Learning How to Grocery Shop

This post is LONG overdue. When we first moved here and found our local grocery store, there were so many new things about buying groceries. First of all, we had to figure out how to read most of the labels on everything. Thank goodness for pictures!!

When heading out to do some shopping we have to remember a few things. This was actually quite hard in the beginning and we always got to the store and THEN realized we forgot one or the other.

The day after we moved here we had some major grocery shopping to do. As Americans we expected the checkout process to be the same. Well.....when we got to the checkout we learned that you need your own bags (thankfully they sell them at the register). We also learned to be speedy baggers. They do not have someone who is there to bag your items and as soon as your transaction is completed, the clerk starts scanning the items from the person behind you (talk about feeling pressured to bag fast)!!!! We learned that if you are planning to get a lot of groceries.....go together!

It also took some time and looking back at it now, we laugh, but using a cart was even different.

The carts are chained together. In order to get a cart out, you have to put a one euro or 50 cent euro into the cart to unlock it from the cart in front of it. Little did we know there was a little more to this process when returning the cart....

If you hook your cart back into the chain, your coin is returned to you. I guess this keeps people from taking the carts down the street with their groceries in them and then not returning them to the store. For the first few months of living here, we just put our cart back with the others like you would in the U.S without hooking the chain back into it. Looking back I think we spent about 10 Euro. Thankfully it was about a month of shopping there before we realized what to do and found that you can even use "fake"coins that are given out by different stores. We now use that.


                                                            Look mom....no hands!!

Although we don't compliment the Dutch very often, this is a good idea. The ramp going up to and down from the store has magnetic strips in it so your cart will stay put. It is especially helpful for going "down" the ramp with a very full cart!

Anything in these bags for me?