Off To The Store

This today to my friend: "We're tired of not going to the Picasso Museum.  We're not going to the Modern Art Museum again today."

Yesterday my friend said this to me: "Your experience with the apartment was more of an authentic Spanish experience than any stinking museum you're not going to visit.  Congratulations!  You're one of us now."

On our first day we bought some shampoo and conditioner at a grocery store.  Spain is very particular about where you can buy things of a hygienic or medical nature, and it's very particular about what items you can buy.  There aren't 300 brands of mouth wash in 219 sizes sold in 1,980 stores.  I think I can buy deodorant but I don't think I can buy aspirin unless I go to a pharmacy - marked with little green crosses - and try to explain to a white-coat clad pharmacist - very reassuring, that white-coat - what I need.  Almost everything is behind the counter so you can't just go in and snatch up whatever you want.  I could get anti-PMS medicine instead of aspirin.  I might have to put up with any headaches I get - my feminine side is a little too developed as it is.  God help me if the dude gives me anti-seizure medicine or Oxycontin or more Ex-Lax ("Ex-Lax?  Que es Ex-Lax?") or something like that.

Anyway, the shampoo was great.  On the bottle, in Castelan, it said: "Champu."  I don't speak Castelan but I managed to figure it out.  Unfortunately, on the conditioner bottle it also said: "Champu."  It was the same brand and same color bottle as the conditioner I buy at home but it clearly did not contain conditioner.  I saw the familiar shape and made my buying decision  based on that.  When my Castelan conditioner foamed excessively I knew  I was on shaky ground.  I figured it out.

I also needed lotion.  I stumbled around a different store - it appeared to be more of a cosmetics store than a pharmacy if the lack of white-coat clad employees was any indication - and selected a brand that I knew.  The store owner came over, turned me around, and pointed out a huge bottle at a much better price.  Ah, wonderful, thank you.  When I tried to pay I pantomimed what I thought was the motion of putting lotion on my body, which was a pretty weird thing to do to a female clerk in a public place.  I'm lucky I didn't get slapped.

The clerk said something along the lines of: "You idiot - that's body soap," and fired off a long string of gibberish at the owner, who then selected a very small bottle of the what-I assumed-was-lotion.  I pantomimed what I thought was "Help, please let me buy whatever the fuck I have in my hand and get out of here."

It was excellent lotion.  Either that or I'm lathering up with soap after I dry off from my shower.