Episode 2: Tears on my Canned Vegetables

Has grocery shopping ever made you cry? In Episode 2: Tears on my Canned Vegetables, Rebecca talks about an unexpected challenge many expats face when they move to a new country … grocery shopping!

Please note, this episode does contain some instances of language that you may consider offensive. In other words, Rebecca says a few cuss words.

Music in this Episode

Peach Pie – Tears of Happiness – Provided by Jamendo

Audio in this Episode

All audio (excluding music) and narration in the RB Abroad Podcast is recorded, edited, and produced by Rebecca Bramlett unless otherwise noted.

In this episode, audio also includes background music that is played over the speakers in a grocery store. I do not own the rights to that music, but could not ask the store to turn off their radio. It also includes a short clip of me humming and singing one verse of a song. I claim no rights to the song, and I apologize for my terrible singing of it.

Transcript

Hello and welcome everybody!

(theme music begins playing)

I am Rebecca Bramlett and this is the RB Abroad podcast, where I tell you about the time I moved abroad for three and half years.

Just a warning for my clean mouthed listeners, or my friends who might be listening with their kids riding along in the car, this episode does contain a few instances of some curse words. Sorry.

(music stops playing)

Before I get started on episode 2, I just wanted to take a minute to say, “thank you” to everyone who listened to the first episode of the RB Abroad podcast. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Umm, my gosh. I was frankly really surprised and kind of blown away by how many people actually listened and even beyond that, gave me such kind feedback and comments.

I am someone who really values my time and is really careful about how I spend my time. Especially the older I get, the more I find myself being really protective of how I use my time and I almost get angsty about it if I feel like my time is being wasted or if I’m spending it doing something that’s keeping me from doing something that is more of a priority. So, I don’t think I am alone in that feeling and the fact that people would spend 40 minutes or so of their time listening to me and listening to a project of mine just really kind of blew me away. I mean, I know I’m making a podcast with the assumption that people will listen but to actually put it out there and then realize that people did listen and gave me incredibly kind comments and feedback back, just, really touched me, so thank you for that. I’m glad you enjoyed it and I’m glad you came back to listen to this episode.

So, now, moving on to episode 2, in this episode of the RB Abroad Podcast, I’m going to talk to you about something that is not what I told you I was going to talk about at the end of the first episode. Sorry about that!

At the end of the first episode, I told you that the next episode was going to be about something I was calling the “expat identity”. I wanted to talk about that topic early on in this season because it was really one of the first challenges I faced when I moved here. And that was challenges to my sense of self and my sense of identity. Things like, the fact that I went from working full-time to not working at all here, and the questions that that made me consider, like, who am I now, if I’m not defining myself by my career and the work that I am doing. And, now there was more an emphasis on the part of me that’s a mom and a wife and was that enough for me? And then on top of that, just being in a new place and being surrounded by a new culture with things constantly being different and just the fact alone that I was an expat now was really kind of all-consuming for a while in my mind, and still is, I mean, come on, I’ve created a whole podcast around the fact that I am someone who lives abroad, so clearly, it’s become a large part of my identity. I wanted to talk about all this in an episode, so I had it scripted and actually recorded the whole thing and wasn’t really happy with it, so I re-scripted it and tried to record it again and just reworked it and reworked it and reworked it and I tried to tell those stories, but, in the end, I decided it just wasn’t working for me for the second episode.

So I decided to just go ahead and mention it here, briefly, just so you can think about that was something I grappled with, but then, just move straight on and use this episode to talk about one of the more interesting challenges I faced early on as an expat instead, and that is, grocery shopping.

Yes, that’s right, grocery shopping.

(grocery store music plays briefly)

Now, food is an integral part of culture and eating is a daily habit, it’s just a part of our daily routine. When you move from one country to another, unless they are really similar in culture, you’re going to experience changes when it comes to food, in terms of what’s available to you, where you can buy it, how you can prepare it. Once you’re into full on adulting, grocery shopping is probably one of the easiest tasks that we do. But that all changes when you move abroad. And it’s not something you expect to become challenging for you until that first trip to a store and you realize, you don’t know where anything is in the store. And, since it’s all in a new language, you don’t know what anything is called. And sometimes they don’t even have the things that you want in this new country. And all of a sudden, one of the things that was so simple in your routine becomes one of the hardest things you face. Because that is how important a sense of familiarity and comfort is to a person when almost everything else around them is unfamiliar and uncomfortable and new and different. And that’s what I want to talk about.

