I need to know because today I felt like an idiota in the supermarket!   It wasn’t pretty.

And, btw, none of the pictures in this post are mine. They all came from the internet.  I didn’t have my camera with me because I only have two hands and I had other aims besides picture taking!  Still, I like a picture in a text, so I’m adding some. Thanks for your understanding.

So, here’s the story: I needed to buy some food and sundries for my apartment.  I Google mapped it and found a real supermarket, not an outdoor produce market, but a supermarket within walking distance.  Good job! A week ago, or even 3 days ago, I doubt I would have thought this was a big accomplishment.  But I have been humbled.  I now take enormous pleasure my small steps forward!

I plug the address into my iphone mapping app so I can walk.  I find it odd that as the crow flies I am quite close to the supermarket (henceforth market), but my app has me walking in a really roundabout fashion.  Why is that I wonder? And I soon find out.

It is because there is a major Viale to cross, which means that there are at least a million cars going a hundred miles an hour zipping along the Viale and if you think you can jay-walk, well go ahead, but don’t call for me when you get hit!

Now, it honestly didn’t look this bad today, but it felt way worse.  But, after being in India last February, I will never complain about Italian traffic.  Well, rarely, anyway.

So, I follow the directions on my app and I am going about a mile out of my way, all to find the one cross-walk for miles (or meters) around.  But I find it and I cross to the other side.

My iphone app is almost worthless at this job because there are so many little streets and I am constantly turning around to see if this looks right, and my phone can’t tell if I am going north or south.  So I put that sucker in my coat pocket and used what under normal circumstances is my pretty good sense of direction.  I had studied the Google map back in my apartment so I sort of knew where to find the market.

And there was no way I could forget the street name because it is Via Cimabue!!!!! Only in Florence!

So I am kind of enjoying my walk, it was a pretty nice day, warmish, the rains had ended.  I only felt seriously lost once and I stopped in a naturapathic store and asked a kind young woman if the Unicoop was nearby.  She said yes, I would be there in due minuti. That seemed hopeful!  But then she didn’t know how lost I could get! Ha ha.

But in fact I found it in about four minutes.  Here’s the facade:

Yay!  I congratulate myself!  My troubles are over! I tell myself.  My only caveat was that I knew I had to hand carry everything I bought back to the apartment, so don’t buy too much, I counsel myself.

I walk in.  Good job!!  It looks like this:

I want to run away, back to my apartment, pronto! But, like a good pilgrim, I persevere.

I see metal carts, like we have in the United States.  I go to the rack to pull one out.  They are locked down with chains.  And yet, that person just took one, and that person.  So, I stand and watch.  I can remember no Italian words whatsoever. I think I see how you press a button to release the chain.  I try.  I can’t do it.  I gesture to a nice gentleman, how did you do that?  He tells me I need to put in a coin.  I do not see where you insert a coin and I do not know what coin you need.  I have coins in my wallet; I just don’t know which coin I need.  I want to run away, back to my apartment, pronto. Instead, I step aside, feeling like un’idiota. 

And then I see these plastic basket things, kind of like we have in our supermarkets back home when you just want to buy a few items.  Only these are too big to carry.  And then I notice people dragging and pushing them along, like a metal cart!  Woo hoo!  And I see where they are stacked. And before you can utter stupido I have one and I enter the mayhem.

I only wish the above photo were I!  I only wish I had been smiling at this point!  Truthfully, I was pretty close to tears.

So, up first: produce.  Wow, I will have to devote some posts to Italian supermarket produce sections at some point.  But today I was not feeling all, “isn’t this beautiful” ish.  I was feeling all “I want to run away, back to my apartment”ish.  Then, it hit me.  What I had read before coming to Italy this time.  Dunt dun dun! You can’t touch the produce without plastic gloves on!

And, I defy you to walk into a supermarket in Italy and quickly don two plastic gloves while not getting run over by other shoppers on a Friday afternoon, and not losing track of your plastic cart thing, and trying to smile and be polite when all I wanted to do was run away.

So, now I have the stupid gloves on and I see bananas and grapes and I make a beeline.  You pick out what produce you want, and put it in a plastic bag THAT YOU FIRST HAVE TO GET OPENED UP! WHILE YOU HAVE TWO PLASTIC GLOVES ON! I felt ridiculous; it took a long time to get the bags opened.  Then I shoved grapes in one, bananas in the other.  But wait, you are not done!

Next you go to one of these:

Only in my supermarket today the sign was not in English, I assure you.

Then you place your produce on the scale, chose the item from a push screen, it weighs it and spits out a sticker that you put on the bag. Only you have plastic gloves on, remember? And the sticker gets stuck to your glove! Solution? Because there is no goddam way you are going to lose that sticker: you attach the sticker WITH THE GLOVE ON IT to the plastic bag around your grapes and you DARE the check out attendant to complain.  Fortunately, he didn’t.  It was about to get ugly there for a minute.

And now you have been 1/2 way through the ordeal with me.  I’ll finish this later.  I have to go take a nap from this first half.