Shopping

To Market, to Market

Ja, I am a German hausfrau: I market, therefore I am.

Now that the leaves are gone from the trees I can look down from the window beside my desk and see the market across the street where I buy our groceries. Kaiser's is a small store that makes our crowded Safeway in Reedsport look positively cavernous, but there's a wonderful selection of hundreds of cheeses and wursts and a bakery with scrumptious breads and rolls.


I carry a clip on my key chain with a metal, euro-sized ring to activate the shopping cart lock—without it I'm always unsuccessfully rummaging in my pockets for that elusive euro coin. I buy our mayonnaise in tubes, milk in tiny liter cartons, and eggs in cartons of ten (why not a dozen?).

Milk, eggs, and mayo

To buy cheese or wurst or fresh meat I stand in line to order from the ladies behind the gleaming display counters—500 grams of mixed ground pork and beef (the cheapest ground meat) and five pork chops, bitte! I was thrilled to discover relatively cheap boneless frozen chicken breasts here, also, a new addition since my German shopping of ten years ago.

Long lines at the cash register are par for the course, especially on Saturdays because all stores are closed on Sundays. I put my items on the conveyer belt and then lay out my cloth shopping bags in my cart, ready for the race to bag the items and get my wallet ready by the time the cashier is finished. I'm getting better now at recognizing all those little euro coins and cents, but it's taken me awhile. I can't imagine what the transition has been like for old-timers who have handled deutschmarks all their lives.

Now I retrieve my little pseudo-euro from the shopping cart and manhandle my heavy cloth bags back to the apartment. I'm grateful to live so near to the market, but my shopping trips are still limited to what I can carry, and I tend to be at the store every day. It's a daily ritual that I engage in with nearly every other German hausfrau.