The Learning Curve

We have been here a little over a week and my greatest discovery has been that everything takes FOREVER! This has nothing to do with the people of Prague, but my own inability to read maps and communicate. Also, walking, taking the metro (below ground) and the tram (above ground) take alot more planning than walking out to your driveway and zipping off in your car.

Ahh-my trip to the grocery store. I just picked up a few items, one of them being grapefruit. I take my items to the checkout and the cashier asks me something in Czech holding up the grapefruit. I have no idea what she wants. I realize (eventually) that she must need the price. I walk back to the produce section (far away) and realize that I have no way to communicate the price to her, so I borrow a pen from one of the other NCSU students and write the price on my hand. Now the line at the checkout has really grown. The cashier finally comes over and gets the price herself. As it turns out, you have to weigh your produce in the produce section and the scale spits out a tag with the price that you are supposed to put on your produce bag. Whoops, I guess I missed that. I know the Czeck people are not smiley, but she was clearly pissed.

A few days later I go to the Tesco, which is like Target on steroids. It has 6 floors, the first floor being a full grocery store. My goal is to get a few items to use in our room (knife, cutting board, hairdryer, etc) plus groceries. Well, I need to plan ahead because Tesco is a combination of metro plus walking, and I have to be able to get all of my items home. The Czeck people have opted not to embrace the rolling carts that they use in New York and D.C. Looks like I'm going to need a backpack. First I go to the floor with housewares and find most of my items pretty easily. However, plastic utensils are giving me a fit. They are nowhere to be found. I spend 30-45 min. looking for them. Maybe the Czeck people don't use them. I finally decide that I'm going to have to ask (Tesco employees speak very little English-I hate asking). She tells me that they are on level 3 with paper, as in stationery. Obviously she must have misunderstood what I was looking for because I can't imagine what plastic forks and stationery have in common. Well what do you know-she understood me perfectly because there they are, right next to the greeting cards. Hmm. Wouldn't have been my first guess.

Now it's time to look for a hair dryer. Probably in the beauty section (which is one entire floor). Wrong. They have liquor in the beauty section, but not hair dryers. After riding the escalators up and down for the better part of an hour, I decide to ask. She wants to sell me hair SPRAY. Close, but not quite. Now it is time for me to begin acting out how a hairdryer works and sounds. I'm glad no one here knows me because charades is embarrassing when you are the only one playing the game. Eventually we sort it out and she tells me that they are on the fourth floor in electronics. Right next to the televisions and game systems. Of course.