A Trip to the Drug Store

Today is cold and very foggy. Most of the snow has melted, but everything is still wet. I thought it would be interesting to blog about a simple task of life - going to the drug store in Germany.

It is possible to get this prescription on base, but it is a giant hassle. It falls into some class of drug that makes the pharmacist on base uncomfortable, so I would have to have forms and signatures and it's just nuts. So I take it off base to a Germany pharmacy to have it filled because they are much more laid back about it.

It takes about 7 minutes to walk to the drug store. By the time I could get my car out of the garage, drive it, park, get my prescription and come home, it's faster just to walk. Plus it's healthier for me and for the earth. Even in the fog, the cold, or the spring rains, I walk when I can here...like the other Germans!

I have been in 2 drug stores here, and they were both the same and very different from those in America. We have the giant drug stores, Walgreens, Eckerds, Walmart, etc that have much more for sale there than just over the counter drugs and prescriptions. That is not the case here.

The drug store in my village is very small. They have a few things for sale like hand lotions and Kleenex and chap-stick lip-balm stuff, but that is it. There are no chairs to sit in to wait for the pharmacist to fill a prescription. I'm not even really sure they keep drugs there - I know they do not keep the one I get, and so the routine is always the same. I take in the prescription, they tell me they must order it, and I go back for it either later on in the day or the next day. I'm pretty sure they have other medications there, just not this one. (Aren't you really curious now as to what I take? LOL!)

Yesterday I dropped off the prescription. Today I went to pick it up. Today was a little more challenging because the person I gave it to yesterday was not the person who waited on me today. I was able to say "You have a prescription for me, my name is Wynd" and the clerk was able to understand me, find the prescription, take my money, thank me - I thanked her and we said goodbye....all in German!

That probably sounds like a very small thing, but usually when a German hears how terribly I butcher their language, they will attempt to speak English to me if they can. It's considerate, yet it doesn't help my German get any better. So to have an entire conversation in German was pretty cool for me.

As I was walking home, I had to pass one of the two grocery stores in Waldmohr. I noticed my next door neighbor coming out of the store, and we waved at each other. She waited for me and gestured in the general direction of our homes, and asked "Haus?" She knows if she tried to ask me "Are you walking to the house?" I wouldn't understand her. But I understood haus, and said yes. She linked her arm with mine and we started to walk home together.

Germans are thought by some to be very nosey. I like to think of them as being extremely curious about things. She pointed to my little bag with my prescription in it and asked me what is that? Ha! Good thing it wasn't a box of tampax or a tube of some embarassing ointment! I pulled the box out and told her it was tablets for me. Then I thought if she could ask me what's in the bag, I could ask her what was in hers, so I did. She listed off vegetables like broccoli and potatoes and also bananas.

Then we talked about the weather. There is no more snow in the forecast for a while, and she is glad, she doesn't like the "schnee". I told her I love it, and here is where an understanding of the meaning but not the actual words comes into play. She laughed and said what gave me the impression of how I like to look at it from inside the house. LOL! This is absolutely true! She said "You no" and made gestures of sweeping and shovelling! Hahaha! Damn, she has me pegged! I told her that is right! I don't shovel, my man shovels! She thought that was funny and hugged me. She also told me it won't rain for a few days.

I told her tomorrow is American Thanksgiving. Ahhh! She knew that that was. We talked about turkey ("puten" in German) and potatoes ("kartofellen") and how we would have gross essen! (Big eating!) Then we were home, and she said tschuss (this is pronounced like "chews" and is the german term for bye) and then she surprised me by saying "byebye".

And that....was my trip to the german drug store. Quite different from start to finish than going to Walgreens.