Grocery Shopping in Germany: Lesson 3 -- At the Lidl

Walk 10 minutes down the path from our house, up the street and you'll be at the Grocery Trifecta -- at one intersection we have three grocery stores: Rewe (the nice one) and the Aldi and Lidl, both discount grocery stores. Of those last two, I usually shop at Lidl because it's on our side of the intersection. To the right you can see the attached bakery, Hechts, which is our go-to bakery.

A first look inside the Lidl. If I walk to the store, I put the groceries I intend to buy right into my reusable bags that I brought. I've been caught in the past where I used a shopping cart and ended up buying too much and it was struggle to carry everything home. The workers don't bat an eye when you put things into your shopping bag or basket.

No fresh veggies or fruit are refrigerated.

Margarine is not refrigerated.

Eggs are not refrigerated.

It was French week this week -- crêpe and tartes mixes, cans of ratatouille and other French items.

You see more heat treated milk that doesn't need refrigeration than you do fresh milk.

Individually wrapped cheeses, similar to Kraft American cheese slices, are not refrigerated.

In the middle of the store are the specials of the week. I have seen everything there: everyday clothing and household items, scuba gear, ski boots, composting toilets, vacuum cleaners, etc. You never know what you'll find.

Expect to wait in a long line at the Lidl and expect that you will let some people cut in line in front of you, with your permission, that is. It is expected that you will look at the people behind you and if they have only a few items, or even just significantly less than you have, you should allow them to go in front of you. If you don't, they will tap you on the shoulder and say, "I have only a few items. Would you mind if I go in front of you?" I had a lady say that to me once, I let her go ahead and it turns out she had more items that I had, but it wasn't worth saying anything. On the other hand, there was a time where I just needed to pick up one or two things for dinner and I had a sleeping Becca in my arms. People noticed right away that I was carrying a slumbering toddler and pushed me to the front of the line. That was nice.

The cashiers at the Lidl scan items at lightening speed and there is only a small space to put them afterward, so you need to be quick about either sticking them back into your shopping cart or into your shopping bag. People get annoyed if you take a long time putting your items away and slow down the already long line. By the way, I have never seen a bag boy/girl in Germany. And when it comes to paying, you can use your debit/credit card no problem, but if you use cash, give the cashier exact change, or as close as possible. It's what they expect and if you just hand them a 10 or 20 Euro bill, they will ask you if you have any change. It's normal to see people digging through their change purses for that 1 cent Euro coin.

Our new house (we hope)

If all goes according to plan, this beautiful house will be ours in a month or so. Before David left Germany, we spent hours a day looking at homes on the internet. We were sure we wanted to live in Peachtree City (the town with all the golfcarts and excellent schools) and thanks to real estate websites that allow you to select certain search criteria, such as a basement, we were fairly easily able to whittle down to a list of 15 homes. Once school let out, we began to see houses on the list getting picked off by eager buyers. I tried not to get too stressed. Other houses would be put on the market, right?

David zeroed in immediately on the above house on a street called Battery Way. Once he traveled back to the U.S., he was able to drive around and check out the houses on our list. That first weekend, he went alone and could not go inside, but was able to knock several houses off our list due to their location (now that he was becoming familiar with the area) or an exterior that needed too much work. The following weekend, he went inside 8 homes with a real estate agent and two homes jumped to the head of the pack, including Battery Way. I think it would be fair to say he fell head over heels in love with this house. He called me to tell me about the homes, sent extra pictures over the internet and gushed about Battery Way.

One thing I was very nervous about was having to enroll the kids in school (they begin August 9th) before we bought a house. It would be a very bad thing to have to switch schools after just a few weeks, but David was reluctant to make an offer on a house without me seeing it first. On the phone David said, "I would be comfortable making an offer on Battery Way without you seeing it, I'm so confident you will love it. I can't say that about any of the other houses." I told him to go for it.

The kitchen has a granite extension that 6 high stools can fit around...

.....and a nice finished room in the basement.

Did I mention it has a salt water pool and jacuzzi? I didn't want a pool, but I am definitely warming up to the idea as David informs me of how hot it is in Georgia right now.

So, it's been a big week so far. And it's the kids last week of school, so there's more excitement/tears to come.

Some minor annoyances about our life in Germany

At gas stations around our area, you cannot pay at the pump. You must go into the little store and pay an attendant. This wouldn't be that big a deal except for the fact that there is usually no place to park your car away from the pump to let other people pull up to one while you pay. As a result, I often see cars back up down the street as drivers wait for their turn to fill up their tank.

