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this little piggy went to market

Submitted by kass on Mon, 03/09/2009 - 20:00

sunday bastille marketsunday bastille market

Honestly speaking, the greatest kick I get out of a holiday is grocery shopping. In a supermarket, a farmer's market or whatever equivalent market the world has, I gets to rub shoulders with locals and do as they do. In that window of time that one spends in the market, the traveller gets to play make believe and assume the guise of local (provided said traveller isn't toting an enormous backpack and clumping around in hiking boots). MacCannell would call a grocery store a stage 4 space, a "back region that is open to outsiders".

I find the grocery store is also the closest one gets to a peephole into a culture. You are what you eat, and the way to the heart of a culture lies in discovering its most basic of things: food. In Turkey, I discovered that Lay's produces yoghurt and herb chips rather than sour cream and onion, but no bacon or ham-flavoured ones, showing both the Islamic history and gastronomic inclinations of the Turks. In France, every single store selling food, no matter how big or small, has a section devoted to wine. Sometimes, wine is cheaper than water, and no one ever asks for ID, a result of the utterly comfortable attitude that the French have to wine, something that’s quite alien to American culture. A grocery store is therefore the manifestation of the social, cultural, religious and economic position of a country and culture all rolled into a few rows and checkout points.

Of course, not everyone is as thrilled as I am at the prospect of grocery shopping. College students, I find in particular, generally belong to the other camp, those that MacCannell refers to as “tourists” with great disdain. For spring break, I had carefully planned out a whole week in Morocco, spent in Marrakech, Fez and the desert (and grocery shopping, of course). However, in the course of planning, I found that the majority of my friends prefer to flit about like butterflies in a typhoon. Consequently, we're now traversing Venice, Sardinia and Barcelona in the span of a week. Indubitably, it will be great fun - traveling with friends generally is – but somehow I feel MacCannell would not approve.

The other day I was in the

Submitted by Bianca on Mon, 03/09/2009 - 21:14.

The other day I was in the grocery store picking out a a bag of lettuce when a elderly Italian women grabbed it out of my hand. She then handed me another bag, the kind of lettuce that was on a weekly special. Although it was a euro cheaper, it was not the type of lettuce I wanted. The women did not speak any English, but seemed so thrilled that she had helped me out. I ended up sticking with the cheaper lettuce, I didn't want to disappoint the nice Italian lady I had met in the grocery store.