Olga Alexandru

对本文主人公而言，杂货铺是一个神奇的地方，它是可以带给人幸福感的场所。

For most people, the weekly shop is a task, but I find a lot of joy in grocery shopping, even though when I am traveling abroad.

As a vegan (严格素食主义者), finding restaurants that meet my needs is not always easy abroad, so I always make sure to book a place that has a kitchen. If nothing else, it helps to be able to have breakfast first thing in the morning without walking around for hours trying to find somewhere suitable. One of the first things I do,after dropping my bags off, is go to the grocery store. I don't cook every meal in my rental accommodation—that would be boring and beside the point of traveling to a new place. But I do love to look for local delicacies and accidentally vegan treats.

I've gotten good at reading foreign language food labels at a fast speed. I know the words for milk and eggs in several languages,which helps the process go quicker.Grocery stores feel like a great way to immerse (沉浸) myself in a new culture. By seeing what their supermarket aisles are filled with, you start to see what the people value. In Torino, I learned that Italy has laws about buying alcohol after 9 pm.There was a situation where my partner was trying to buy non-alcoholic beer, but they wouldn't let him because it was after the curfew (宵禁令). We tried to show the security guard that the beer was nonalcoholic but the language barrier proved too much. Luckily, somebody who knew English came over and explained it to him,and we were able to complete our purchase.

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