is a small 23. Triumphant, you return to the squash and look at the corner of the tag to find that it is blank. Alas. You sigh, put the unlabeled squash in your cart, and hope that the cashier does not tell you off in French.

Happy to leave the produce section you head over to the dried goods for some Arborio rice. After an initial moment of excitement upon locating the rice, you realize that there are 12 varieties. Fine. For your budget’s sake you settle for the store brand. Or you try to. There are three types of Migros brand Arborio rice. A brief inspection of the labels reveals that you, in fact, know very little French and you put the one with the red packaging in your cart. The same goes for the broth.

Standing in line for the cashier you pat yourself on the back for remembering to bring reusable bags along (so that you don’t have to buy any) and place all of your items on the conveyor. The cashier efficiently rings you out and (using the screen as a convenient guide) hand over the appropriate amount of cash. Well done you. Stepping out of the way to put the change in your wallet you notice that the cashier has started on the next customer and all of your items are pooled at the end of the counter. You hurriedly pack your own bags, thankful for the little metal divider that allows for two sets of groceries to collect, providing you a solid four minutes to pack your bags. Returning the cart, retrieving your Franc, and walking to the bus you feel triumphant. And awkward. And heavy. Surely you can’t need this many groceries. By the time you reach the apartment you have sworn off the purchasing of canned goods for a diet consisting of cotton candy, marshmallows, and puffed cereals.

You unpack your groceries and start to set out the ingredients for one of your favorite recipes - one you have made so many times that you know it by heart. It starts with five cups of broth and one cup of rice. The only measuring device you can find is in grams. How many grams of rice in a cup? How many (not joking, the package was labeled this way) deci-liters of broth are in five cups? A quick trip to the magical internet machine gives you an approximate answer and you are on your way. Isn’t making dinner relaxing? I bet you can't wait until breakfast tomorrow.