There’s something extraordinarily disconcerting about grocery shopping in a foreign country. It’s a little like being lost in a new city, but multiplied. It’s so simple and familiar, yet there are a thousand nuances changed.
There’s more produce, better fashion. You’re expected to bag your own groceries. There are new and different flavors of Fanta that actually taste good. Of course, they’re flavours, and you’re in a shopping centre, where there will probably be a pudding aisle with cake mix and ice cream and a hygiene aisle with nappies and actual French shampoo. Locally grown foods feature the Union Jack. Your change will be an incomprehensible handful of coins, likely given to you by a person whom you’ve held an entire conversation with while having no idea what they were saying.
The weirdest thing, though, is blending in. No one stares at you like they do a loud group of tourists. And why would they? Like you, they’re just trying to get out with their bagels and apple juice as fast as possible (which seems to be quite a bit slower in English groceries…). It’s so incredibly mundane that it’s easy to forget you’re 4500 miles away from home—and when you remember, it’s all the more incredible.
No comments:
Post a Comment