Especially since because, as I’ve tried to explain to friends back home the things that are hard here, and I’ve tried to explain to new friends here how things are hard here, every time I say how hard grocery shopping is, people look at me like I am crazy.

(grocery store music plays briefly)

So, I want to use this episode to try once and for all to properly explain and help people understand why grocery shopping is one of the hardest challenges expats face, especially when you are a brand-new expat and you’re still figuring things out.

All right then, let’s go shopping!

(sounds of a seat belt unbuckling, a car engine, car keys jingling, car trunk opening)

So, one of the very first things I had to learn about grocery shopping in Belgium, and most of Europe, really, was that stores don’t provide shopping bags for free like we’re used to in the States, the horrible plastic shopping bags that we get for free in the stores in the States. So this was actually a fact that I was more than happy to learn and comply with, but it still takes getting used to, because at least back at home if you forgot the bags in the car, or forgot them in the house and forgot to return them to the car for the next trip, there was always back up. There were bags there available, and here, well there are too, but they’re available for purchase. So, you learn pretty quickly to remember your shopping bags every time you go on a shopping trip.

(sounds of bags crinkling)

Now the next thing to learn about grocery shopping again in Belgium, and again most of Europe, at least this region where we’ve done a lot of travelling is that they require a coin deposit for you to get a shopping cart.

(sound of cart being unlocked and rolling)

And, I think this is actually brilliant because I imagine it cuts down on the number of stolen shopping carts, or abandoned shopping cards in the middle of parking lots. Because how many times have I been in a grocery store or a Target parking lot back home and someone has left their car just in the middle of a parking spot or the street or they’re rolling down the street because someone left them, come on Americans, we have a really bad habit of doing that. Return the cart to where the carts belong. But here you’re definitely going to do that because you’re going to get your coin back, and if you don’t, you don’t get your coin back, and these are 50 cent, 1 euro or 2 euro coins we’re talking about, so that’s no small change. But this was a habit that took some getting used to, because I don’t always carry change with me, or at least, I didn’t used to always carry change with me, now I do, and it would really get frustrating if you got stuck and didn’t have that cart when you needed it to go shopping. Because some of the stores do provide coinless little hand carts if you want to use those to shop but don’t have a coin to put in, but those aren’t always big enough. Some stores have coin sized tokens available for you that you can use if you don’t have coins. That’s a little trick that took me, oh, only about 6 – 8 months to learn.

(sounds of inside a grocery store, carts, music, a cell phone ringing)

So today, I’m shopping at the Carrefour, which is a popular chain in this area of Europe. It’s kind of like, Europe’s Wal-Mart. It’s not as fabulous as Target so it can’t really compare to Target, but it’s slightly better than Wal-Mart because it doesn’t have the people of Wal-Mart, but it’s got the “everything you need” mentality … clothes, toiletries, food, bread, vegetables, dried foods, toys, everything.

(background shopping noise ends)

In this store, they have these self-scanner devices so you can actually scan all your own groceries as you do your shopping and then that makes the check-out process quicker because when you get to check-out you just hand over the self-scanner where it already has your total and you pay, and then you’re done. That’s that beeping you keep hearing. (beep beep beep) Other people, self-scanning.

(beep beep beep)

Now, the next lesson for shopping in Belgium occurs in the bread aisle.

(beep beep beep)

For starters, Belgians sell a lot more fresh bread, daily baked fresh bread in the store (or better yet, you go straight to the bakery to get your fresh bread, not the big grocery store, if you have the time to shop in different stores for all of your needs. But if you are in the store getting your bread it’s typically fresh bread and I love this habit because fresh bread is amazing. That said, the fresh bread here has a lot fewer preservatives, probably healthier for us, but it means you’re buying fresh bread almost daily because it really doesn’t last more than a day. And this American family still eats a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, almost daily, so we need our bread to be fresh every day.

We also need it sliced for those sandwiches and here, in the grocery stores, if you’re buying fresh loaves of bread, you get to slice it yourself. That’s right, most of the grocery stores have a large, professional grade bread slicing machine that is out in the bread area and you are responsible for slicing it yourself.

