The Grocery Games

MY NEW SPORT

Image credit: Newly Swissed

Over time, we're often given a chance to reflect on the glory days. Maybe it was your athletic prime. Maybe it was that fourth-grade diorama that, in your mind, was basically museum quality (and maybe you still think so).

Mine?

Grocery shopping.

For the last 12 years in Minnesota, grocery shopping was my event. When you have young kids, every trip out of the house has to be intentional. You're working around naps, school pickup, sports, work meetings, bedtime, and trying to squeeze twelve errands into one trip.

I prided myself on exceeding the occasion about 90% of the time.

I was FAST.

In our Edina bubble, stores were only a few minutes away. I knew the layout of the grocery store by heart. I made our shopping list organized by aisle (back of the store to the front). I knew exactly where every item lived. The only thing that could slow me down was the speed at which the cashier bagged the groceries.

Honestly, I think I could've won silver in the World Championship Grocery Shopping League (WCGSL of course).

Why silver?

Because I always came home missing one item.

Every.

Single.

Time.

I'd tell Lindsey before I left, "I’ll be home quick, but I will forget one thing that is needed." I never knew which item it would be, but I could promise consistency.

Life occasionally gives you another chance at greatness.

Forty-year-olds can still compete at the highest level. Just ask LeBron James.

My second shot?

Grocery shopping in Switzerland. This is varsity. Maybe even semi-professional.

First, you have to decide which country you're grocery shopping in.

• There's our local Swiss grocery store, which is high quality but a little limited while it's under construction (and, of course, Swiss-priced).

• Then there's France, where the selection is enormous...and so are the traffic jams getting there. But France also has Costco, so naturally I'm willing to overlook a few inconveniences.

• Next week, I'll be trying Germany.

Every country has different prices, different products, two different languages, and rules about what you're allowed to bring back across the border. Meat. Wine. Total value.

Suddenly grocery shopping feels less like running errands and more like managing international trade.

Then you get to the shopping carts. You don't simply take one. You basically rent one...without all the paperwork. Insert one Swiss franc, unlock your cart, and you're in business. Honestly, it's genius. There isn't a single cart abandoned in the parking lot looking for a car door to dent.

At one shopping center, MPARC, I also learned that you have to pay for parking.

Not when you exit the ramp/lot. When you leave the store. I now know there are signs explaining all of this. Unfortunately, they're paragraphs as you enter written entirely in German.

Then you walk into the grocery store.

Produce is a familiar immediate site. Makes you think, “yep, I got this.”

After that...It's like walking into a dark room you've never been in before.

Nothing is where your American brain thinks it should be.

Every aisle becomes a scavenger hunt for brands I've never seen before. 70 SKUs of sliced ham that all look the same. You change your google translate to French>English and hold it up to see what you are buying and WHY SO MANY options! But the internet doesn’t work that deep in the store, so now you are flying without your instruments and intuition just needs to kick in.

One of our biggest concerns before moving involved Grace and her yogurt needs. One of the best ways we've been able to get reliable protein into her is yogurt. We were nervous about whether we'd find something she'd eat. Thankfully, she found a few she loved almost immediately.

The problem is...

I can't remember which ones they are. And when I do, every store carries different brands and flavors.

So now our very small European refrigerator contains what can best be described as a yogurt graveyard. Half of it is filled with the wrong yogurts that I accidentally bought and now have to eat myself.

Every shopping trip I confidently think, I got the right yogurt this time.

Every shopping trip I discover yet another yogurt that is apparently not the chosen one.

I'm beginning to think finding the correct yogurt combination is like solving an escape room designed by yodeling Swiss dairy farmers.

Then comes checkout.

This is where grocery shopping officially becomes a sport. The cashier begins scanning items at approximately the speed of light. At the exact same time, she asks—in German—whether I have a loyalty card, I need a bag, and whether I'm paying by card. I shake my head "no." Pull out my credit card. And hope the mathematical order of operations somehow lines up with the questions she just asked.

Meanwhile, the conveyor belt never stops. It just keeps pushing your groceries toward the edge while silently judging how slowly you're packing them.

The next customer's groceries are now approaching mine at an alarming rate with full expectation you are gone before the groceries connect. As a rookie, you're secretly hoping the person ahead of you bought a lot of produce. Maybe—just maybe—they forgot to weigh something.

Your chance to absolutely hustle. Just enough time to shove everything into the reusable bags that you actually remembered this time.

Small victories.

Minnesota and Basel are different places with different cultures, and that's exactly why we wanted this experience. We really do try not to compare them. But I will compare one thing.

Time.

In Minnesota, I could leave the house, shop for a full week's worth of groceries at Target, come home, unload everything, and be completely done in about an hour.

Here?

A grocery trip to E.Leclerc in France takes me somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes. Unloading, organizing, recycling the packaging, and putting everything away? Three and a half hours.

I'll get better.

I'm learning.

After all, grocery shopping isn't just another errand anymore.

It's officially part of my new job description as a Hausmann.

As I was leaving the store last week after paying for parking, I watched a local Swiss man standing at the payment machine trying to figure it out.

He worked it out just fine.

But for one brief moment... I realized I actually knew what I was doing.

Progress.

Fortunately, people have been incredibly kind as I awkwardly make my way through each grocery adventure.

And who knows...

Maybe one day I'll earn my cup in the European Grocery League.