What I Did Today

Today I went to Tesco, which is the Czech equivalent of Walmart. Tesco has three floors, but there are no escalators in the store, so you have to pay for what you want on one floor before exiting the store and taking the escalator to another floor. There's also a fourth floor that consists of storage and the bathroom, which costs 4 crowns to use. There's also no toilet tissue in the stalls. When you walk into the bathroom, you have to pay the lady on staff, get as much toilet paper as you need from the roll on the wall, and then go into the stall.

Some notes about Tesco: You can tell what people eat the most of by which food sections are biggest. For instance, in Walmart there's always a huge cheese section and a pretty small alcohol section. The opposite is true at Tesco. A whole section of Tesco the size of the fruits & vegetables section at Walmart is devoted to alcohol. Meanwhile, the cheese selection is pitiful. I couldn't even find any cheddar, and I only found one kind of shredded cheese.

The bread section is also huge, as they share the French love of fresh bread here. They have all different kinds of bread sitting out in the open air like vegetables. You just get a bag and pick up as much bread as you want. The traditional Czech bread seems to be the most popular. It's kind of croissant-shaped and one little loaf costs less than a crown. (I don't know how you're supposed to pay .90 crowns, as I haven't seen any coins worth less than 1 crown. Maybe they round up.) I've become somewhat addicted to this bread because it's good, cheap, easy to carry around and it makes a great snack, or breakfast, or side item with whatever meal I manage to scrape together. I bought like ten loaves of it today at Tesco.

Other things they don't carry a lot of at Tesco: floss, . They don't have tomato sauce, period, only tomato paste. I'm going to have to look elsewhere if I want to make spaghetti.

Things they do have a lot of: American DVDs dubbed in Czech, American bestseller books in Czech, and American hair products. I was shocked by the hair care section - almost all the products were American brands like Garnier, and the bottles were almost all in English. The DVD section is also full of American influence. I found Blades of Glory and both National Treasure movies dubbed in Czech and subtitled in a whole bunch of languages, including Slovenian, Russian, and Slovak. I think I'll buy that before I leave. I also found The Lord of the Rings in Czech, which I am totally going to buy.

There are actually tons of bookstores here. There's literally a bookstore on every block. The main square has two of them. And none of them are international chain stores, either. Some of them might be franchises, but there are no Borders or Books-a-Millions. It's really cool.

The worst part of shopping at Tesco, though, is that you have to bag your own items. The checkout lady just scans the items for you and you do all the bagging yourself. The Czechs are good at it but I'm not, so I'm trying to pay for my purchases while bagging my own groceries. The checkout lady won't wait for you, either. She'll just start scanning the next person's items and throwing them in with the stuff that you haven't bagged yet. It's rough.

I also managed to order a hamburger today in Czech. What I managed to say was, "Hamburger. Ketchup. Mayonnaise. That's all." But the guy at the hamburgery understood me and gave me exactly what I wanted. It wasn't a hamburger like we think of though - the meat was different, almost like soy or something. I don't know. It was weird, but it smelled good and I was hungry, so I ate it. I also discovered a street vendor today who sells what looks like rotisserie chicken. I'm not sure what it is exactly but you can buy the whole chicken, or half a chicken, or 1/4 of a chicken, so I'm going to try there sometime soon.

Tomorrow the school is taking us on a trip to visit Macocha caverns and a brewery. Classes start on Monday.

Look for a post soon about my Czech class. I've been waxing lyrical to all my fellow students about it and they're getting sick of it, so it's time I poured my enthusiasm into a blog!