On Wednesdays I don't have any classes. Instead, the days are reserved for "field studies," where you basically take field trips with your classes. Every class is scheduled for two Wednesdays over the course of the semester, but unfortunately for me, since two of my classes are taught off "campus" (the DIS classrooms), every day is a field study! This means I get to a) explore b) sit around the house or c) do work. I'm currently downloading some tv shows from home to watch, which rules out option b) until later. Classes just started, so our only work is reading, making option c) not really an option at all. That leaves a), which is probably the most logical anyway, since I just got here about a week and a half ago. I planned on spending the morning updating this blog, but after I realized that I would be going to the grocery store later, I decided I would wait in hopes that I could get some interesting stories out of it. I did.
If any of you have ever gone to a cultural supermarket, such as the asian one my mom once dragged me to, you'll be able to sympathize with how I felt after walking in to Netto, the chain supermarket that happens to have a branch right down the road from my house. I had already been in various supermarkets twice, once to kill time and another time as a field trip for my 2-day Danish survival class, so I knew the basic layout (none whatsoever) and the "rules" (bring your own bags, unless you want to pay for a way to carry your groceries home; don't get in the other customers' way, because they all know exactly what they want and where it is). Danish supermarkets are simultaneously very diverse and very scarse. They manage to sell all your standards: meat, dairy, grains, produce, sweets and toiletries; and they also throw in clothes, alcohol, home decor, small appliances and office supplies. However, there aren't many different brands, varieties, sizes or even choices between one type of pasta and another. Except for in two categories: alcohol and cheese. In one aisle (and we're not talking USA aisles, we're talking Danish aisles. Imagine about 1/4 what you're used to the length of an aisle being.) they squeezed in chocolate, crackers, cookies, pastries, cake mixes, bread, pasta, jars of sauce and cereal, and probably some other things I'm forgetting. However, if you were looking for some alcohol, you could take your pick from the 2.5 aisles they had devoted to it, plus the checkout refridgerators (normally filled with soda in the US) which were filled with individual beers, wine coolers and various bottled mixed drinks. Now on to the cheese: it probably took up around the same amount of wall space that a cheese section would in the US, or maybe slightly more. Floor to ceiling, about 15 feet long. Now imagine a 3-4 foot space filled with meat, right next to the cheeses. Thinking that there had to be more options, I walked to the other side of the cheeses, thinking maybe they had divided the meat into two parts due to some strange Danish logic I just didn't understand. There was about a 2 foot long section devoted to fish, so I was sort of right in my thinking. What I didn't expect, however, was that the cheese section actually continued after the fish section. Apparently, what I was looking at was only blocks/wheels of cheese, and the really fancy stuff (the kinds of cheese spreads you may serve as an appetizer in the US) was just down the wall a bit.
I told my host family that since I don't have anything to do on Wednesdays, I'd be more than happy to make dinner. My plan for tonight was baked mac and cheese (I thought this would be suitable given how much they clearly like cheese) with peas and ham. So I look for the sharp cheddar cheese. I didn't think that this would be that hard to find - it's not like I was looking for American cheese or something like that. But there was no yellow cheese to be seen. Finally, after about 10 minutes of searching, I found some white cheddar and decided that would have to be good enough. Next on my list was some parmesan. I had to pick up every individual cheese block and think to myself "does this look like the cheese I'm looking for?" because, believe it or not, after a whole week and a half of being here I still don't speak Danish. I settled on some pre-grated stuff that I'm 90% sure is parmesan. Next, I walk to the meat section in search of ham. There isn't any. There's pork, hamburger meat, other mystery ground meat (you'd be surprised how similar all meat looks when you can't read the packages), chicken, tons of varieties of sausages, some liver, some bacon ... but no ham to be seen. After a few minutes of thought, I decide to grab a package of diced bacon and just throw that on top of the mac and cheese. While I'm browsing, a woman had apparently been a little over-enthusiastic while grabbing a package of fresh liver (yum) and knocked some other packages on the floor. I help her pick them up, and all the while she's talking at me in Danish. She ends by saying "____ tak" (tak means thank you, so I assumed the word before it was one of the variations of the word "many" that they use here.) and I smile and walk away. I'm more than happy to admit I don't speak Danish when I have to, but I decided I'd try to get by without standing out as the stupid American, at least for this one shopping trip.
Next I started looking for breadcrumbs, and quickly gave up, realizing that I could just make my own with bread they had back home. I knew asking for condensed milk would just be too much, so I opted to buy some heavy cream instead. But Danish milk is not the same as American milk. There were cartons of 0,5% and 1,0%. Cartons of 35,0% and cartons that had no percent at all, but rather words and pictures. I gathered that the one with a cup of coffee on it was probably our equivalent of half-and-half, and the one with a whisk was probably whipping cream. I grabbed the 35,0% milk, figuring that was probably heavy cream or something along those lines.
I go to check out, and because the Danes hate small talk, and there was a screen showing how much my purchase cost, I bagged my groceries, paid the cashier and walked out without anyone being the wiser that I didn't speak more than 5 words of Danish. As I'm trying to figure out how many dollars 118 kroner is, I hear that there's a commotion going on behind me, with a bunch of old ladies all yelling the same thing. As my curiosity got the best of me, I turned around and saw one lady holding up a block of cheese and looking at me. Apparently, I had forgotten to put it in my bag. I took it from her, moderately embarassed that a group of 5 ladies had been yelling at me in Danish for about 10 seconds and I had no idea, said "tak, tak" and left. So basically, I'm not the stupid American, I'm the stupid mute.
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