the swedish supermarket.

My first perception of Sweden was simple. It is a relatively similar country to Australia, both culturally and socially. Well… that’s what I thought until I visited the supermarket alone for the first time…in winter. Never did I imagine a simple job could be quite the task. As for the winter, I arrived to the supermarket in a jacket, gloves and scarf. Immediately as I entered the sliding glass doors a rush of warm air surrounded me. I ripped of my winter accessories in fear of fainting and grabbed a shopping basket that had wheels for the purposes of towing it along the ground behind you. All of a sudden i was caught up in one big juggling act, carrying your woollens and managing the wheely basket, at that point you feel like you’ll never manage. While the obvious perception that the language barrier may be the next problem, it isn’t.

In Australia, most supermarkets a relatively set up with the same flow and design. You gather your fruit and meat first, move through the aisles and grab your dairy products last. This may also be how the people of Sweden work, but for an Australian, it’s utter disarray. The cookies come after the fruit which then backs onto the dishwashing liquids, followed by cooking utensils and after that somewhere down the back you will find the tetra-pak cartons of milk. While still maintaining the great juggling act, you start to pick up a 3 litre milk carton but really it is far too large to lug home, thus a one litre milk is bought even though you know that by tomorrow you will have run out. Time now for the register, that’s the easy part, the check-out-chicks there to help you. Alas! The juggling act doesn’t stop here. As like in Australia, the groceries are unpacked onto a convey belt. At this stage the lady behind the counter doesn’t recognise you are foreign and the usually greeting of ‘hej hej’ is exchange from me to her. My groceries then appear on another convey belt on the other side on the counter. This confuses me. But wait, she isn’t packing them? I look around to the other shoppers to try and work out what to do, jacket, scarf and gloves sill in hand. After witnessing the lady beside me I copy her by buying two paper bags.

I pay and all of a sudden the rush starts to pack my own groceries! Caught unaware and unprepared, I place my jacket, gloves and scarf on the floor and in a hurry I pack my paper bags. Dairy goes in with bread, fruit goes in with cans. Nothing is in order. Nothing is bagged correctly. But I have no time to rearrange. I grab my bags, somehow manage to throw my scarf and jacket on and I scamper out into the artic weather of -4 degrees. If I place my bags down on the snow to put my gloves on, the paper bags could get soggy, so I decide to start the journey home without my gloves on. It all seems too difficult to put them back on.

One grocery shop, just 1 litre of milk and a few other necessities later I’m on my way home. Mission complete!

Note to self- don’t expect the ‘check-out-chick’ to pack your groceries into free bags.

flags flying high for the birth of Princess Estelle