Ammenities

The supermarkets in Latvia intrigue me. They are so small and the selection so scant. There are no baggers, that you do yourself, and the only bags available are small plastic bags about half the size of one of the plastic bags you and I would think of. It seems like I, along with everyone else, am stopping by to get groceries every other day because you just can't fit all the groceries, say, for a week, in enough of the little bags.

Now, I have my theories behind this shopping culture so foreign to me. My first instinct told me that it's because they're so poor they only can afford to buy enough food to last a couple days at a time. This was soon debunked, however, as I realized these people here, at least HERE, in the city center, have money.

Next, I thought that maybe nobody has refrigerators so they only buy just enough food so it won't spoil. Again, this isn't true. Like the States, everybody has a fridge.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that possibly these small supermarkets are a carry over from communist days when state run food stores were the only means of purchasing food and people only got small rations at a time. I may be wrong, but that would be my guess. The idea of big, U.S. style supermarket, let alone a Costco or Sam's Club, would probably be viewed as so completely unnecessary it would make me laugh.

Which brings me to my next point, garbage disposals. There was a very nice, German girl that worked here at TI with me for a week or two before she left. One day we were talking and she asked me what the deal was with those things in the kitchen sink that suck everything down the drain. She couldn't understand why those existed. Excitedly I went off on the swirling water and the sucking power and the ease with which you can get rid of those food scraps, and the swirling sucking motion, and how easy it is to dispose of unwanted food scraps, ect, ect, ect. She just looked at me with a blank look and said, "but you can just throw the scraps in the trash." Oh, well, yeah, I guess you could actually; never thought of that.

Albeit unnecessary, I still like them. There's nothing like the action of a 1/3 horsepower electric motor under the kitchen sink than can suck water and make it swirl down the drain, taking with it unwanted scraps of food, that eats and sucks down the water and food in swirling motions, taking with it the water and scraps of food and the...