Wal-Mart

Wal-Mart is not doing too well in Germany. In fact they just closed one here recently. So in a show of solidarity, I went to a Wal-Mart this weekend. After all, these are my people.

I wanted to see how Wal-Mart in Germany is different than a Wal-Mart in the States. They still have the greeters, an they sell basically the same stuff, only different brands. They sell all kinds of liquor, wine, and beer, but I still couldn’t find any Old Forester. I may have to switch brands.

They’ve got this cool escalator too. It is a moving ramp, and you can take your cart on it. I was watching people ride this and they weren’t even holding on to their carts. I thought that there must be some type of raised lip on the belt that held the carts in place. But as I got close to it I didn’t see any. The treads are just like the metal treads that are on standard stair escalators, only they don’t rise up to form individual steps. It is a moving ramp. When I angled my cart onto the escalator something grabbed the wheels and held them in place. Either the wheels have magnets in them or the whole escalator is magnetized.

To test the magnetized tread hypothesis, I pushed some kid with braces down on his face. It was purely for scientific purposes, and I took no pleasure in the act. It would have been pretty funny if his face was stuck to the escalator though. Can’t you imagine the look of terror he would have as he approached the point where the escalator ends? Every childhood fear he ever had about getting sucked into the crack would have come back to him in an instant. As would the vision of the Tom and Jerry episode where Tom gets stuck in the escalator and just keeps going round as Jerry cranks up the speed. He was able to get up though and, luckily for me, he thought that someone else had pushed him. So I avoided another international incident.

I was in the food section (did I mention that this was a Wal-Mart Supercenter? well I should have) looking for coffee. God, I hate hotel coffee (or at least this hotel’s coffee). After locating some, I was checking out other goodies and assorted things. I love to look for odd things in supermarkets. I used to love to walk around the Valu-Market in the south end of Louisville just looking at the different ethnic foods. I also love Asian groceries for the same reason. I like to try and figure out what the stuff is (most of it has no English), and end up buying and using some of it. Since I’m the different one here, everything is foreign to me, and each one is a potential adventure just waiting to happen. However since I don’t have a kitchen here, I need to basically stick to precooked and/or canned items.

The canned meat aisle at the Wal-Mart Supercenter did not disappoint. Now the canned meat sections of American supermarkets are basically Spam, canned ham, tuna, and maybe if you’re in one of the higher end stores you’ll get some potted meat food and Vienna sausages. In Germany the canned meat aisle is a big larger. I counted no less than 8 different kinds of sausages/wieners that were available in cans and jars. Plus there were various Pates, cans of mystery meats, and jars with various wild animal parts in them. I was truly enamored. I only bought a few things though, including two cans of Pate one is Goose Pate and the other is Venison Pate (both are mostly pork though), and a jar of Deutschlanders. The Deutschlanders are 8” wieners, and come six to a jar. Like pushing the kid on the escalator, these purchases were made strictly for scientific purposes.

I also went to the IKEA store here. The place is huge! It is also a maze and very difficult to find your way out of. Once I figured out that I really wasn’t interested in most stuff here (~10 minutes in), I started looking for a way out. The store has mirrors all over the place. If you’re looking at something while you walk past it, you’ll suddenly see someone coming towards you in your peripheral vision. When you stop, you discover that it is a reflection of someone walking in another direction, or sometimes you discover that it is your own reflection. So I kept wondering around until I finally saw the exit. But I couldn’t get to it from where I was, so I had to go around a wall, through some glass doors, and down a stairway before getting close to the exit. As I neared the exit I noticed the food aisles. Apparently Scandinavian furniture is just not right without something to nosh on. So I bought some healthy looking, yet somehow crappy crackers. I think they were from Finland. I also bought a tube of fish roe paste, just because it looked interesting and the little Aryan kid on the tube had a big smile on his face. How could it be bad?

Sunday I was out walking around Wiesbaden, basically just walking around and checking stuff out. I had a book so I’d stop to have a beer here, read a little bit, stop to have a glass of wine there, read a little more. I could have gone on like this for days. I was listening to the Hoodoo Gurus on my MP3 player, it was a beautiful day, and all was right with the world.

After crossing a road coming out of the park a gentleman stops me to ask a question. I take my ear-buds out and he’s rambling along (in German) and holding up some magazine. I said, “Sprechen nicht Deutsch”. And he started digging into his bag for an English version, but he didn’t have one. So he held up the German version and opened to a page and the only word that I caught was “…deluge…” He held up the magazine and I said, “ya, Moses.” He nodded, and looked at me rather earnestly. I shook my head and put my ear-buds back in and walked away.

Nothing will ruin a nice Easter walk like a Jehova’s Witness!