Shopping experiences

You can tell a lot about a country by the shape and selection in the stores and shopping centres. Last week, I visited quite a few stores (looking for some furniture/paint/etc.) and had a few interesting experiences.

BAUHAUS (German store chain) looks like a complete knock-off of Home Depot, but it looked classier than Home Depot. The store I visited was HUGE! Everything you could buy in Canada (and more) was available here. Two thumbs up!

BAUMAXX is kind of like Canadian Tire and RONA mixed together. They have a good rug selection, but other than that, it's not worth shopping there.

PEVEC (Croatian store chain) was a really confusing store. I think that this store sells everything under the sun. You could find bedding, electronics, groceries, kitchenware, plumbing, tools, tires, building material, and GROCERIES!!! I had a headache after I was done walking through the store as it is HUGE.

SOLIDUM was another interesting shopping experience. This is a mall with about 70 furniture stores. I know, who needs 70 furniture stores in one space, but it did kind of make sense. Each furniture store focused on one thing (or two or three) like chairs, office furniture, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, etc. The styles that I saw here were amazing. Beautiful kitchens and bathrooms. European style really is something different.

There are so many grocery store chains in Croatia, that I find it overwhelming. Most of the grocery stores also sell almost everything else (kind of like a huge Loblaws or the Real Canadian Superstore). Grocery chains available here are Konzum, Mercator, Billa, Kaufland, Interspar, Ipercoop, Getro, Metro, Tommy, Diona, and a few more. A lot of these stores are from Italy and Austria, and expanded into Croatia as soon as Croatia opened to foreign capital. Selection in these stores is excellent (they have four-ply toilet paper scented that smells like a rose - try finding that in North America!). :-)

Shopping experience would not be complete without a trip to McDonalds, which we only make as we needed to use the washroom. Sneaky European McDonalds caught on that it is being used as a public restroom, so now all McDonalds in Croatia have a pin pad (you type in a pin number) to enter. The pin number is conveniently printed on your receipt which you ONLY get if you buy something. Oh well, I just waited for someone to walk in and then I followed them in. If that fails, I can always ask someone for the pin. The lesson here is, there is no point in having security if it is easy to circumvent it.