Shopping

[pne]

I went for a little post-Christmas shopping to day, to see whether they had any interesting Christmas sweets on sale. Boy, was it full! I suppose I committed the triple sin of (a) going on a Saturday around noon, (b) shortly after Christmas and (c) on the first day that fireworks can legally be sold around here.

And when I wanted to bring my shopping cart back, there was no other cart to attach it to, so I couldn't get my little plastic chip back. I was the first person this happened to (just before, an employee there had taken away the last shopping cart) and slowly, a queue of people with carts started to form. Unfortunately, nearly all had chips rather than coins in the carts, so people who wanted a cart were out of luck since they couldn't just give the person a €1 or 50¢ coin in exchange for the one in the cart. Finally, an employee came around with a little metal thing which would unlock the coin.

Comments

Free tokens

[pne.livejournal.com]

I don't remember tokens having been free... actually, I think they're fairly new in Germany.

When I was young, I think everyone used mark coins, then slowly tokens started coming out; either metal (optionally with a hole for attaching to a keychain) or plastic (I have one of those). And all the ones I saw cost exactly DM 1. (I wonder what they sell for now -- €0.51, the equivalent, or maybe €0.50?)