Learning: Marketing

We're lucky to have a nice ABC store (small supermarket) just down the street where we can get most necessities. There's a bakery just a little further, and many other small fruit markets, flower shops, and other ABCs within a three block area. The only challenges have been to learn the various opening and closing hours (on weekends only morning hours, if at all), to learn the rules about bottle deposits and weighing/labeling produce, to remember to bring a shopping bag to bring home the goods (or plan to pay for one), and to manage to position yourself so that you can see the numerals on the cash register. The cashiers are kind and patient, but when you hear that you owe, "ezerkilencszaskilencvenkettö" it just doesn't get from my ear to my brain in a timely manner (that's 1992 forint, about $8.50). Add to that our (mostly) resolved fumbling with Hungarian bills and coins, and the need to bag our own groceries, the next person in line does appreciate whatever we can do to hurry it up.

Another challenge has been to know for sure what we are buying. Mostly it's not too hard; the brands may be unfamiliar, but the products are similar, and sometimes identical. I must admit I've been the one who's brought home some oddities, such as when I thought I was getting a tube of a pate-type substance and it turned out to be paprika flavored velvetta-type cheese, and the same day managed to bring home a block of 'fat' (lard) instead of butter. Jack has been surprised when cherry filling in a strudel was poppy seeds, and I brought home chocolate cake with cherries in it for breakfast one morning. We both contributed early on to buying a nice large box of feta cheese, which was a full pound of the richest and most delicious cream cheese you could imagine. All in all, we're doing fine at the supermarket and in the kitchen, where we've been cooking somewhat like we do at home, beans and rice, veggies and noodles, and soups. There's so much meat in the restaurant meals that, except for some sausage, we've left that all at the store.

A bigger challenge, and much more interesting, is to go to the downtown market. It's everyday (I think), and has both indoor and outdoor stands. Fruits, vegetables, meats, fish, breads, honey, cheeses, are sold by individual vendors. They are sold by metric measurement, of course, so when it's not as easy as handing the vendor three oranges (delicious, from Spain), sometimes I'm reduced to forming a sign language equivalent, such as two handfuls of dried beans. That's probably better than garbling grams and kilograms and ending up with having to take the beans home in a wheelbarrow.

The method of positioning oneself to see the cash register readout doesn't work so well at most of the booths in the market, since the produce is weighed the old fashioned way. But the vendors are very good about writing down the figures, or even, in a particularly obtuse moment of mine, taking the proper bills and coins from my outstretched hand. I definitely have learned to smile, and say my excuses and thank yous in Hungarian.

We went to a new booth, for us, a few days ago. The cabbage stand sells freshly made sauerkraut, peppers stuffed with pickled cabbage, and other such delicacies. We had heard about the stand, and wanted to have a nice meal of kolbász and sávanyú káposzta. So we took a plastic container with a tight fitting lid, found the stand, and found this sign.

Not hard to get what we wanted (although we bought too much!), but I took the picture so that I could translate some of the other choices for our next trip.

Upstairs in the market there is an area with 'fast food' that you can eat standing up at tables, or take out. There are lángos, palacsintas, rétes, kolbász, and pogácsa (some of you from the upper Midwest may recognize some of these dishes). There are also many items that are stuffed, fried, or both--likely all delicious.

So, each time we go to the market, we get a little better at it. As of yet, I haven't bought any flowers there, but I certainly look--they are beautiful. And they are now putting out seeds and garden plants, and pussy willows, sure signs (I'm told) of the impending TAVASZ (Spring!).