Kamikaze Shopping

Shopping, the simplest and benign of activities. That droning sound of endless elevator music drives you insane.

Not here, not in Izmir. It's all about shopping completely blind...Kamikaze style! Myself, Sarah, and Darren all went to the the local Kipa store for things we needed. Kipa is the Walmart of this area. They sell everything. We needed laundry detergent, face wash, milk, alarm clocks, snacks and other goods. It was strange to say the least. When we started things were ok. The prices were clear and we had fun looking at all the funny things they sell. The first difference I noticed was that there was a lot of employees. They would fill up a space immediately when you took something off the shelf. The other thing I noticed was that they were all attractive young women doing the job. If you needed help finding an item, they were there to serve you. Now that's service! Since I knew where nothing in the store was, I must ask the girl. The other counselor we were with got some shampoo and the bottle had a woman's picture on it (i.e. girls shampoo), however, he was a he. So the young attractive Turkish girl offered him a picture of a man to stick on the shampoo so he wouldn't be humiliated or caught buying a feminine product as a man. We looked all around the store and it was fun. Sarah got her European sweets, and I got some milk that is not refrigerated. We found some very good juice and snack chips. The chips are different in flavor here. They have more different spices, but good. the milk tastes different, but ok. I got some sweets for myself, such as nestle crunch bars and some hazelnut bars. We were shopping for laundry detergent, but it appeared that it may be dishwashing liquid. After some time, we found the laundry detergent in another place, after almost buying some dishwashıng soap for our clothes. The fabric softeners smelled strange. The perfumes used were not good smelling to us. They sold lots of bulk nuts and spices. We finally checked out. I could not get some soy sauce I wanted because the UPC symbol did not scan, so the Turkish girl looked at me and said, "No." So that's it, no soy sauce for me. I tried to get it but the language barrier prevented this. We took a taxi home for 5 yeni Turkish lira. The taxi ride is great fun and a risk to your life. Get in, shut up, hold on!