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This little garden and wall in front of our house is a pain. First of all, I need to weed the gosh darn thing and keep the rosebush trimmed, and some of you may know that gardening is not high on my list of priorities. Maybe in the future, but not now. The bigger issue is that little wall. It's a low one, but just high enough that if I park beside it facing away from the front door, I cannot open my car door. It took me whacking the door against the wall several times for this fact to become ingrained in my brain.

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When we were preparing to move to Germany, I said to myself, "Having the internet will make everything easier. I mean, you can even watch full episodes of Dora the Explorer on-line." Ha. Having the internet is a godsend, but forget about being able to watch programs and videos from the U.S. with no problems. Go to Nickjr.com, Hulu and even sometimes youtube and try to watch a video while you're abroad. You will get a message informing you that that video or program is unavailable outside the U.S. David did some research and found out that you can fool some of those sites into believing you are in the U.S., but over time, those sites figured out what we were doing and we couldn't watch the videos anymore. We finally found a way to watch some show and videos, but we then run into the problem of having a slow internet connection and at times, the video needs to buffer ever 5 seconds and makes watching something too frustrating. That's just one reason why I have bought so many DVDs for the kids these past three years.

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The grocery store where I do my weekly shopping has stopped selling my orange Irish cheddar in favor of yellow British cheddar -- not the same thing, believe me. It's a sign that this is the right time for us to move home.

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I'm not sure what is up with German electronics. Since we've been here, we've gone through 2 DVD players and the one we have now is on the fritz; our DVR is freezing up all the time; I've gone through 3 pairs of good-quality headphones for my ipod (can't do earbuds); 2 of our 3 telephone handsets won't pick up calls; James' drumset and Micaela's electric guitar -- each less than 2 years old -- have needed to have pieces replaced; we've gone through 2 vacuum cleaners and my current one just had a wheel fall apart; 2 little boom boxes have broken. Some of the items were hand-me-downs and it wasn't a big surprise when they broke, but other people have complained to me about how often they need to replace their electronics here.

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Right in front of our house is space for two cars to park. The house right next to us has a handicapped reserved spot and we are not allowed to park in front of their house. 95% of the time when I take the car somewhere, upon arriving home, I have my parking spot open right in front of my front door. I say "my parking spot" but I have no legal claim on it. It's public parking. 5% of the time, however, there is a car parked in my spot and it is usually parked in such a way that I cannot park in front nor behind it. I must park somewhere else on the street. It's not a big deal, but I still let curse words fly out of my mouth every time we arrive home to see someone else parked in front of our house. David had to find another spot on the street about 1/2 the time when he came home from work as someone took the other spot in front of our house.

When we first moved here, it was an issue, though. There was a woman who came to ride her horse in the afternoon near our house (it was boarded in the barn across the street) and when I would come home from picking up the kids at school, she would be parked in such a way that she was taking up both spots in front of our house. I finally had had it and asked the nice teenage boy across the street whose car that was and could he please ask the driver to just park farther up or father back so that I could park there, too. She never parked in front of our house again.

Rebecca's 5th Birthday

Rebecca has known that her birthday was coming up and she knew that she would have a cake and some presents, but today she seemed a bit unsure about everything.

It began with our tradition of draping our kids' doorways with crêpe paper and balloons. Becca fell asleep in the bed in our office, so I draped the paper from the window to the wall right along the side of the bed. On the morning of someone's birthday, it's a big deal for the birthday boy or girl  to be woken up and then have to rip through the paper or figure out a way to crawl through without disturbing the paper or balloons.

When I woke up this morning, Becca was in bed with me. When she woke up, she showed me the crêpe paper and showed me how she crawled under it in the middle of the night, but it all seemed to have been done with some trepidation.

When a Kindergartener has a birthday, he is greeted immediately with a special birthday song. This morning, Becca's teacher saw her coming down the hall, gathered all the kids in the doorway and they sang the little song. Becca looked a little sad and needed a hug when the song was done.

Even when she was given her special crown her teacher made for her, Becca didn't seem happy.

Some of the classmates who sang to her.  They all look a lot happier than Bex.  By the time I picked her up in the afternoon, she was doing better.

One of the highlights of Rebecca's day was talking to her daddy on Skype. She began asking me last week, "So, Mom,....where's Dad?" Yesterday, I reminded her that Daddy was in America, to which Becca replied, "Oh, yeah. America. That's in Germany." I explained, once again, that to get to America, you travel on an airplane as it is very far away from Germany.

