Experience Budget

Rostock Markt by F. Geyer

If you want to get technical, the open-air market two blocks away from our apartment is more expensive than the grocery store.

So is the old butcher shop down the street.

And the 19th century bakery near the harbor.

Sometimes the prices are closer--especially when a certain vegetable is in season--but usually there's a 20 or 50 cent difference.  Or even more.

But, you know what?  I shop at the markets, and the old butcher shop, and the tiny bakery anyway.  It's part of spending my "Experiences Budget."

I get to walk in under a swinging sign of a carved bull's head and see a very friendly butcher who knows who I am ("Ah!  Die Americanerin!").

And I get to say things like, "Could I have 100 grams of mittwurst for dinner tonight?"  And I say it in German.

And she says, "Only 100 grams?!  You are not German yet!" And she says it in German.

Or, I get to walk around the Neumarkt in the shadow of that historic, brick Marienkirche, and look at those rows on rows of smoked fish and eels, or see the new kinds of flowers they sell in buckets (not the usual roses, carnations, gerbera daisies...).   Some I've seen in designer bouquets in American magazines, some I've never seen anywhere else.

I get to go up to the man with the deli truck, framed by rows on rows of tiny chickens spinning on rotisseries, and watch him cut me a "halb hänchen" (half-chicken).  I wish him a nice continuation of his day--because that's how you say it.  You have to be explicit about how you hope it continues to be good.  I think it's a nice detail.

And you get to walk home past the bakery, which is always just a little bit more stressful.  The storefront is a tiny walkway in between the wall and the display cases and you're confronted with four rows of different varieties of bread loaves.  Round, rectangular, diamond, square, seed encrusted, cracked, smooth--as a not-as-friendly-as-the-butcher-but-still-nice baker mentally taps her fingers on the counter waiting for you to choose and formulate a sentence in your head.

"My streusel is burning," she thinks.  "How do I say 'dinner roll'?!" I think.

The bread here is heavy, by the way.  They don't mess around.