(noise of bread slicing machine operating)

This would NEVER happen in America because these are big, terrifying machines where you could easily just chop a finger or two off…

(noise of bread slicing machine operating)

… and law suits would be happening all over the place, I’m sure. But here it does not seem to be a problem. You’re just responsible for yourself and you don’t cut your finger off.

(beep beep beep)

And if you do, you don’t sue.

(beep beep beep)

and as far as I know, fingers aren’t being sliced off on a regular basis at the stores, at least not that I hear about, so it works out.

It definitely took me awhile to figure these machines out. Most of them do have picture tutorials, which is nice, especially when you’re new and non-native and don’t speak the local language because you couldn’t really read the location language, so picture tutorials are very helpful. But even still, the first time I used one, I was pretty confused and took the advice of my son, who claimed he knew how to use it because he had watched someone before him use it, and we got about halfway through and then couldn’t figure out how to turn the thing on. He told me to push the big red button, because he thought that’s what he saw someone else having done, but that ended up being the emergency cutoff that shut the whole thing down, so we had to get assistance from the store clerk anyway. She showed me the green button that should have been obvious. From that point forward, we were experts on that bread slicing machine.

(noise of bread slicing machine operating)

Another thing I’ve had to get used to in a lot of stores here is in the fresh fruits and vegetables aisle. A lot of stores require that you weigh your own fruits and vegetables. This saves time at the cash register. That is, if you remember to do it.

(beep)

So, you pick out your fresh fruits and vegetables, take them to the scale, select them on the screen,

(beep, beep)

And it prints out the price ticket for you.

(sound of price sticker printing)

This is one way to learn the new language’s name for all the fruits and vegetables you like pretty quickly.

(beep beep beep)

So now that we have our cart, and our bags, and possibly our bread, and we’re ready to do some more shopping, you start looking for everything on your list that isn’t as obvious as bread, because the bread aisle is pretty obvious, and meats and fruits and veggies. Those sections are easy to find by eye. But when you’re looking for packaged goods, it becomes a different story.

Now, if you’re like me, you probably have been grocery shopping in the same store for years, and at this point it’s probably just routine. You know the layout of the store, you know where the regular ingredients are that you buy on a regular basis, you know where to find them. But going to a new store in a new country is like starting all over again.

Sugar, for example.

Oh, and then the sugar aisle. The sugar aisle is next to the coffee and tea, not with the baking, because I guess coffee and tea is prioritized over baking? I don’t know. But I used to go to baking to find flour and sugar, and neither of those ingredients are in the baking aisle here.

(sounds of music and store employee on loudspeakers)

And as for the baking section, there is fluid flour and patisserie flour and self-rising flour and numbered flours.

(sounds of music and store noises)

There’re so many types of flour here and none of it is all-purpose. I don’t think they believe in all-purpose flour. They actually believe you have a purpose for baking and your flour should match it.

(store noise ends)

I still haven’t figured all these flours out yet and I’ve baked with all of them, half the time with the inappropriate one at the inappropriate time, but everything for the most part still turned out edible.

(beep beep beep)

It’s been nearly impossible for me to find things like vegetable shortening, like Crisco. I actually gave up on finding that, not that I cook with it that often but sometimes I do. And then about three years after living here I found some, not at the grocery store, but at an arts and crafts store.

(beep beep beep)

It took me 6 months to figure out where bread crumbs were shelved.

Oh, oh, (laughs) bread crumbs. You have no idea, okay, I think, bread crumbs was like, the longest thing that it took me to find. It got to the point where I just didn’t think that they used bread crumbs here, and I started making my own out of the bread that goes stale after a day so, I mean, I just kind of thought, well, maybe they don’t need to use bread crumbs here because they have stale bread every day?

(beep beep beep)

In addition to bread crumbs, something else I started making from scratch was chicken broth, because I’m really used to being able to buy those really big cartons of chicken broth back home but they don’t sell it like that here. Here it’s really small cans that are really expensive, like more expensive than a whole rotisserie chicken in the meat section, so, I just started buying rotisserie chickens, eating that for dinner, and then making my own chicken broth with the remains. I kind of feel like living here a little bit has turned me into an 80-year-old broth making lady.

(beep beep beep)

So that’s some of the real obvious differences I faced in the grocery stores, but what is more stressful and harder to explain is some of the smaller, more nuanced differences.

