Einkaufen in Deutschland

That means shopping in Germany, for all you non-German speakers. I decided I had heard enough about how great the shopping is in Germany so today I checked it out for myself. (I'm referring to grocery shopping, by the way, and this is relative to grocery shopping in Switzerland.) I'm a little surprised that I decided to go considering how little I knew about how to get to where I was going. One friend told me "just take the #8 tram to the last stop, and when you get off you have to walk over a bridge to your right". But that's basically all I knew. After about a 15 minute walk through an incredibly ugly, industrial part of Basel that I had never seen before (past the chemical plants, etc), I crossed the "Zoll" (border crossing) into Germany, and there it was, the Marktkauf. Let me tell you, it was worth the trip. I wasn't planning on doing a major shopping trip at this point, especially considering I was on foot and not in the car. I considered it more of an exploratory mission. I mainly just walked up and down the aisles and looked at how many different types of pickles they sell, for example. The store is huge, the selection is huge, and the prices are unbelievable. I guess the trade-off for the good selection and low prices is fighting the crowds. While I looked around at the crowded aisles and watched people bump their carts into each other I thought who are all these people and why are they all shopping on a Friday afternoon? You can be sure that once we get the Virginia tags on our car changed to Swiss plates I will be making the trek into Germany quite often for my shopping. Until then, I can't deal with the hassle of crossing the border with anything except my feet or a train.