Shopping inconvenience

Steve left to go back to Tucson a week ago, and since then it feels like time is racing, and I am racing, and yet I am not getting anything done. The city is exhausting, which is completely expected. I am trying to gain momentum at work, meet old friends, catch up with family, play in a new orchestra, unpack boxes, do various administrative things, run errands, and everything seems to take forever.

Some of it actually does. I am wasting a lot of time shopping while not buying anything. Whenever I enter a supermarket, I am completely lost. Instead of buying reasonable stuff to eat during the week, I find myself checking out the international beer selection (Lagers. Sigh.) while fighting leftover childhood urges to raid the chocolate/candy section (it was quite convenient to be in a country without any of the junk food I remember from childhood!). It takes me forever to find essentials like toilet paper. I get frustrated over the produce (I don’t exactly know why), plus by then it's typically getting too late to chop vegetables for dinner anyway, so I buy more cold cuts and bread. And 50% of my time in the store I am fighting complete overload. Where is my Trader Joe’s?

Another part of the problem is that shopping is SO INCONVENIENT. Yes, I used to say the exact same thing about Tucson when I went there. And I still think it is inconvenient to shop in Tucson if you don’t have a car. But at least I could make an evening of biking to the mall. Here, all the stores are just around the corner, and all it takes is a little walk or a little stop on the way home from work. But here’s the problem: half of them close at 6 and the other half close at 7. None of them are open on a Sunday. And here I am, in need of a long woolen winter coat, shoes, food, house shoes, printer paper, daylight spectrum lightbulbs, a desk lamp, refills for my pens, sheets, and towels, just to name a few. To the best of my knowledge, I need to hit between 5 and 6 stores for just those things. Last Saturday was shot for the purpose of shopping because my father, brother and little sister visited me (which I am perfectly happy about, don’t get me wrong here). So, I am currently taking off from work earlier than I want to every day, just to race to perhaps one or two stores before they close. If I am lucky, one of them has what I need, and a sufficiently small selection of it, such that I am actually capable of making a decision. I am not good at making decisions over 50 kinds of winter coats, none of them under € 200, when I am hungry, tired, carrying my laptop and an umbrella, and rushed because they may kick me out in ten minutes. So I end up looking at things and not buying any. But most of the time I am actually on the street, I see the shops closed.

Did I hear you say “Just buy it online!”? Yeah, that's what I thought, and went onto amazon.de for those daylight spectrum lightbulbs. What I did not realize is that things don’t get dropped off on your doormat if nobody is home. You have to pick the packet up at the post office (hours, you guessed it, 8 am – 6 pm). This morning at 8:30, I waited for 20 minutes at the post office to pick up one of the lightbulbs I bought. There are two more on the way. Now, that might still be better than racing to a store that may or may not have what I need, but it does take some of the fun and convenience out of online shopping.

So what to do? I need a housewife! Because, clearly, that’s how these kinds of structures have worked in the past. I need a wife to buy the mundane stuff during the work week, so I have some time to look for a winter coat on Saturday, instead of trying to get to 4 stores, together with the rest of Vienna’s full-time employed. Oh, wait, now I remember, I already made plans for this Saturday. Clearly, I am not granting shopping the priority it deserves.

Probably, in the end, it’s all about getting used to it. I had my routine set up for “Tucson by bicycle”, and I cannot remember how my Viennese routine worked, back in 2007. Even if I did, it might not be much use, because I am on a different schedule and on a different budget. So I am probably just doing it all wrong. You go somewhere new, none of your routines work out any longer, and everything, the tiniest bit of everyday life logistics, is kind of abrasive. So, I guess, in that sense, “convenience” is mostly about what you are used to. But boy, would I like to go run errands after dinner instead of before!