I didn’t anticipate the fact that food brands and makers would be different. And it’s kind of like, duh, of course they were. It’s a new country, it’s a new continent. Of course, there is some overlap, there’s Kellogg’s products and Quaker products and Minute Maid products, but even still, they’re not quite what we are used to. I think there actually are some laws about the number of preservatives and additives and certain ingredients you can add to food here, so, even something that is the same, theoretically, tastes a little bit different here because some of the ingredients are different and we kind of had to re-learn what we liked. Like, we can’t find Cheerios, so we tried the Honey Pops Loops to see if they were just as good. And, they’re ok. They’re good. They’re different. You get used to it.

There is definitely no JIF or Peter Pan peanut butter, so we had to figure out what brand of peanut butter we liked here instead. And truly the answer is that none of them are a suitable replacement. Europeans just don’t understand peanut butter the way Americans do. Bless their hearts though, some of them are trying. We just got back from Greece where our resort had a dish on one of the buffets that was potatoes topped with peanut butter and Parmesan cheese.

(beep beep beep)

So all this sort of stuff can be funny and you think, oh it’s ok, you just learn what you like instead and you adjust but it really takes a while, especially if you have favorite recipes that you are used to cooking and you can’t get those ingredients that you’re used to using anymore.

Like, they don’t sell Cool Whip here. They don’t sell anything like Cool Whip here. They sell a ton of different creams and types of creams, but nothing that is identical to Cool Whip. So, if I ever want to serve Paula Deen’s Banana Pudding, which of course, I do, I have to use a replacement, and it took me a while to figure out what was the best. Oh, and for that recipe, they also don’t have Vanilla Wafers, so I had to figure out which of the Belgian cookies are a suitable replacement for Vanilla Wafers.

(sounds of grocery store)

Ah, the cookie aisle, the waffle aisle. Every store has its grand waffle and cookie aisle. It’s no joke.

(grocery store sounds end)

And in the summer time and it’s time for cookouts and S’mores, oh wait, they don’t have graham crackers, so how do I make a S’mores without a graham cracker? Well, actually, I found that Belgian speculoos cookies are a pretty suitable replacement.

(beep beep beep)

There aren’t things like Chex Mix or Goldfish. Yes, moms, let me repeat that, THERE ARE NO PEPPERIDGE FARM GOLDFISH. WHAT DO THE KIDS SNACK ON?!?! Waffles guys, they snack on waffles.

(beep beep beep)

I haven’t had a decent tortilla chip in 3 and a half years, aside from when we made trips home. The closest thing here is natural flavor Doritos. Yeah, that’s a thing. It’s basically traditional nacho flavored Doritos without the orange flavor powder all over them. That’s the best option for tortilla chips here.

For a long time, black beans were really hard for me to find.

A lot if it is just slowly learning where things are stocked, like for a while I was so confused about the beans situation and I couldn’t find black beans, I thought I was going to have to start buying dry beans, like, boxed dried beans, and do the whole like, soaking them and cooking them, you know, the old fashioned way, and I don’t do that, so it was kind of freaking me out, but then I finally found where they were.

There was only one store where I could find them, but I’m starting to be able to find them other places now. But that’s something I’ve also gotten used to. There’re four different grocery store chains where I shop, and each of them has some item that I can’t get anywhere else.

Oh yeah, there they are.

So, where I shop each day depends on what’s really on my list. And yes, I said each day, because European refrigerators are traditionally about half the size of American refrigerators, if not smaller, so I usually only have room for 2-3 days’ worth of food at a time.

(beep beep beep)

Maple Syrup? Nonexistent. Cheddar cheese? Available, but depressing. Green chilies for my mother-in-law’s amazing white chicken chili recipe? Gotta go to the American Food Store in Antwerp for those. That’s about an hour away.

For expats, international food stores are a lifesaver. And yes, I will drive 60 km to buy proper Maple Syrup, or green chilies, or enchilada sauce. Sometimes these things are that important.

(sounds of grocery store)

Okay, the International Foods aisle. Don’t even get me started on the lack of Mexican food here.

(grocery store sounds end)

Now of course, I understand that I can’t expect the same imported foods here that I got used to at home. I understand why it’s impossible to find good Mexican food in Europe, but God I miss it.

The flipside, of course, is there is, of course, a ton of new imports to try which we would never have access to in the States – French cheeses, Spanish goods, African goods, Asian goods – lots of new things to try and some things that I refuse to try.

