When I travel to far-off lands, I’m bemused by the oddity, the other-worldliness of ordinary grocery market shelves, where indigenous patrons must think I’m insane. I remember quite distinctly a flock (troupe? herd?) of Swiss interns—colleagues at my first dot-com gig out of college—marveling over an entire aisle of white bread. Personally, I thought they were verrückt. However when I spent a vacation in Bërn, I clearly couldn’t find one loaf of wonder bread at the nearest Coop or Migros.
Now that Zé is in town, I constantly find myself looking at products as a foreigner would. I suppose we’re all compelled to examine our everyday life through an alternate lens when accompanied by those that didn’t grow up around things, just so we can attempt to empathize with their situation. That is why these two products seemed ridiculous enough to photograph with my phone. The former is from Target in Newport, NJ. The latter is from the Shop Rite here in Hoboken. I bet Migros has neither.
Do you have any products you think that a foreigner might find odd? Send them to me!
Pardon the reference to the old Adobe Photoshop Easter Eggs.
I don’t find pork tidbits odd. We do have that in Brazil, although it’s more common to buy that fresh instead of packed like that.
Butt paste would be odd anywhere I think.
For me, the oddest thing in NY so far was seeing a drugstore (Duane Reade) selling stuff like chips and beer. 🙂
Well, Duane Reade is more like a Convenience Store (like Walgreens) with a Pharmacy Section. I know they brand themselves as a drugstore, but really that’s only a section of the store.