Życie Codzienne (daily life): Shopping for Food

When Margaret asked me about the differences in day-to-day life, I wondered why it hadn’t occurred to me to write about it before.  I guess because I didn’t think anyone would care.  But the more I think about it, that’s one of the most interesting things about living in another country, isn’t it?  The touristy stuff is for tourists.  So, thanks, Margo.  Day to day life is different for me, personally, in a million ways.  Of course, some of those changes are down to my change in career rather than my change in country: if I worked at a bank or a law firm here, I’d probably be just as dissatisfied with my life as I was at home.   But some of the simplest things are different to the core. 

So I sat down to write a quick summary of all the things that were different.  But that idea went out the window as soon as I saw how much I had to write just about food.  So instead, I’m going to try to check in at least once a week with another blog entry about one thing that is different here.

Shopping for food: There are a couple of big Super Walmart or Target-style stores here (They call them hypermarkets,  and they’re mostly imports from Western Europe, like Carrefour and Tesco).  They’re usually busy, well-stocked, and offer the widest selection of food, so if you want to buy a lot at once (usually on the weekend), or get ingredients for stir-fry or Mexican food or something, they’re the only place to go. 

However,  it is commonly known that the best places to buy fruits and vegetables are not the hypermarkets.  There is nearly always, within a 5 minute walk of wherever you are, a fruit and vegetable stand.  The selection is smaller, but the quality is higher.  They are not shipping fruits and vegetables over to Poland from Southern Chile (not to say none of it is shipped over, but not at such obscene distances). Sometimes the stands are part of an indoor market, like the one pictured in this blog entry, and sometimes they are no more than tiny little boutiques or street stalls.  Everything is laid out in bins or baskets with handwritten price tags.  

Usually (though of course not always – each one is different), in my experience, the arrangement of the display seems to have been determined with an eye for color and has the aim of creating visual interest rather than trying to group like items together, which I find endlessly charming.   In my mind, it shows a kind of appreciation for food, and a pride in the work the owners are doing.  Food is not just a generic product to be moved on and off of shelves – it’s important and beautiful and meant to be appreciated – of course, try to remember that we are still in Poland, not France or Italy, so eating isn’t a near-sexual experience, either.  Anyway, where was I?  Oh.  At the greengrocer’s, you don’t put each different item into a sterile plastic bag to be weighed, stickered and scanned.  You load up your arms with the items you want and take them to the owner.  They are weighed, added up, and dropped into a single bag (which they will give you, but it’s always better to have one with you).  And off you go.

Another difference has to do with frequency.  Since the food here doesn’t have all the preservatives that food has in the States (and thank God - apples shouldn’t refuse to go brown after being cut in half four or five hours ago!), most people don’t just do all their shopping for the whole week all at once.  They have the staples at home, and every couple of days, they stop and pick up fresh ingredients to add to them.  For this kind of shopping,  many people go to the fruit and vegetable stands, to the bakeries, butcher shops, or to the Sklepy spożywczy: the small corner grocers.  In some of them, you pick up a few items from the shelves and take them to the counter.  In others, you stand at the counter and tell them what you want, and they go to the shelves and collect it all for you.  Of course (just so you don’t get too idyllic an image of Poland), with the onward march of capitalism, many of the corner stores are drab, fluorescent-lit places like Netto and Biedronka, where the arrangement has nothing to do with visual appeal, the selection is limited, and the employees are tired and often kind of rude, but the prices are rock-bottom (think Aldi).  And every major street (and many minor ones) has a żabka, too.  Think 7-11.  Not open 24 hours, but relatively late, and every day of the year, holiday or not.

So, yeah.  It's pretty different.  It doesn't really have to be, I guess.  If I wanted to pretend I still lived in the States, I could go to the hypermarket once a week and load up on pre-packaged preservative-laden food.  But I don't.  I like the Sklepy Spożywczy, and I like the greengrocer.   I hope they don't go away as Poland marches ahead into the Western world.  If they do, I might have to marry a Frenchie just to live in a land where they still value food.  For now, I'm happy here.

OK, enough.  I actually have to go do some grocery shopping.  I need some fresh bread, some tomatoes, some chicken, and spinach, if I can find it.  It’s Italian tonight.