This morning Becca said, "Mom, where is Daddy?" with some annoyance in her voice.

I don't know what we would do without Skype and the internet. Talking to Daddy helped put Becca in a better mood.

The word on Becca's new shirt means "Little Angel" or "Cherub."  I snatched up a few of these shirts when I saw them.  When you come upon kids' shirts in stores with writing on them, chances are the writing is in English. 

Littlest Pet Shop and Playmobil are awesome gifts.  Becca and Emilie will disappear up to their room and play Playmobil or Littlest Pet Shop, or a combination of the two, for hours and hours.

Time for cake and ice cream.  We ate birthday cake while we watched home videos of when we brought Becca home from the hospital in 2005.  Even our dog, Guinness, looked younger.

Becca's cake was decorated with crushed Oreos.  Just over the past two weeks, she has become enamored with Oreo cookies.  She take after her Daddy.

Birthdays are a big deal in Germany.  David always says that you don't get a lot of work done at the office on your birthday because you spend the whole day fielding phone calls from friends and colleagues wishing you a happy birthday.

I feel guilty that none of our kids have had a birthday party this year. The girls' birthdays all fall within a month of each other and with us starting the moving home business, it just didn't work out. I've promised all of them that next year, they will all have a party. I could have sworn I could read their minds: I've heard that before, Mom.

Soccer Barbecue

Today after school, the soccer team had a barbecue. We all ate Bratwurst as we watched the World Cup being broadcast on a big screen.

Right before I snapped this photo, Emilie took a big bite of her Bratwurst and said, "Mom, you know, when we're living in America, I'm really going to miss Bratwurst."  I assured her that there are Bratwurst sausages in the U.S., it may just take some trial and error to find ones that we like.  The more difficult quest may be that for a good accompanying crusty Brötchen roll.

Joking around with just a few of the friends our kids are going to miss

Some team parents engaged the kids in a lively soccer game, a more aggressive game than I was expecting.

Is tripping legal?

The grown-ups held their own quite nicely.

James steals the ball....

...takes it down field....

.....takes a shot and waits to see if it will get past the goalie....

....G-O-A-L!!  And a high five.

James guarding the goal

With coach Rajiv

A few things we won't miss and a few we will

A few things we won't miss about living in Germany:

1.  Stores are closed on Sundays.  There are just times where I haven't planned well enough ahead and it would be really nice on a Sunday to be able to run errands or pick up some ingredients for a meal I forgot the last time I went shopping.  I've learned my lesson and am always sure to have a good supply of ibuprofen on hand in case someone gets sick on a Saturday night or Sunday.

2.  Quiet Sundays.  The unofficial law is that you can't do noisy things on Sundays -- the kids can't be screaming and yelling in the backyard and you can't mow your lawn.  That means if you count on Saturdays to mow your lawn and it rains that day, you have to wait another week to mow your lawn.

3.  Driving in Germany.  I will admit that I still get nervous driving here, particularly in unfamiliar places.  In Germany, the powers that be like to keep traffic moving.  That means you don't see as many traffic lights or stop signs as you do in the U.S.  You see more roundabouts, yield signs and intersections where you have to count on your knowledge of priority to navigate through it.  Your brain has to be much more alert here, and I often arrive home after a drive to a new part of the area feeling exhausted.  You approach an unfamiliar intersection with no traffic lights or stop signs and your eyes scan all around -- Do I have the yellow yolk sign indicating that I have right of way?  If not, did I make note earlier whether or not I am in a "Zone" which means drivers coming from the right get right of way?  Or do I have the sign that means "You have right of way at this--and only this--intersection?"  I've learned when in doubt, just slow down at every intersection.

Driving at night is an issue as well.  German streets are not as well lit as in the U.S. (if they are lit at all).  At every traffic light in our area, there is an additional traffic sign indicating priority.  When I first got here, I was confused.  "I have a green light, but there is a stop sign right next to it.  What do I do?"  When I was taking driving lessons a few years ago, my instructor told me that those signs are for when the traffic lights are out.  "Geez, how often do your lights break down here?" I thought to myself.  The sort-of answer is "Every night."  Traffic lights are shut off late at night.  That means you need to rely on signs instead and familiar streets no longer feel that way. 

