Grocery Shopping

Grocery shopping in Switzerland was overwhelming at first with the different foods and the labels written in a foreign language (usually French and German, sometimes Italian, too). The price of food was also a shock and still is at times, but I’m getting used to it. Here’s a website to get an idea of food prices in Switzerland: www.leshop.ch. Scroll down to the bottom to see prices. Notice that these are sale prices!

The shopping is getting easier now that I know my way around the local grocery stores. I mostly shop at the Coop and Migros. I’m still not quite sure how to pronounce the first one. Some people pronounce it like a coop for chickens. Other’s pronounce it so that it rhymes with “hope.” I think the pronunciation reflects which region of Switzerland you’re from. The locals can tell that I’m not from any part of Switzerland by the way I butcher the name. I miss straight-forward names like “Cub” and “Rainbow.”

The Migros is the other grocery store in town. You can tell how big the Migros store is by how many M’s are on the outside of it. One M is a small store. It goes up to 3 M’s, which means really big, like Super Target big. Ahhh, I miss Target. You can’t do all your shopping at just the Coop or just the Migros. They don’t carry the same products. So, I have to go to Migros to get cheddar cheese because the Coop doesn’t carry it. Then I go to the Coop to get alcohol because the Migros doesn’t have any. I spend a lot of time chasing between the Coop and Migros during the week!