I didn't go into any grocery stores! I quite enjoy going into other countries' grocery stores. They convey interesting information. Are they mammoth? Weensey little corner shops? How are they organized? What do they contain, prioritize? It's interesting how doing something on autopilot on home soil suddenly is brought to the forefront of consciousness as I navigate a new exotic terrain in search of ordinary products.
I was thinking idly the other day about grocery shopping in Finland. Just a random moment. Here's a few of the things that stand out in my memory about it.
They sell their potatoes, dirt included, in these big bins. Left to my own devices, I don't know that I'd have ever found them - the potato section looks like nothing but big, dark containers of dirt. But you get a big sifter scoop, dip it in, shake off the excess dirt, and voila - potatoes. Bag 'em up and there you go.
For produce generally, you also need to weigh and price out whatever you buy. They don't do it at the register. The first time I tried that in Helsinki, I felt like a complete idiot. The machine's display was all in Finnish - which I don't know and probably will never learn.
Couldn't get the damned thing to print me out a price tag, and I got 3 of them seemingly jammed in error-mode (hard to tell - again, Finnish! But pushing more buttons wasn't doing anything). Then I finally stood behind a lady who was weighing out her bananas or whatever, watched what she did, and then mimed her when it was my turn. I think it worked, but I wasn't sure; I got a tag with numbers on it - hopefully it was the right price and I didn't end up paying 10 euros for a few bananas (again: Finnish!).
The next summer, I think they had replaced the machines with nice friendly versions with pictures of the produce on the touch-pad so that illiterates like me could put the item on the scale, push the button that showed (say) a banana, and get the price tag. That was a little humbling, somehow.
They sell their fresh herbs in wee little pots. I mean, when you buy the herbs, you're buying them live; you could probably take them home and replant them and grow your own if you wanted. I thought that looked really smart. And: arugula = rocket. Took me a while to figure that out.
Crackers. Finns love crackers. I'm not talking the wimpy saltine or ritz variety. These are hearty, rye-based, serious foods. Sometimes they come in shapes as big as a wheel. For all I can tell, they all taste the same. But there must be subtle differences, because there are entire aisles devoted to crackers of assorted brands and sizes and shapes.
And bread. I'm not a big on eating bread, but I do enjoy all the other aesthetics - the shapes, the colors, and especially the smells. The bakery section is large and gorgeous.
Cheese is also popular. The sections of it we find in the stores in the U.S. look wimpy compared to the gigantic slabs of it they have in the dairy section in Finland. Also: be careful about buying what looks like yogurt. They also have a thing called fil in Finland that's pretty common, and though it's kind of like yogurt, it's not the same and it might yick you out. The yogurt often comes in containers that look like they'd hold milk; the yogurt is more liquidey there.
Lots of pre-marinated meat and it is usually quite tastey.
Lots of sauna accoutrement in the health and beauty section. Lots of products containing tar - tar soap, tar shampoo, tar-scented oil that you can add to the water to splash on the heater in the sauna. Sounds weird, I'm sure, and to hold a bar of tar soap up to your nose and inhale - well, I won't lie. It stinks. Yet, strange but true, the scent that gets left after you use it and rinse it off is much like sandalwood.
Be either quick on your feet and have good environmental awareness, or don't mind the little old lady who elbows you out of her way as she's reaching for the whatever. And they don't say anything that sounds like "excuse me" when they do. They have a different way of navigating personal space there.
Bring a coin so that you can get a shopping cart. They're lined up with a kind of locking mechanism that released when a coin (25 cents?) is inserted. You get it back when you return the cart. I thought that looked VERY smart!
Bring your own bags. This is a trend that's gaining ground in the U.S. - at least in our western portion of it. Because they charge for the bags you use at the store. So if you don't have your own, you pull out however many you think you'll need at the register, add them to the pile of everything you're buying. The lady rings you up for them, and then you proceed to the end of the conveyor belt and bag our own groceries. Everyone bags their own groceries.
I remember the first time I went to a store and found out about the bag thing in Scandinavia. It was liquor store, where we were stocking up on wine (which they don't sell in grocery stores, and which is frequently packaged in boxes. Also, for American beer they carried only the worst varieties - why?). We went with the bottles, and I was doing, unreflectively, what I see happen all the time here as I was bagging it up - putting the different bottles in their own bags so that they wouldn't clang together excessively, and the guy at the register looked at me like I was crazy. Afterward, G laughed, and said "you know, I just had to pay for all those bags, don't you?" Of course I didn't, but at least it explained the crazy look.
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