So I drove by our local Lidl today. For those of you unfamiliar, Lidl is similar to Aldi (which I think many of you will be familiar with), a discount grocery chain that offers low prices but limited and often changing selection. Anyway, what interested me today was the big sign they had up advertising that they now stay open until 9:00. Our local grocery store has been staying open until 10:00 for a couple of years now. Most everything else still closes between 5:00 and 8:00 in the evening depending on what they sell (bakeries 5-6, drug store 8, pharmacy 6:30). A fair number of the less retail oriented places (doctor's offices, pharmacy, post office, bank, etc) also close for 2-3 hours mid day.
There is a growing trend towards opening earlier, staying open through the day, and closing later. I am a bit ambivalent about this. On the one hand, I am often grateful to be able to make a grocery run later in the evening--once the Dave (and thus, the car) is home, or when I realize I have forgotten something, or because we have just come back from a trip and need groceries for the next day. On the other hand, the more that is open, the easier it is let your evenings become consumed by running errands and move into that fast paced and frantic lifestyle that I really like being out of. In reality, other than emergency medications (the pharmacies take turns being open 24 hours for those), is there anything that we HAVE to have immediately and couldn't wait until the next day for? Probably not!
None the less, as I get ready to fly to the US today, I am kind of excited to know I can shop whenever I want--get groceries at 2:00 a.m. if I feel like it.
I will be posting from the US while I am there (assuming Marika lets me use her computer!)--plenty of fun adventures are to be had there too--and there are likely comparisons to German culture that I have not noticed having been gone so long, that will hit me when I am living them.
--Hadley
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