It's been a while since I blogged about recycling, and I think in a past blog I may have even promised that I would never blog about recycling ever again. But today, I must go back on my word, because today, I got down and dirty with the recycling process. I know I should be embarrassed to share with everyone my debacle at the local market, but blogging about it is cheaper than therapy. Plus, I don't want to have to go through the harrowing process of locating an English speaking shrink. So here goes...
The day started with some dear friends of ours flying in from Madison, Wisconsin to visit us for the week. Anytime someone comes to visit from the States, we feel very blessed and really try to make the long, expensive trip over here worth their while. We were so excited to see them and share with them what life is like here in Switzerland. So seeing as it was the Saturday of a 3 day weekend, and the markets would all be closed for the next two days, Sandy and I headed out to our town market to stock up on groceries. She thought it would be interesting to experience a Swiss market. She had no idea....
As I've said before, grocery shopping here in Switzerland is not the mindless activity that it is in the U.S. It starts with getting your ticket for the parking garage, and making sure you put it somewhere where you will be able to find it when you are ready to leave the parking garage. Second, while looking for a safe spot to place the parking ticket, you need to remember to grab your empty grocery bags, as well as your bag full of drippy, sticky, plastic bottles to be placed in the recycling bin inside the store. Third, while doing all this, you need to make sure you have your 2 franc coin so that you can retrieve a grocery cart in which to place all your bags and recylables and take them up to the grocery store in the elevator. No, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to manage all this, but apparently you have to be brighter than I am to do it while catching up with an old friend you haven't seen in 12 months.
We were chatting away while riding up the elevator, and proceeded to dump our big bag of bottles into into the large recycling bin. Usually, you have to place each individual plastic bottle through a small hole in the wall, but when they are expecting lots of customers, they make it a little easier (read: less annoying) by leaving a big bin for you to just dump your recyclables in. So we carelessly dumped and went about our shopping. Sandy and I chatted and caught up as we threw the overpriced swiss groceries into our cart without a care.
After paying for the groceries, we headed over to the customer service desk to buy garbage bags. For some God unknown reason, the garbage bags are kept hidden behind the counter like contraband and must be paid for only in cash. I promise I don't make this stuff up. Next, we stopped at the floral department for some fresh flowers because it's one of the little luxuries I splurge on to try to add a little color to our otherwise sterile white apartment. Poor Sandy has now been awake for over 24 hours but is still powering through all of our tasks with a smile on her face. Finally, we head back to the parking garage with our cart full of ridiculously expensive crap, and start loading up the car. At this point, I get the feeling that something isn't quite right. I don't know how to explain it, but I felt like something was missing. So I reached into my purse to feel for my parking ticket, and found it right where I'd left it. No problem. I'll just return my cart, pay for my parking and get Sandy and me on our way home.
This is when our pleasant shopping experience took a turn for the worse....
I reached into my purse to grab my keys. Hmmmm......they aren't in the pocket I usually put them in. Must have fallen to the bottom of my purse.... Nope, not there either. Wait, did I use them to unlock the car as we were walking towards it? That's strange, I must have left the car unlocked. But I ALWAYS lock my car. Unless of course I'm deep in conversation with a friend.....
What followed was a futile hunt through the entire car, and it's contents, for the missing keys. We searched, and re-searched, sure that we'd stumble upon them and laugh about the ridiculous place I had put them. After 15 minutes, I assure you I wasn't laughing.
Feeling like an ass, I trekked back into the store, all the while racking my brain as to where the village idiot might have placed her keys. We retraced our steps through the grocery store, checking all the bins in the produce section where we had stopped on our first pass through. I imagined how we'd laugh when we found my keys wedged between the tomatoes and the kiwi. But no dice.
I then headed towards the customer service desk where I had earlier purchased my contraband garbage bags. Knowing the woman spoke no English, I typed the word "keys" into the translation app on my iphone and waited to see the German translation to inquire about my lost keys. FYI, the German word for "KEYS", is, apparently, "KEYS". Thank God for my awesome translation app. So in my best German accent I said, "KEYS?" in a loud voice, because I'm fully convinced she will understand the English language better if I speak it really loudly. Once again, no dice.
I check out the floral department counter as we walk past it, and then suddenly I spy the recycling bins. Nooooooooo......... I'm not that ridiculously absentminded am I? But even as I'm thinking this, I know it to be true. I suddenly recall hearing a strange sound when I dumped in the plastic bottles and thinking, "Oops! Must have mixed a glass bottle in with my plastics!" But rather than look to be sure, I decided to get the hell out of the recycling area before someone comes and yells at me for an improper recycling infraction. Clearly, after 13 months, I'm still scared of the recycling police.