4.  Feeling out of touch with what is happening in the U.S. Back in the U.S., between TV news, the newspaper and internet,  David and I kept up fairly well with current events.  Especially since 9/11, when I just happened to turn on the radio right when the station began broadcasting what was happening in NYC and right before the second plane hit, we didn't want to be caught unawares of a developing situation.  Since we've been in Germany, I definitely have a feeling of being out of touch.  We know the big headlines and if I was so inclined, I could do research and be more up to speed on current events, but I find myself often not so inclined.  The news can just be too depressing.  

5.  Picking up the kids at school every afternoon.  This has become a bit less of a chore since Micaela and James got cell phones.  Instead of having to search them out, I can call them and tell them I'm on my way and to meet me at the security booth in the parking lot.  I can also call Micaela after school and remind her to be sure Emilie gets to her piano lesson.  But it's a pain that it takes at least 45 minutes to pick the kids up and then I have to start dinner, sometimes at 6:00 and we don't eat until 7:00.  Considering that Emilie and Becca might need to take a bath, etc. it can mean a later bedtime that I would like.  It can also mean that the kids are very hungry and sneak snacks before dinner, so that we all sit down to eat a meal I worked hard to put together and they're not hungry for some reason.

A few things we'll miss about living in Germany:

1.  Stores are closed on Sundays.  Sundays are peaceful days in Germany.  Plan ahead, get all your errands and shopping done by Saturday, because you can't do it all on Sunday.  Sundays are for relaxing, taking a walk or a bike ride, or doing some sightseeing.  You are in a way forced to relax here on Sundays.

2.  Quiet Sundays.  You are guaranteed to have peace and quiet on Sundays.  You can have people over for a barbecue or sit outside and read a book and you don't have to worry that your neighbor will whip out his lawn mower or leaf blower and ruin your afternoon.

3.  Driving in Germany.  What most Americans know about driving in Germany is that you can drive as fast as you want on the Autobahn.  And that's true, though if you're in an accident, you can be cited for driving faster than you should have been.  What I have noticed in my everyday driving around is that Germans are courteous drivers.  They use their turn signals, which is important in a country that doesn't use traffic lights and stop signs as often as in the U.S.  If you need to change lanes or merge onto the Autobahn, Germans make it easy for you.  My driving instructor had told me, "Germans look at driving as 'We're all in this together.  Let's get where we need to go safely.'"  Except for the drivers going over 120 mph on the Autobahn, I have found that to be true.

4.  Feeling out of touch with what is happening in the U.S.  When you don't have the morning news on every morning for three hours and in the evening for one, and you're not reading the newspaper every day, there's a good chance your stress level will decrease.  I haven't been "worried" about as many things as I might have been had we not moved away from the U.S. for a few years.  Watching news segment after segment about topics like the various flus and the potential for great loss of life, the dangers of letting your kids walk around the neighborhood alone, bizarre murders or accidents, can take a toll. 

5.  Picking up the kids at school every afternoon.  Because all the kids' extra-curricular activities take place at school, I know that once I pick them up and drive home, there is no more driving them around to their lessons, practices, etc.  It's all done for the day.

Moving home: Why the U.S. economy will improve during the next 6 months

U.S. economicsts will have a smile on their faces during the next few months because the Nylund family will need to buy a few things once we move home, namely a house, a car or two, a washer and dryer, a hair dryer or two, 2 or 3 clock radios, several desk and floor lamps, a sofa, a coffee machine, a refrigerator, a freezer, a lawn mower, a TV, a DVD player, toaster oven, etc.

While we were running around like chickens with our heads cut off preparing to move to Germany with only 6 weeks notice, we had the good fortune to strike a deal with an American colleague of David's who, at the same time, was moving from Germany back to the U.S.  We basically traded many household items with her:  hair dryers, toasters, DVD players, clock radios, coffee makers, etc.  We even traded minivans.  Having those things waiting for us in Germany made our transition much easier than it could have been.

We're now trying to sell the things here that we cannot take home, but once we're back in the U.S., we'll be buying more things than we want to think about.  I told David and the kids, "Birthdays and Christmas for the next year will include things like clock radios, desk lamps and hair dryers.  Sorry kids, but nothing fun for a while."  

The good news about all this is that we can buy the latest technology -- more fuel-efficient cars, a more efficient washing machine and refrigerator.  And we'll try to get by with one TV (you can watch so much TV on the computer now, we may only need one actual television set.  In fact with sites like Hulu, I'm not sure we even need a DVR anymore.  And do we go with satellite or just an HD antenna?).  David and the kids are looking forward to getting our first flat screen TV.

We'll just be doing our little bit to help out the U.S. economy.