Grocery Shopping

 The two most common grocery stores here are either Migros or Coop. There are small local ones as well as large and beautiful ones. Swiss grocery shopping is quite a pleasure until you reach the cashier. Well at least if you have bought meat or fish. It is just so expensensive here. Salmon costs about 350 kr per Kg and normal ordinary pork chops 240 kr per Kg! So what you do is to cross the boarder and go to Germany to do most of your grocery shopping. You almost freak out by these prices. We actually eat vegetarian several times per week as we both like it and it helps to keep costs down a little.

 The stores are beautiful here, well organized and neat. You almost feel like you've stepped into Whole Foods in the US when entering some Swiss or German stores.The fruit and vegetable sections are large with a great selection. You also have a really large selection of organic grown produce as well. A bigger and better selection of organic goods compared to most Swedish grocery stores. It is so nice to be able to buy wine while you buy everything else. 

The dairy section is equally wonderful. They have it all there and the selection of cheese is even bigger here than in Sweden.

Plenty of organic stuff to choose from. Something you do have to remember is that you have to weigh all your fruits and vegetables yourself and put on the little price sticker unless they have been pre-packed and pre-priced already. Of course I have forgotten this and had quite an embarrasing encounter at the cashier. The only thing I could say was " I am sorry" (well at least I could say that in German) but I would have liked to explain that I forgot as this is something that is not done in Sweden or the US. Well I guess this will help me to remember hopefully in the future to weigh and make sure I got my price sticker on my bag of bananas and tomatoes. 

So people do a lot of their grocery shopping in Germany since it is both cheaper and convenient as the drive is not far away. However, there is a limit on the amounts of meat, milk and alcoholic beverages that you are allowed to bring into Switzerland. Boarder patrol may stop you and want to check your goods when you pass from Germany to Switzerland. The limits for meat are just half a kilo or one kilo per person (I can't remember exactly) so you can't really get a lot.

Since all stores are closed on Sundays here and it seems like just about all of Switzerland goes grocery shopping in Germany on Saturdays me and C have realized it works a lot better for us to go on an evening mid-week instead. We usually go around 7 or 7:30 pm and that works great. The stores are much less crowded and usually boarder patrol has closed up and gone home even.

Another thing when it comes to grocery shopping in Germany is that the tax in Germany is about 19% wheras in Switzerland it is 8 or 9%. So you save your receipt, get it stamped by the German border patrol and next time you go shopping you get the difference in tax back in money. Just have to make sure that you get your green slip with you and stamped. 

Another thing that you have to remember is to bring your own bags to pack in. They only have paper bags or recycling bags here. But as we did this in Sweden as well it is not something new to us. We actually went to Germany yesterday so now we are good and stocked up again for a while. Our fridge and freezer aren't so large so that sets the limit but so far it has worked out for us.