I sheepishly share my realization with Sandy and we start peering through the 6 foot tall plastic bag hoping to see my keys. I figured since the bag is see through, I would be able to see them and could casually rip a little hole in the side to retrieve them. Of course, that would have been too easy. The keys were nowhere to be seen. Sandy and I debate what to do as more and more people dump their empty plastic bottles into the bag that I am really praying holds my keys. Suddenly, a Coop Market employee walks up and starts wheeling away the plastic bag, and quite possibly my keys. In a panic I try to tell him with ridiculously exaggerated pantomimes of me starting my car, that I believe my keys might be in the recycling bag. He offers a lengthy response in German, making it clear he will be of no help. When I use my limited German to ask if he speaks English, he proceeds to yell something in German across the room to one of his coworkers. I don't know what he said, but I imagine it was something like, "You gotta get a load of this! This lady either really wants to play charades, or she's a freakin' moron and threw her car keys in this recycling bag!" Three of his fellow Coop Market employees came over and had a brief discussion in German. I can only imagine what they are saying to each other. One of them speaks some English and seems to understand my predicament, but doesn't seem to know how to handle this unusual situation. I'm pretty confident that this doesn't happen every day.
Finally, a pleasant older gentleman who works there, joins the small group of employees discussing the problem and proves he is the brains behind the organization. He enters a door that leads into the secret world behind the recycling wall and quickly returns with a cart and an empty six foot tall recycling bag. We play another quick round of charades so he can show me that he wants me to empty the full bag of dirty plastic bottles into the empty bag. Excellent.
I looked at Sandy who still had a smile, but now it looked a little more delirious from lack of sleep, and said in my peppiest voice, "Welcome to Switzerland!" Only I could manage to have our out of town guest sorting through garbage within 3 hours of her plane landing.
To make the situation even more mortifying, the recycling area is located right at the entrance to the store. Everyone entering and exiting the store had to walk within 10 feet of our key retrieval mission, which means that on the busiest shopping day of the week, I was spotted elbow deep in dirty plastic bottles by several hundred people. No one called my name or stopped to chat, but I'm pretty confident I wasn't someone you would want to claim to be an acquaintence of on this particular day. Fortunately, I maneuvered the 6 foot tall carts to provide a bit of a privacy wall for myself and and left poor Sandy to perform for the crowd of shoppers. No, it wasn't nice, but I figured she'd never see these people again and my reputation among townsfolk really doesnt' need any more tarnishing.
Anyway, we sorted....and sorted.....and sorted. Sandy commented on how the Swiss are quite diligent about cleaning out their bottles prior to recycling and even mentioned that one of the cleaning product containers had a "nice" smell. Remember, she hadn't slept in WELL over 24 hours at this point. About midway through our search and rescue mission, Sandy inadvertantly knocked me in the head with a bottle. At least I think it was inadvertant. Although who could really blame her if it was intentional. A few minutes later she looked at me and casually said, "This probably isn't what you want to hear right now, but there is some white stuff in your hair." She was absolutely right, that wasn't what I wanted hear and I proceeded to use my sleeve to frantically wipe at my hair like a cat on crack. I felt a little better when we realized it must have happened when she knocked me in the head with the detergent container. I may end up with a big bleached streak in my hair, but at least I wasn't wearing someone's curdled milk.
After about 15 minutes, and several hundred bottles, we were almost to the end and still hadn't spotted my keys. Dear God, if I subjected poor Sandy to this disgusting task for no reason, I will die. Really, I will just crawl into this giant bag of stinky plastic and die a pathetic death. Then suddenly with only about 50 bottles left, I spot something dark in the very bottom of the bag. Could it be!?!?!?!? I reach down and pluck my ring of keys out of the bottom of the bag and without so much as a WOOHOO!!! say to Sandy, "Let's get the hell out of here!". But as we were heading for the elevators, I quick decided it would be worth the humiliation to stop and snap Sandy's first picture of herself in Switzerland. Don't ever try to tell me I don't show my out of town visitors a good time....
Yes, just another story to add to my ridiculous adventure. At this point, all I could do was laugh at the situation and thank God I had a partner in crime to share in the experience. Oh, and it helped knowing that the next bottle I would hold in my hands, would without a doubt, be a bottle of chianti.
