Adventures in grocery shopping...

Grocery shopping in Hungary is an ordeal with all it's own rules (many of which apply to shopping anywhere.)
First, as you enter you MUST have a cart or a basket- even if you are entering the tiny one room shop on the corner where there is barely enough room to walk and all you are grabbing is a carton of milk- you MUST have a basket! This applies to almost all stores in Hungary, including bookstores- a one room bookstore where you are running in to grab one book- you MUST put it in a basket. Failing to do this will, at the least, draw stares and glares from the people who work in the stores and your fellow shoppers, will probably result in numerous people chasing you around the store shoving a basket in your hand and will occasionally result in the security and or manager pulling you aside and insisting that you please take a basket!
This is of course if a basket is available, in my Spar (where I do most of my grocery shopping) baskets seem to be available only between the hours of 2:17pm and 3:58pm on the second Tuesday following a full moon. If this is the case then you must get a shopping cart- even if you need only one or two items. This is not as simple as it sounds because you must put a coin into the carts to release them from their lock- and it must be EXACTLY the right coin, in the case of my Spar it must be a 20ft coin. So, if you arrive to get a carton of milk and there are no baskets and you have no 20ft coin then you can't get in. Now don't be thinking that you can go in and get change from the cashier because there is only one way out of a Hungarian grocery store and that is buying something, so you could go in, get the glares for your lack of basket, stand in the line (which I will get to later) and ask for change- which they may or may not give you- and then get out and get your cart- but I find it's easier to just always keep a 20ft coin on me.
So now you are in! you have your cart/ basket and you have come across the produce section- the next hurdle. You can not simply buy an apple in Hungary, you must pick out your produce, bag it and then take it to the electronic scale, weigh it, punch in the correct code for your purchase (this requires knowing the Hungarian name of your fruit and weather or not it is the Hungarian or Californian variety of Paprika) at this point the machine will print you a sticker with your price- failure to do this correctly will send you out of the line while you are paying.
So now you've made it into the store, managed to bag and label your produce accordingly and find the rest of your items (including the eggs which took a while because the were on the shelves with the canned goods, not the fridge section...hmmm...just pretend that didn't happen- oh and go for the milk that IS not the kind that is on the warm shelf next to the coffee)
Now it is time to get in line, there will ALWAYS be at least 4 if not more check-out counters/ registers in each store but there will NEVER be more than one open- despite the ten people in line or the five employees chatting while they dust the shelves. So you will wait.
After waiting in line your turn finally arrives and now it is time to jump it in to high gear! get your items on the belt, and back off and into your basket or cart immediately because there will be no pauses before the next customers stuff starts getting tossed on to yours. Throw your stuff up, quick figure out the money (on a side note NOBODY here will appreciate correct change- if the total is 760 and you give them 1060 they will look at you like you're an idiot, and hand back the 60 you gave them along with the 240 in change- clearly you are not helping them out) now that that is taken care of you must quick grab all of your items and move out- to one of the tables/bagging areas out of the way. They will certainly not be bagging for you, you won't even get a bag. Either you bring your own or you must ask for one at the exact precise moment that they have finished ringing up your items but before they have totaled everything (you get charged for the bag) failure to ask at this exact moment will result in incredible eye rolls the likes of which have been seen only in my 8Th grade class.
So the moral here? plan ahead! there is no quick run to the store as a last minute thought on the way home from work, you must plan ahead so that you have your bags and your 20ft note ready.
So here's to that, I'm off to the Spar- today I may attempt the meat counter- between my basic Hungarian and limited understanding of the metric system I may end up with something to cook for dinner or I may end up with half a pig- we just never know.

p.s. sorry the posts have become a bit more sporadic lately- I was writing at home and then bringing the document to school (where the Internet is) on my USB jump drive but I broke it :-/ so now it's all about typing at school.