A few months ago, when I was very concerned about the exchange rate and having enough money to not only eat, but also to travel and take advantage of living in one of the most historically rich cities in the world, I came up with "The Total Experiment."
My theory was, seeing that the cereal Total has pretty much everything you need, eating that for every meal with perhaps a glass of Emergen-C would keep me nutritionally balanced and not put a strain on my wallet. Now, before you can shout at me for being crazy or brilliant, I must confess that this experiment never saw the light of day.
I was about to give it a shot, but within seconds of entering Tesco's cereal aisle, I realized this was an entirely new ballgame. I was not greeted by the familiar faces of Toucan Sam, Count Chocula or that weird CGI Frosted Mini Wheat. Instead, a force of foreign names, logos and box designs confronted me. Even Tony the Tiger had gone Benedict Arnold and was now pushing "Frosties." What kind of world had I entered?
That moment was my startling introduction into a rarely discussed but significant piece in the culture shock puzzle: name brands.
They're something that you just take for granted on our side of the pond. You know which brands are worth the extra cash, which ones are a real bargain and which ones to avoid no matter what kind of sale is going on.
Sure, navigating a supermarket without Mr. Clean or Mrs. Butterworth to guide you may not seem like a daunting task, but once you throw in the fact that many things in Britain have slightly strange names (oh, so sultanas are raisins!) and you're already fighting to resist converting the prices to dollars, you'd be surprised at how much you wish you could see the Kool-Aid guy staring at you.
And the confusion doesn't stop there! Step outside any Tesco or Sainbury's or Marks and Spencer (see what I mean?) and new mysteries appear on every corner! Back at Tufts, I took the Dunkin' Donuts-Starbucks relationship for granted. Dunkin' Donuts had better plain coffee and was far cheaper, but if I wanted something special or to chill out for a while, I went to Starbucks.
Now, while they still have Starbucks here, there's no Dunks. Instead, there are these strange entities called Caffé Nero and Costa Coffee. I spent one of my first days in London going into all of them to figure out which was the blue-collar one and which one to go to for a good black coffee. The unfortunate answer was: None of them.
And to make things even more strange, the chain stores here have an even higher frequency than at home. You think the Starbucks trend in the States is bad? A London street is similar to the background in a Tom and Jerry cartoon: the same thing over and over again: Boots, Pret ? Manger, Tesco, Sainsbury's, Caffé Nero, Starbucks. Repeat.
And yes, you read that right. Rival grocery stores and coffee shops are right next to each other. Sometimes capitalism confuses me.
As time goes on, I'm getting used to the change. I've learned to start my mornings off with Weetabix, get my household goods for cheap at Argos and to live without French's mustard.
But nothing will fill me with more patriotic pride than when I come home over Christmas break and can triumphantly run through the aisles of my local supermarket, greeted by my friends: the Trix Rabbit and the Keebler Elves.
Devin Toohey is a junior majoring in classics and studying abroad in London. He can be reached at Devin.Toohey@tufts.edu
