One of my simple pleasures is walking the aisles of unfamiliar grocery stores — bonus points if they’re in a foreign country. I want to say it started when I went to Italy in 2008 and discovered the world of digestive crackers, which everyone knows are actually just cookies. I’ve always been a sucker for branding and packaging and standing in front of a wall of digestive cracker/cookie/biscuits, all vying for my attention was really fun.
Something about taking in all new information, on a scale as both large (the building itself) and minute (the singular food items) as a grocery store feels meditative for me. It’s also an immersive way for me to understand how people in other places live; it’s not as intimate as getting a home cooked meal from them but way cooler than just eating at a restaurant in the area. As someone who has a tendency to get distracted or sucked into my phone, I love that the grocery store forces me to focus on the task at hand.
And that was 173 words on my thoughts regarding grocery stores. Now would probably be a good time to tell you that I am wildly hungover and the fact that any words happened at all is shocking.