Monday, February 20, 2006

The infamous plastic bags

One thing that cracks me up about living in this crazy place is the use of plastic bags for everything under the sun! Their packaging skills are a little limited. For example, go buy a kilo of butter, they slap it into a plastic bag and off you go. A dozen eggs (wait actually 10 eggs because 12 is just a weird number to use!), they go into a plastic bag and it's your responsibility to not let the knock together on the trek home. Herbs, plastic bag. Ground meat, plastic bag. Olives, plastic bag. Now, the quality of these bags is not very high so they also make for wind catchers when people "dispose" of them and they flutter into the wind and land on the nearest tree branch. The slightly higher quality ones also double for a shoulder bag or backpack when you have numerous things to carry from one location to another. I am assured that in heaven there will be no asking "Paper or plastic"!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Um hum...crazy. When I was in Albania the first time in 1996 plastic bags were very new here in Albania. They just didn't have any such thing during Communism. Then, you had to buy them on the road from little boys, or people at the pazar (outdoor shopping area). One of my favorite memories from that time is one gentleman inside the pazar that was a bit more getting the whole market economy, competition thing. He had a sign by his vegetable stand that read, "The bags are FREE, like in America!!!

Anonymous said...

Just to clarify to anyone other than Laura who reads this. In my above comment, when I said, "Then you had to buy them...." I didn't mean then, as in during Communism, but then as in when I was there in 1996 several years after the fall of Communism. In case you were wondering :-)