I went to the store today, because I ran out of juice.
Going to the store in Germany is not terribly different from the US, apart of course from the fact that all of the products are completely unfamiliar and all the labels say is: "BARBARBARzuckerBARBARBARfettBARBARBARhohes-CBARBAR." It really only takes a week or two before one finds a couple of safe labels and begins to develop comforting brand loyalties. Not too bad. The payment process, however, is much more difficult. You have to deal with the cashier speaking German at you, and while you could admit you don't speak a word of their language, because the lady at the counter totally speaks English, who wants to do that. After maybe a month or so, one becomes fairly well acquainted with the few formula of appropriate cashier-customer dialogue, and this difficulty also breaks down into familiarity.
The hardest part of store trips is the line. We Americans are used to waiting in lines that are actually quite a lot longer than the ones here. But we do not experience the intense, crushing pressure seems to build up in a line of only five or six people here. We wait impatiently like everyone else but the British, but unless someone is seriously screwing around at the front of the line, like trying to "return" a half-drunk carton of milk because they suddenly "found out" it was the wrong fucking flavor, we're pretty chill.
This is not the case in the German model. Once you get to the cashier, she's got half of your shit rung up by the time you can say "Hallo," and God help you if your cash isn't in hand ready to pay by the time she's done. You will feel a rapidly escalating sense of panic as the German equivalent of a Care Bear Stare hits you from all angles if you get caught with you hand still in pocket, looking for wallet when she says "Acht Euro fünfundneunzig," or if you give her the wrong amount of money because she said the number backwards. Even if you manage to get the money thing down, you've still got to scoop up all your fuzzily-gathered foragings before they're pushed off the counter by the next guy's. This wasn't a problem while Yandee and I were tag-team shoppers, but I have not managed to do this once alone. The Germans all seem to manage fine, but I've never had the opportunity to watch how they do it because I'm always frantically looking for a tenner while the guy ahead of me magicks his shit into what is presumably a refrigerated Bag of Holding. Probably a Mercedes.
Suffice it to say that I'm a little bit distracted as I wait in line with a bottle of juice and a bag of chips. My mind is on how much this will probably come out to, not the woman behind me. She says something and for a second I figure she's not even talking to me, but then I realize she's looking at me. I have no idea at all what she's just said, but due to context cues, I was able to conclude that she wanted me to move my ass up and put my shit on the conveyor, so she could also put her shit on the conveyor. Luckily I was even able to do this fast enough to cover up that was completely unable to understand her. She even smiled at me understandingly, and I smiled back at her understandingly. Whew, crisis averted!
But then she kept talking to me! I try the understanding smile again, but it's no good this time - apparently it was a question, and not only that, but a question that expects an answer. Shit! I give up.
"I'm sorry, I don't speak German :-(," I say.
"Oh! I asked if you are a physicist," she says.
":-O Yeah I am, how did you know?"
"Well, from the way you look and the way you're dressed, you know, and the things you bought."
I was a little embarrassed but somehow not too surprised that going to the store for a bottle of orange juice and a bag of tortilla chips would peg me as a physicist. It turned out she was a retired psychologist. I immediately started wondering what exactly tortilla chips are loudly proclaiming about my psyche, when I started to feel the Stage I Care-Bear Stare. Fuck, my turn to pay! I rush to get back the necessary force of will and also to whip out some money. In the end, despite having only two purchases, they still almost got pushed off the counter by the psychologist lady's much healthier purchases.
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