Starbucks trip & Shopping trip

I was a witness to someone's first Starbucks experience. Yes, it's true. Until two weeks ago, Eunji had never consumed a hot, overpriced but delicious beverage from the coffee chain we all love to hate. So in order to remedy this, we took a trip to the nearest Starbucks, just 25 minutes away in Basel, Switzerland.


Eunji, me and Krystal.


Although the visit ended with a stomache ache induced by her first starbucks beverage...the trip was an overall success.

Shopping

Grocery shopping is a bit different here in Germany. It's not common at all to have a one-stop-shop Super Wal-Mart, so we typically go to three, sometimes four, stores in one day to get everything we need for the dorm. I am lucky because my dorm is located in Kandern where the three major grocery stores are, whereas other dorms have to drive up to 20 minutes to the nearest store! On Monday's the dorm parents go shopping to stock up on food to last until thursday. And then on thursday the RA's buy everything we need to last through the weekend until Monday. So this past thursday I took a few pictures of our weekly shopping trip.

We stop at Lidl first and we easily fill two grocery carts. All the dorms have a running milk order with Lidl, meaning that we tell them how much milk we're going to buy from them each week and they will stock their store for that amount in addition to what they order per week for the rest of the town (Kandern). If we didn't do this, then all the dorms would buy all of their milk and Lidl (and Kandern)would not be happy with us! My dorm orders 20-30 liters of milk per week, but the guys' dorms order at least 50-60 liters!!! That's a lot of milk!

This is our van, stacked full of empty crates. By then end of the morning, these crates will all be full and overflowing into the back seats of the van.

This is Hieber's. Hieber's is a bit more expensive and nicer than the other grocery stores. They carry specialty items like Oreo's and Ritz crackers! The other day I saw a box of "American style" cereal that was priced at 5 euros...that's like $8! So we only buy a few things here every week.


Penny Markt is probably the cheapest grocery store in town and it is our final stop.

Sometimes it's hard to control the grocery carts!

Once we get back to the dorm, its takes a while to unload everything and organize it inside. We have one large walk-in refridgerator, as well as a walk-in freezer and large pantry. This picture is of me in the refridgerator.

It always amazes me that in just a few days, all of this food "magically" disappears!