(beep beep beep)

Belgian meat sections and butchers routinely have more available than in the States. For some reason it’s really hard to find turkey here, but super easy to find horse meat, and rabbit, and eel. No, thank you.

Fortunately, things are well labeled, and often they’re labeled with pictures, not just words.

(sounds of the store)

Seriously, thank God they put pictures of the food on some foods.

(sounds of store end)

One store I regularly shop in calls this section of the meat “andere vrienden” that’s “other friends.”

(beep beep beep)

There’s one item in the Carrefour meat section that’s always given me a lot of concern. It’s a package much like ground beef packages often are in the States. It’s a cylinder of what I assume is ground meat of some sort and it’s wrapped in plastic and sealed on both ends. But on the outside, it has a picture of a really cute Golden Retriever on it. So, I’ve always wondered, is this fresh meat for dog food, or is it fresh dog meat?

(beep beep beep)

You know what else really screws up a recipe and having to shop for a recipe? It’s the fact that all my recipes are in imperial measurements, and everything here is sold in metric measurements. Conversions are a pain in the (beep beep beep). Ugh, conversions.

(sounds of the store)

(talking to self) Two quarts which, according to Google, converts to 1893 ml, oh fuck these are in grams not milli…, oh no, there’s the millimeters. So, I need, oh God I need a lot.

(sounds of the store end)

Especially for recipes that call for three cans of cream of chicken soup, well, the can sizes aren’t the same. Cream cheese containers, sour cream containers, soup, canned veggies, none of them are the same sizes as the containers in the States.

(sounds of the store)

(talking to self) 425. Oh, now I have to do math. So, 425 goes into 1893.

(sounds of the store end)

So first I have to remember how many ounces are in each can in American cream of chicken soup, and then convert that to metric, and then divide by the size of the cans of the Belgian cream of chicken soup, because they’re not the same size.

(sounds of the store)

(talking to self) 850 and 850 is 1700, and then another 425.

(sounds of the store end)

Honestly, I’ve just gotten to the point where I usually wing it more than anything else.

(sounds of the store)

(talking to self) Oh, that’s well enough. That’s well over.

(sounds of the store end)

I don’t know why I bought 8 containers of sour cream honey. I must have done my conversions wrong!

(beep beep beep)

In addition to all the time I spend standing in the aisles on my phone, looking up measurement conversions, I spend just as much time using Google translate.

You’d think for the most part, you can pick things out in the store, just using your eyes, just based on what they look like. But you don’t realize how often you need to double check ingredients or just confirm that what you’re holding is what you think it is.

(sounds of the store)

Case in point, the frustrations, I need to translate what this type of meat is, and I can’t load the internet because there’s shitty internet in the store but you can get on their Wi-Fi but I’m having to take a moment out to get on the Wi-Fi, and I’m trying to stay out of peoples way. Feels like a constant battle.

(sounds of the store end)

I’ve spend to much time standing in aisles, staring at my phone, doing these conversions and translations, now, anytime I see someone in the store that looks even remotely non-Belgian, standing in an aisle, staring at their phone, maybe looking a little lost of flustered, I wonder, ooh, are they an expat too? Should I go talk to them? Should I go comfort them?

(beep beep beep)

Has grocery shopping ever brought you to tears?

Fairly early on in my time here, after spending over 3 hours in one store, crisscrossing back and forth countless times, trying to figure out where certain things were and trying to find everything on my American sized shopping list, I stood in the canned vegetable aisle and just started crying. I was physically and emotionally drained and I still hadn’t found the black beans or bread crumbs or the sugar yet. And I was just done.

(sounds of store)

I cried in this aisle once. I had been in the store for over 2 hours doing this, like, going into each aisle and having to do the translations and then do the conversions, and I had crisscrossed the store I think, like, I don’t even know how many times. I lost count. And I couldn’t find the black beans. I just stood in this canned vegetable aisle and cried. I felt so frustrated. It was like, over 2 hours. I’m like, grocery shopping should not take over 2 hours.

(sounds of store end)

In fact, tears have come to my eyes on a couple of occasions in the grocery store. One time, a Kacey Musgraves song came on overhead.

