Russia: St. Petersburg Self-Service (cont.)

The deli woman quickly wrapped my order in butcher paper and set it on the counter. When I took out my wallet to pay, she handed me a receipt. I thought she’d written down the price to make it easier for me. I held out my rubles, but she shook her head and pointed to the one person I’d completely overlooked.

The lone cashier was stationed in a raise pulpit, partially hidden behind thick wooden bars. It was what my guidebook innocently called a kassa, but her towering position and the fact that I couldn’t see her face pushed my anxiety into fear. She was Big Brother making sure I didn’t take off with the self-serve bread. I didn’t want to be yelled at for making a mistake or hauled off to the gulag under accusations of shoplifting bread, so I held the bag of rolls high over my head and shoved the deli receipt into the eye-level slot.

The cashier said something I didn’t understand, so I just shoved my bills into the slot. She handed me change and another receipt. I headed back to the deli, handed over the new receipt, and got the cheese and meat in return.

I was proud of myself. I’d just walked into a full-service grocery wielding but a single Russian word and gotten what I had came for. I felt good.  I could walk out, lunch in hand, successful! Then I saw the chocolates and drinks.

Flush from my little victory, I decided to round out my meager lunch. I walked over to the chocolate counter. The old man behind it pushed himself off the crate.

A cooler full of drinks stood behind him. At this distance, eta seemed like too broad an instruction; my finger wouldn’t be able to pinpoint which rack, let alone which bottle, I wanted. The sweetness of my last victory faded quickly, and I racked my brain for the word ‘cola’ or even the color orange.

Frustrated, I turned to the chocolate and picked out “Sankt Peterberg Chocolat.” It had a beautiful illustration of the city’s characteristic bridges, but, more importantly, I knew how to pronounce it and didn’t have to rely on eta.

The man placed the chocolate bar on the counter and looked at me expectantly.  My eyes scanned the cooler, hoping to remember any other word.

“Fanta,” I said at last.

The man shook his head and rattled off something, pointing to the woman at the deli. Did he not understand the brand name, was it pronounced differently here?

Embarrassed, I panicked.

“Eta.” I pointed to the cooler.

Now the woman at the deli started speaking to me. She pointed at herself and to some drinks behind her.

I didn’t want the drinks behind her. I wanted the orange soda behind the old man. The more they spoke and pointed, the more I wanted to leap over the counter, push the old man out of the way, and grab a soda—any soda. It would have been so much easier. I felt like a helpless, stupid tourist. I wanted to take my bread and cheese lunch and run out of the grocery.

The old man handed me the receipt for the chocolate and waved me over to the woman at the deli. She handed me a receipt, apparently for the soda. It seemed that, even though the old man was encased in the same pen as the beverage cooler, drink authorization fell outside of his jurisdiction.  With two new receipts in hand, I headed back to the formidable woman in her pulpit. After paying for and collecting the fruit of my labor, I emerged with a complete lunch, but was exhausted from my brush with the old soviet system.

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