Eggs In A Bag and Milk In A Coke Bottle

Life here is different. For more reasons that one, but today I will highlight on difference: supermarkets/ grocery stores in the Kenet.

Going to the store is a daily affair. Thank God we have a store at the end of our street (100ish yards,) literally I am thanking God for this. This shop is the most convenient and we visit it frequently, however it is not the only one in our neighborhood. Stores are everywhere. If you want to sell something, open a shop, no problem. There are at least 10 shops (probably more) within 5-minute walk from our house.

There are no Super-Walmart's or Wegman's. Some shops are as small as the size of our bathroom in my house in the states. In the tiny shops, most common, you enter the shop and tell the shopkeeper what you are looking for and they fetch it for you. Much easier than walking up and down the 100 aisles of Wegmans or even 10 aisles of Aldi/ Dash’s.

Along with the size of the store, the selections are much smaller as well. This makes life much a million times easier for an indecisive person like me. You get what they have and you don’t have to decide between 92 types of cereal, 57 varieties of ketchup or 23 brands of toilet paper.

Eggs come in a bag and you can walk into the shop and specify the number of eggs you want. You can get 1 or 20+, you aren’t locked into multiples of 12.

Milk... there are many options for milk; none of which you regularly find in the U.S. You can buy powdered milk. You can buy a box of milk, 1.5l. Or you can order milk from the milk lady. In this case milk comes in a coke (or other soda) bottle. It is cheaper and supposedly tastes better if you get it from the milk lady. However if you choose this route you must boil it before use.

Cheese here is not creamy. It is crumbly like feta, heck maybe it is feta, beats me. It’s salty, has a strong flavor, and delicious. It doesn’t melt in grilled cheese sandwiches. Trust me, I know. We have grilled cheese about twice a week…the nights I am on dinner duty. I’m pretty sure my cooking skills make my mom and grandma proud ;-)

Pop comes in 1.5l bottles, not 2l. Fanta (a coke product) and Ivi (a Pepsi product) are popular here. Fanta Exotic and Ivi Peach are my favorites and should be bought by all if you can find either an/or both in the U.S. If you come for a visit I will treat you to both a Fanta Exotic and Ivi Peach (it’s a great incentive to come visit!)

Corn on the cob sold at the market is not “sweet corn”(?) You can’t just boil it and eat it. The only way to consume it is by grilling. We learned that lesson the hard way. That was a fun night.

Not everything is marked, price wise. Maybe people just know the prices. Maybe they change depending on the person and day? I’m not really sure. All I know is I don’t know the price until I get to the register- it’s always a surprise. Cash Registers and receipts are non-existent and credit/debit cards, what are those? A calculator is used to tally the prices and only cash is accepted.

If we don’t have enough money to purchase what we need, no problem. We can go back later that day or following week and pay off our debt (at the store we visit frequently.)

Men get served first. If you, a woman, are waiting in line and a man comes to the check out he gets priority. You wait.

Life is different, and I like it.