Chapter 3 – 5 kilos of potatoes

So I finally found a supermarket near my home. Let me explain first what a market is like and then how it can be made ‘super’. Markets are made up of kiosks, some more permanent structures, some merely metal rods fitted with plastic coverings which are disassembled each night. They are everywhere, a stall or two here, a whole strip of them there. The goods are displayed with the prices and you must tell the prodavets (salesperson) how much of what good you’d like, they dole it out to you and then you pay. (Note: Here you do not hand the money directly to the cashier. There is almost always a little dish that you place the money into, they take it from there and deposit the change in the dish again. I’m not sure why they do this, possibly to make it easier to count the money both for you and the cashier.) Anyways, in the more permanent structures everything is placed behind a glass partition so you have to either say the product’s name clearly or you can revert to pointing and body language. Needless to say much of my shopping is done by the latter process. Keep in mind all products are sold this way, fruits and veggies, bread, pantyhose, shampoo, everything.

A Supermarket is therefore super due to the fact that most of its products are placed on shelves where you can actually just go and pick up what you want and place it in your basket. Amazing concept!! Then you go and pay for all of it at the end of the shopping trip. This is a fairly new style of shopping brought in from the west during the wane of communism. However there are still some products that you need to go and ask the prodavets for, such as meats, candy and – ta da! – vegetables. I believe that is because they are the more expensive products (except for candy) and the supermarkets here are much more diligent in preventing theft, or at least don’t have the luxury of cctv everywhere, unlike in England.

So now my story… I go to the supermarket, excited by the prospect of not having to bother actually talking to anybody and grab what I need, until it comes to the time to buy vegetables. Well I definitely need at least apples and potatoes, my staples for life. I get five apples no problem. I ask for 5 potatoes (5 individual, little potatoes), what do I get instead? Five kilograms of potatoes. As the prodavets is scooping out more and more of the versatile vegetable into a bag, my eyes grow wide and my mind is searching desperately for the words to say “No, I only wanted 5 individual potatoes!” Unfortunately the salesgirl’s hands were faster than my mind and as she handed me my sack of spuds, I was forced to hand over my meager gryvnias and begin contemplating what to do with the 5 kilos.