One thing that is always striking about being in Europe is that it feels close enough to home that there are times when it feels like you never left. The faces are familiar. So are the cars, buses, and a lot of the products in the stores. Heck, if you are surrounded by Americans, like I was during orientation in Torun, it's sometimes easy to think that you're on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago someplace having lunch. The wait staff of course speaks Polish, but you and your buddies are jabbering away in English as always.
But then there are those subtle and not-so-subtle reminders that you aren't in Kansas anymore. Street signs are an obvious example, but a little bit more jarring is what happens when you walk into a supermarket and try to find stuff. The first thing I noticed is that a lot of the stuff that is readily available in any supermarket in the States is either in a specialty store or simply not available over here. Take lentils, for example. I'm aware of one store in Krakow that carries them. Also, it's not like you can hop over to the equivalent of the Giant Eagle (or the Jewel or Food Lion or Aldi or whatever) and pick up a bunch of jalapenos. And just last night I asked a woman who works in the Jubilat for baker's chocolate. Either my Polish is really bad or it simply doesn't exist over here, based on the look I got. Granted, it could be that elsewhere there is such a thing: try walking into Giant Eagle and asking for daikon root and you probably will get the same look. Still, based on a bit of shopping around, I'm going to have to change what I cook and how I cook it. I had absolutely no problem cooking bigos, a Polish stew, for instance.
Lest I be accused of saying "man, there's no food in this country!" I should point out that there's a great variety of stuff, just different priorities as to what kind of variety. In the supermarkets I've visited I have seen entire aisles of tea, separate from the entire aisle of coffee and other hot drinks. You want candy or chocolates? You can probably combine the "foreign novelty sweets" at several supermarkets in the States (except for that Ginormous Giant Eagle across from Bayer on I-376 in Robinson Township that looks like it was built in an aircraft hangar). In the average Polish supermarket, there is an entire other aisle of beer, both domestic and foreign, in cans and in bottles but oddly not in six-packs. The standard supermarket probably has at least 10 different kinds. There are 4 or 5 varieties of eggs at the Jubilat, which are sold in packages of 10, not 12. Also extremely popular over here are "poprawki", or packages of spices that are pre-set to just sprinkle on chicken or beef or turkey or whatever it is that you are making. Think of it as Laury's Seasoned Salt on steroids. There's an entire aisle of these packages at the Jubilat. You want macaroni or pasta? Well, here's five different brands of linguini and macaroni and rotini, but no wagon wheels. Finding potato flour is no problem, whereas that's a somewhat special item in the States. So, a lot of my time in Poland has been spent marveling at a very peculiar set of circumstances: supermarket clutter that is difficult to wade through, coupled with the perception that there really isn't any food in the store.
Another thing that we all take for granted on entering a supermarket is that we know at least roughly where everything is. Well, I've spent a fair amount of time blundering around grocery stores here, because the conventions are somewhat different and cutting through clutter often requires knowing the conventions. There are so many items in so many varieties that if you had to read literally every single label, it would take you quite a bit of time.
Take a simple purchase like baking powder. When you're looking for it, what is it you look for? A red can, about 5 inches tall, with "Rumford" in big white letters on it, next to the flour and down the aisle from the instant frosting and instant cake. Having found the flour at the Jubilat, I proceeded to look in the immediate area for about five minutes, as I was looking for a can. Surprise! Polish baking powder is sold in smaller amounts and in things that look like oversized yeast packets. These were in smallish boxes embedded within the numerous packets of instant pudding, gelatin, etc. I didn't manage to locate baking soda or vanilla extract. I did, however, manage to locate a whole vanilla bean. The theory, I guess, is that you can make your own darn extract.
There are other subtleties too. I bought "Poznańska" flour. That label tells me absolutely nothing. It literally means "Poznań-style." There was also "Wrocław-style" flour on offer. The difference between the two of them eludes me, other than that the former would come from Greater Poland and the latter from Silesia. The difference will probably not elude me for very long.
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