The Polish Sausage House

The adventure of a new city, where walking to the corner store can yield the results of a child like perspective, are bittersweet events.

 New colors and packaging, names and logos of all sorts for what would usually be mundane products, now come to life in a sparkling new glory. And all at once your bombarded with sensory overload, looking like a loon trying to understand local colloquialisms like kitchen porter which is just a fancy name for a dishpig.

An example being last week as I stood in awe at the 14p can of beans whilst in Tesco.

This was a can of beans with a logo that had more than 2 colors on it, one of which did not entirely cover the can with its sickly blue. The can wasn't even dented! I was confused, giddy, even paranoid that someone else might see these very beans and take my joy away. I advanced on them, looked to right and left as quickly as I could and in one fell swoop like a majestic foreigner, grabbed the can.

I was- victorious.

Mind you there are times when my nonsensical interaction with cleaning product and canned food are interrupted by humans, this begets a new set of rules and requires thinking on ones toes.

Case in point, the Polish sausage house.

Yesterday I went to a lovely little Polish shop I pass from time to time. I thought to myself, tonight would be a good night to leave Edinburgh vicariously through a keilbasa. I would close my eyes and imagine I was elsewhere while I polished off the peppered Polish pork with a pleasant performance of palette pneumatics.

I entered the store front and was greated by inanimate joys from left to right, shit I couldn't pronounce, shit that was dead and shit that was cheap. I was loving it.

I wondered around, observing and touching everything but the open aired bread, that would just be fucked up. I just imagine chlamyidia fingers back at the mall, 'waz iz dis ai see 'ere, is dis braid. is all funnay looki'n. Jeezus turned into braid, did yu know that?'. So I do the next person a favour and opt out of turning the showcase bread into a touch museum. I'll keep my bacterium to myself until I shake your hand, you do the same.

As these and other thoughts concerning alternative uses for topical creams rushed me like a river I came to the back of the shop, and while bringing my head up to help guide my direction into the next aisle, I made an uncertain amount of eye contact with an individual standing at the back door. I say uncertain because I did not know if the interim was less or more than what was needed for me to 'politely' turn away.  I felt locked, wonderfully awkward.

She was shocked, bothered that I had stumbled across her hidden keilbasa stash or something to the equivalent. She actually gave me a dirty look, this fucked me up. Still locked in gaze, I was officially unsure of the next move, now more concerned with frightening the mare that stood 7 feet away, for fear she might charge. The Polish are resilient folk you know.

Between mountain lions and a mob of Polish kurwa, I would choose the mountain lion.

So there I stood, feeling like I'd caught her stroking her own kielbasa when we decide to break the ice simultaneously. Me with a kurt, 'hello', and she by rushing passed me without so much as a kurt hello! I felt cheated, like I deserved an explanation. Why did I feel awkward here? I'm the customer, the foreign kind that asks how to pronounce everything in your language, thinking I'm being worldly and polite when truly your thinking, 'fucking stupid american', despite the fact that you know I'm Canadian. We all sound alike.

I still bought her sausage with some bread and cheese, it was fantastic. But that moment we shared, that will haunt me forever.