Shopping in a Foreign Land

Shopping in a Foreign Land ©

By

Michael Casey

Well I’ve just come back from the Polish corner shop, I got tomatoes and eggs, their food always seems fresher and tastier, a few pennies more but always worth it. Since before last Summer 2017 we switched our supermarket as my daughter wanted better food prior to the exams. No I was not starving her and keeping her in a cage before, but a change was due and my kidneys could need help too so we switched. So we go to the posher supermarket for bulk items and as ever the Polish shop for other stuff, it saves me from crossing the

main road and being a large target for speeding drivers.

So now you know the background, what about the shopping experience as all those sick making magazines on glossy paper boast. I’m not going to be a supermarket magazine posed on paper in a boring world wide useless style. MIAOW, yes I detest that style of writing, I would not even call it writing as its all so samey. I’ll bore you with my style instead.

When you are in a store with foreign language everywhere its an experience, an adventure. If the language is European or Latin based you have a clue, but if you are in China, as I’ve been, then it’s a whole different ball game. Or maybe you are in Japan, or Korea, what then?

Or what if you are Chinese and you are shopping in Birmingham?

Food labels have pictures on and that’s what saves us, we like the picture so we buy the product. In Polish shops everything seems to have a EY on the end, MayonaiseEY or something similar. I’ll double check later when I look in our fridge. But beware pictures are worth a 1000 words but, National tastes are different. So a Polish tongue is different to a Chinese tongue, and I’m not talking about French Kissing in the USA either. I’m talking about how different countries have different tastes in food.

Some food appears so bland compared to say Birmingham tongues, and I’m not talking about Pork Scratchings either. Or one countries tastes is so salty, and nobody’s chocolate can beat Cadbury’s, come to Birmingham where it is made just a few miles from where I am sitting.

In Germany, in Frankfurt where we visited back in 2007 the food in our Offenbach hotel was great, and the little restaurant next door had Licher lager, which I’d love to try again,even though I’m not much of a drinker. My book Still Smiling 2017 has a cover photo of me in Offenbach. Also next door was a little supermarket where we’d buy a few things just by looking at the pictures. So pictures do influence us.

Obviously when you are in France wine features big-time, as does Fresh Produce, so you have a feast for your eyes. There is a different smell in each different shop too, whether abroad or in a foreign produce shop here in Birmingham. This again is part of the experience, you love that shop because you can drink in all the smells.

Just as a bar or restaurant anywhere that has not been cleaned just makes you want to turn around and leave. I also have a 20 minute rule about places, if they don’t serve me in 20 mins then I walk out. They obviously don’t want my money, and their customer service is zero.

So you buy your stuff and then you have to pay for it, using your foreign language skills. Luckily all the girls in the Polish shop have some English. I even handed a usb stick with some stories and Polish translations to one of the girls to help her with her English studies. But getting back to the checkout. Once there you have to pay, and if you are in France or China then it can be quite a test, but luckily electronic tills display what you have to pay. Though on my first to Shanghai in one back street place an abacus was on the counter. Far quicker than calculators.

You leave the shop juggling your purchases because Theresa May who lives on the corner always steals all the plastic carrier bags, so you juggle your way home. Once home you randomly open a few things, those you don’t like go into the cat’s bowl. Luckily Totoro will eat anything that comes out of a plastic packet. In fact Totoro will beat Hussain Bolt down the stairs any time of the day or night, once the sound of plastic beckons.

So by trial and error you develop a taste for seaweed, or mayonaiseY or however Polish people spell it. Or the local fizzy pops, or their biscuits, you even get addicted, so you always go to this or that foreign shop just for your food fix. But you never learn the language, so they always speak to you in Mandarin or Polish or Albanian. So you develop fantastic sign language skills and end up dating a beautiful Korean girl. And then you practice each others tongues, and you and work that out for yourselves…