Eltern

I am used to the idea that in Europe, people go shopping not once a week to stock their cart with a range of frozen foods, but rather every couple of days, to buy fresh bread and delicious produce and deli-bought fish. I am okay with this. In general, I believe that food should be more realistic than it is in America, where square bits of ground-up chicken and potato rectangles made of reconstituted starch constitute a meal. Europe is on the right track. Everything is organic. Bread is great.

I am less okay with this when it becomes apparent that the every-other-day European shopping leads to a certain kind of hell hour for grocery stores.

Namely, 5 pm. When everyone takes the train home, holding tightly to an unhygenic metal pole as they avoid the stares of others. When everyone pulls a canvas bag out of their purse and heads to Aldi. When everyone BATTLES.

My friend Erica wrote a fairly hilarious post about the subtle differences between America and Deutschland last week. Here it is: http://www.ericamorgan.com/?p=691#more-691 . In it, she also concentrates on the way grocery shopping alters from country to country, namely the way it is okay, in Germany, to budge in line.

Today, I fought my way through Aldi, which was a hell of fluorescent lights and sketchy eggs and confused teenagers holding 2.99 bottles of wine. I stood in line for 20 minutes, shoved my 100 euro bill at the cashier (Erica also talks about how people, in Germany, expect that you will pay with the smallest denomination possible, which was proven by the fact that the cashier rolled her eyes at me as she machine-gunned my change onto the counter). I rammed my things into two plastic bags (.29 each, save the planet!). Then I made my way to Edeka, the Byerly's of Germany, to buy non-suspect milk and cheese.

The lines at that grocery store were hell too, but less for me than for the girl behind me. She was blond, freshly-scrubbed-looking, rather plucky and Germanic, and also plainly a student. And she was also the unlucky person to be standing at the end of the line when an old woman, who walked with a limp and was pushing a cart even though all she was carrying were two packages of parsley, cut in front of her and announced, "I was here before."

I expected the girl to be like, "Okay, whatever," since the old woman wasn't holding very much, and also she seemed mean. But to her credit, blond girl was like, "No, I'm at the end of the line."

"But I was here first," said the lady, and settled herself complacently behind me.

"No," said the girl, smiling, "I'm sorry, but I was here." She wedged her cart in.

The old woman's face registered shock, and there was a minute where neither of them knew what to do. I thought that was the end of it. I thought blond girl had won. I began putting my things on the tray, and the girl turned to me, beseeching.

"I really was there first," she said.

"I know, you totally were," I said. "Super weird."

Then the old woman poked her in the side.

I couldn't hear all that she said, but I did hear the words "RESPECT FOR YOUR ELDERS!" and "THE TRUTH!"

"Excuse me," I said, at this point just wanting the increasingly long-seeming line to not be awkward any more. "You can go ahead of me, if you like. You don't have many things." I failed to realize that in principle this was the same thing as the blond girl capitulating, since I was ahead of her, but the witchy old woman was starting to terrify me with her insistence.

"No," she said evilly. "This young lady has decided that I am not allowed to go ahead of her."

At that point, everyone settled for looking in separate directions. The blond girl gazed at her groceries. She seemed near tears. I wasn't sure what to say, or if I could say anything that would make it better, or if I could say anything that wouldn't be heard by the old woman. It wasn't what I would have done, in her situation -- very likely the old lady would have just said something to me in German and I would have instantly caved -- but that didn't mean I wasn't proud of her for standing her ground despite the hexes the old witch was probably casting on her.

I saw her outside the student center later, luckily. "Gut gemacht," I said, which means "well done".

"Seriously?" she said.

"Yes. She was mean!" I said, or think I said.

"She just kept insisting..." blond girl said. She was talking to one of her friends, probably about that, and so I waved goodbye, and pushed my grocery-laden bike (I still haven't figured out how to not shop American-style) towards the dorm. I hope that because I said something her story changed from "and the girl in front of me thought I was being ridiculous" to "hey, that old woman was a bitch, even if one should respect one's elders".

And I hope that whatever spell that old woman cast on her won't be too debilitating, or too long-lasting.