I remember my first time shopping in a German supermarket. It was at Kaiser’s in the west part of the city, it was a Saturday afternoon and I was buying all sorts of stuff in order to cook on the weekend. Naturally, coming to Berlin after 10 years in New York, I didn’t carry cash with me, so by the time the cashier finished bar coding me I just handed to her my credit card. She looked at me strangely and said: nur EC.

As I said, it was in the west so the people behind me were really patient when I apologized and left everything on the counter to go to the ATM to get some cash. I took out 50 Euros which were enough to make the purchase and even to get 6 cents back. Then I grabbed two bags from beneath the counter and was planning to throw the groceries in when the cashier looked at me strangely and told me something in German. I was puzzled so someone behind me explained to me that in Germany bags also cost money. I was shocked: not only there was no one packing the stuff for me, but I even have to pay for the bags.

Since I didn’t have sufficient funds to buy the bags, and since the people behind were getting really irritated (west west, but I was eating into their weekend time), I just rolled my shirt up and threw in the drinks, stuffed things in my pockets, and managed to juggle the rest in my hands. It took me about 40 minutes to get to the flat I was staying at then, which was no more than 100 meters away from Kaiser’s. Things were rolling off my shirt to the floor, and when I tried to pick them up, things started to fall off my pockets. I am sure that I looked like an idiot, but I am used to that.

This incident helped me understand that by moving to Germany I will have to learn things from scratch. I am telling you this because I never woke up from my first supermarket nightmare experience. I always forget to scale my fruits and vegetables, I always forget that I am not allowed to try one of the grapes before I buy the whole bag, and, worst of all, I am always get stuck in the register, never able to throw all my purchases inside the bags before the cashier is starting to scan the next customer’s ingredients.

So now, before I go to the supermarket I always have a plan: make sure to get a cart (you can just put the groceries in the cart and worry about the bagging later). I always pay with EC (13 seconds extra time), and I always say yes when the cashier ask me if I want hearts. I never get embarrassed nowadays, but if someone need a heart, I have a drawer full of them