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Showing posts from December, 2011

The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain: Why shopping is a pain in Ukraine.

I used to like shopping. I thought it was fun. I love closure, and so nothing was more satisfying than crossing items off a list. I enjoyed the experience of checking out new stuff, looking for bargains, and of course everyone knows that buying stuff feels good.   That was then. This is now. Shopping here is a pain. Let me explain (hey, I’m a poet and I don’t even realize it)! First, we don’t have a car. That means we are at the mercy of public transportation, and so we have to keep that in mind when choosing what store to go to. Is it close to a bus or metro stop? Do we have to transfer metro lines? When we lived in the city center, we were really close to two metro lines. We like this store called MegaMarket, and it was only a few stops away on the metro. So, we would grab our backpacks, walk a block to the metro, go down a ridiculously long escalator, then hop on a metro and ride a couple stops down.   Then we would walk a few blocks and there it was..…Megamarket! Second re...