Today after madly dashing off some important emails in the morning that I hope I haven’t sent too late, Stephan and I took the train into Germany for some shopping. We live on Im Surinam, which is right behind Badische station, which is a German station in Switzerland. There’s boarder control and everything, but nobody was manning it! For 10.50 Euro we got a 24 hour team pass (up to five people can ride on this one ticket) and after a few stops were off to do some shopping in the charming town of Lörrach. We had breakfast at a small bakery, then went to the Migros there. Supposedly the prices are such that the break even point of shopping in Germany rather than Switzerland is 80 kilometers! It was hard to compare since the Euro is stronger than the Franc, but I take their word for it.
It most appearances German and Swiss groceries are much like American ones. Perhaps there’s not as much ceiling space, and there’s more bread and cheese choices, but I can buy peanut butter (for a hefty price in the foreign food isle). All the carts are hooked together so you must put a deposit of a Euro in to free your cart. You bag your own groceries and must pay for a bag if you don’t have your own. Other than that, it’s pretty straight forward.
We ended up taking the train home and dumping the stuff and making another trip in another direction, and this time German was only one stop away. The city wasn’t as quaint, but the stores were modern and there was even a natural food store. We took the bus back and drove right through the boarder. There’s just too much traffic back and forth to check everyone. Even on the trains the conductors check for passes only about 10% of the time.
That’s all to report for now. Sorry the pictures aren’t that interesting, but I found it neat that all the produce comes from so many places in the world. You probably can’t read it, but this picture includes fruit from Israel, Spain, New Zealand, France, and China. Maybe the same is true in the states but it’s not written in such large print. By the way, the pears from the US we got today were very tasty. I wish we could get good pears in the states!
