Coffee and an airbed

Magdeburg l When you’re in a British town and you feel like having a coffee, chances are, you go to a café. Cafés are something that Britain does well, or at least thoroughly – they’re everywhere, and all the major cities and towns offer exactly the same range of expensive, soulless chains you can sit in for an hour or two while you ponder how your drink can possibly have been so expensive.

In Germany, however, as I recently discovered, a café is not necessarily the place to go if you need a shot of caffeine while you’re out and about. You go to a shop that sells coffee, yes, but that shop probably also sells pyjamas, chopping boards, travel adaptors and bicycle pumps – this week. Next week it will probably sell nothing but coathangers, cat litter trays and cushions.

That’s only the start of the German shopping experience. After getting stocked up on coffee and sportswear, a German might next stop at a pharmacy. For shampoo and shaving foam, a Brit might naively expect – well, yes, but also perhaps for pet food, tea, soy-based meat substitutes and chia seeds. Pharmacy stuff… right?

In Britain, I had only limited exposure to the mix-and-match approach so beloved of German retailers. This was through the two well-known discount supermarkets that have made their way across the Channel. Certainly, the most distinctive thing about these stores in the UK is their infamous central aisles, with their bewildering but strangely joyous collections of parasols, vegetable peelers and alarm clocks – technically referred to, with undeniable accuracy, as ‘non-foods’. I think this is an echt German shopping experience – but the word it makes me think of is a typically English (well, American) one: random. When I find myself checking the price of a Yahtzee set when I’ve just popped in for some bread, I can’t help but wonder why. Surely, nobody actually goes to the supermarket looking for these things – do they?

Traditionally, the Germans are supposed to be the organised ones, so I’d have expected everything to be neat and ordered in a German shop. It was therefore a surprise to encounter places where you could go in for a coffee, and come out with a pair of trainers. But at least I feel that the German shops are being honest with me – these objects are clearly not essential items, and there is little pretence that they are. By contrast, British supermarkets tend to be pushier, and the influence of their marketing departments is always evident. You get used to a constant selection of pointless offers, designed to convince you that you need to stock up now: three pineapples for the price of two, £5 off if you spend £100, things like that. There is no place for computer monitors or lawnmowers, or any other unexpected items that might jolt shoppers out of the stupefied capitalist daze into which they have been lured.

I’m a lot more likely to respond to the direct, take-it-or-leave-it approach of German stores than to the insidious, stealthy marketing of British ones. Maybe I want an airbed and a lightbulb, maybe I don’t, but I’d rather decide for myself. That’s why, as I was collecting my coffee the other day, I gave serious thought to impulse-buying a small wooden rabbit house. I decided not to in the end, but it was a close call. Maybe next time.

Eine deutsche Version des Artikels gibt es hier.