Went on a little shopping excursion for more food as I have lots of pasta & rice, but I didn't have any vegetables or meat. I was less than logical in my food choices! I took the Metro to фили and found a supermarket there. Auchan - the French export! I also popped into the post office to pick up some more stamps. I'm not sure quite how long post will take to get to England, and they don't have an int'l box separate from the regular mail like in France....so it could be interesting!
Anyway. Shopping. I picked up all the food I wanted. Bananas are ridiculously cheap, I got a large bunch for 30 pence!! I managed to get a kilo of chicken breast for about 200 roubles, which is about £4.30. If I'm thinking correctly that is also very cheap. I got some generic 'yellow cheese' which could be interesting. I found goats cheese for a low price too - 100 roubles - so £2 or so. Also very cheap.
My only problem was with getting my fruit & vegetables. In Auchan they have the French (& Waitrose Henley) system of weighing your own fruit & veg before you get to the check out. Just so the checkout girls have even less to do, because their job is THAT taxing. I'm used to this due to the fact my little brother used to always fob off the weighing on me when we were in France. Unfortunately I was unable to distingush between the different breeds of tomato in Russian and I mixed a yellow pepper in with a green pepper. This meant I had to do the walk of shame TWICE back to the veggie counter to re-weigh my vegetables. I held up the people behind me who gave me the evils (well most Russians look like they're giving you the evils because they don't smile, so I guess it was nothing unusual). I mean the sheer laziness of it all! It's bad enough that she babbled at me in Russian, sent me off, and didn't even do the nice thing and maybe help by packing my shopping. Oh no. Left it all there so I had to stuff it all in hurridly and squish my bananas. Cuh.
THEN I had to lug it all back to my halls. But that was worth it because of the cheapness of the food. I don't want to sound like a scrounge, but the supermarkets around me are pretty expensive because they're smaller and have less choice on offer. Seeing as I'm likely to only spend my money on food and the Metro, I'd rather buy more for less if you get my gist!
Also. I don't know, but for some reason I feel like I have the word FOREIGNER stamped on my forehead and all over me. I guess I must look differently both in terms of clothing and face structure to Russians. But does that mean that every Russian has to stare at me? It's mildly unnerving.