(sounds of store)

(humming)

This is an aisle where I started crying once because a Kacey Musgraves song came on the radio in the store, Dime Store Cowgirl, and I had had that song on a playlist of mine for a running race in North Carolina before we moved, and, it talks a little bit about how she’s still who she is from where she came from, and I had done this race through Durham and got really emotional right before we left about leaving and then, I actually put it on a playlist for a race here, too, right after we moved here, so, I don’t know, it was a song that I connected with a lot because its about someone who grows up and leaves home and misses it but loves the world that she sees but never loses that sense of herself, and I don’t know, I got really attached to it and then I was standing here in the store and it came on and yeah, it made me cry.

(sounds of store end)

(humming and singing)

‘Cause I’m just a dime store cowgirl

That’s all I’m ever gonna be

You can take me out of the country

But you can’t take the country out of me, no

‘Cause I’m still the girl from Golden

Had to get away so I could grow

And it don’t matter where I’m goin’

I’ll still call my hometown home

(beep beep beep)

(sounds of store)

So I’m pretty much done and I’m, like, girding myself to go up to the lines because these lines are always a freaking nightmare, queueing etiquette is different here, in that there’s no such thing as queueing etiquette, there’s never enough cashiers open, also I have a full cart and that’s giving me some angst because you have to bag yourself here, in the  bags that you bring, and they move fast, so you’ve got to be ready, you’ve gotta have you’re A-game because that line is waiting, it’s waiting on you to bag your shit, pay, and get out, I find it so (laughs) stressful to check out at the grocery stores here. All right. Here we go.

(sounds of cashier and cash register and bags being loaded into cart)

Okay, I am checked out and then I always have to step aside and repackage, because it’s chaos.

(sounds of cart, car trunk opening, bags being loaded, cart being returned, car door closing, car starting, cart token being dropped, seat belt buckled, car going into gear)

(humming same song that was hummed earlier)

Okay, we made it out, let’s go home!

I was raised in a family that appreciates food.

(theme music begins)

That is a nice way of saying that we love to eat. I learned, to my detriment really, that food provides comfort. And even if you have healthier eating habits than I do, with food being such an important aspect of culture, it provides a level of comfort for everybody. That’s why food, and access to food that is known and familiar is important to expats.

All of these grocery shopping experiences, I’ve laughed, I’ve cried, I’ve shared American food traditions with new friends. And by keeping my mind and my mouth open, I’ve learned to love and appreciate new foods and food traditions, too.

I’ve learned the value of soup on a cold and wet Belgian winter day. I’ve learned how much I love fresh nougat in France. I’ve learned I have my limits on stinky cheese. I’ve learned that a German soft pretzel dipped in cheese mixed with butter at a monastery on the top of a mountain is, in fact, heavenly. I’ve enjoyed the simplicity of delicious, hot, corn on the cob on the top of another mountain in Romania.

Basically, I’ve eaten a lot of good food over here, and some of the best has come from gas stations and roadside stands (um hello fresh mozzarella sold at a truck stop in Italy). Oh, and I’ve learned the magical power of a fresh hot Belgian waffle covered in Nutella.

Food nourishes us and comforts us, and also helps broaden our horizons.

Okay, so maybe all this talk about food has caused me to drift off topic a little bit. But as you can hear, some of the best food shopping experiences I’ve had in Europe haven’t even been in a grocery store. Which leads me to the subject of the next episode.

Next time, on the RB Abroad podcast, I’ll be talking to you about travel. I’ve been fortunate while living in Europe to be able to visit 15 countries and I want to share stories with you from those trips with ups, downs, and life lessons along the way. Thanks for coming along. Keep listening!

(music ends)

(grocery store sounds)

A man just bumped into my cart. I wasn’t moving out of his way fast enough.

(grocery store sounds end)

I am Rebecca Bramlett and you have been listening to the RB Abroad podcast, my series where I tell you about that time I up and moved abroad for three and half years. This podcast is 100% independently produced by me as my final, personal project for my postgraduate in digital storytelling from KASK School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium. Thank you for listening.

If you like what you hear, I appreciate your support through subscriptions, reviews, likes, comments, and shares on whatever platform you are using to listen, and/or on any of my social media channels. Until next time … tot ziens. Bye!

This episode contains music by Peach Pie, provided by Jamendo. Complete details about all the music and audio used in this episode can be found on this episode’s post on the RBAbroad.com website.

(sounds of store)

The beer aisle, you guys, the beer aisle is glorious.

(sounds of store end)