in the marktplatz

I've been realizing that we haven't actually written too much about being in Germany. And, having read a series of completely lame-o posts from this semi-professional blogger I subscribe to, I figure I'm not really going to do any worse. (And she just had a book published!) So here goes:

Mostly, I've been half-writing some comparative posts in my head the last few weeks--how things were in England compared with Australia compared with here, etc. For example:

Winner of the Best Knockoff Ziploc Bag: TESCO, of the UK

Winner of the Worst Knockoff Ziploc: HIT, of Germany, which can't even manage to be sealable, let alone resealable. (One of the many oddities of this year has been hauling plastic grocery bags and ziplocs over 5 continents. Suddenly I'll realize I'm holding a Tesco bag that we've drug all the way from England, or a Kroger bag from Athens and think, "This bag has made quite an exceptional life journey.")

Or more (okay, slightly more) substantive things like shopping. The American-style supermarket definitely exists in all of the places that we've lived, but I've found it interesting that in America, it's pretty much all we've got: One big fat store where you can buy everything but the kitchen sink. There are dozens of such big fat stores--most of us have 2-5 to choose from, depending on whether we're in the city or the country--but there are really only big fat stores. Farmer's markets, where they exist, are usually just one day a week. Trader Joe's, though fabulous, has only a relatively small number of stores. Some big cities have a North Market or a Pike Place Market, but most of us are not so lucky. Most of us are shopping at Kroger or Walmart. I cannot name a stand-alone butcher anywhere in the state of Ohio. Nor a green grocer. Only a couple of bakeries.

This is not how the Germans live.

Though Germany has supermarkets, it also has The Marktplatz. Stalls in the Marktplatz sell most perishable stuff--lots of fruits and vegetables, some cheese, some fish, some meat (mostly sausages and lunchmeat) and flowers. Although I really like the Marktplatz, it does get a little exhausting. You have to have a separate interaction with every single vendor and no two vendors carry the exact same things.

For instance: Yesterday I needed red peppers, onions, cilantro, cumin, and a loaf of bread. This entailed 5 separate purchases. I started with the Spice Guy, who only had spices and then moved on to the Cilantro Woman who had cilantro but no peppers or onions yesterday. Next I went to the Guy With Lots of Peppers but he was out of onions. I looked through three more stalls before I found Someone with Onions and then I still needed the loaf of bread. The bakery with the bread we like was out of our favorite kind, so I went across the street to the other bakery (There are at least 7 bakeries within a 10-minute walk of our apartment. At least. The big supermarket has two, just on its own. Nope, I'm wrong. There are at least 9. I forgot the two in the Marktplatz.) After perusing the second bakery, I decided that they didn't really have anything that I wanted so I went back to the first bakery and tried a new flavor but realized that they didn't have any cakes that I liked so I went back to the second bakery for the second time and bought a piece of cake.

Yeah. Like I said, exhausting. Though the quality is absolutely better, sometimes I miss Kroger with its one-stop-shop. And I'd miss it even more if I didn't have anything better to do than spend 20 minutes shuttling between bakeries to buy one loaf of bread. Why not just go to the supermarket? Because the produce, if you can find it, is rotten before you get it home. It's incredible.

England seemed most like the U.S. Everything was available at the supermarket and most of it was pretty good. There were also specialty shops (like The Cheese Hamlet, which we have already raved about several times, or Axxon's Butcher Shop, whose award-winning sausages we miss), but you didn't have to go to them if you didn't have time.

And Australia was the happy medium: a regular supermarket which was usually part of a plaza which included the butcher, the baker, and the green grocer (thought I was gonna say "candlestick maker", didn't you?) After about two weeks of Kroger's never-ripe-until-it's-rotten produce, I suspect I will be missing things in Australia.