State of Emergency – Famila is da
Oct 22, 2005 ~ filed under: A-life & Delicious & English ~ 0 comments »Ok, some won’t know, but “Famila” is not German word for family, it is the name of a big supermarket (chain). (But for sure it will imply the word family with it). We have now one “Famila” in my town and the citizen of Eckernförde behave like we’ll have the 3rd World War in the next days. The parking lot was more than over full and I’m sure the new supermarket is big enough for all 23000 inhabitants of Eckernförde who were all at the same time at the big opening last Wednesday.
Ok, my father and I were there as well, but only because I wanted to behave like Germans do: Just try to get as many free products or give aways as possible 
Yeah!
Normally I don’t mind about such things, but yesterday…I wanted to know it! And we just finished lunch…good time to grab a coffee for free or let somebody give me a rose to say ‘Welcome to our new supermarket (we don’t have enough in this small town) and please feel free to try all our free catering”…Yes, definitely I will…I escorted my dad through the crowd.
Damn, what do you all think, that you won’t have something to eat the rest of your life? Don’t you have a home-sweet-home or a work?
[was middle of week, Wednesday as I said, during day time...ok, Germany has about five million of unemployed people, some of them are here probably].
To my dad’s astonishment – we steered towards the first espresso bar, where we got a very nice espresso with or without milk foam. Yummy, first goal = reached!
Next, only a few steps ahead, we came to the wine area.
Yummy No. 2!
Unfortunately they didn’t have Australian wine as free test wines =) but anyway…we tried a red Germany “Dornfelder”, a white “Burgunder” (burgundy) and talked to the would be wine-grower. I complained about the more than bad (small) range of Australian wines (haven’t seen one of them in Oz) and that even other smaller supermarkets in this town have it though. 
Yes, I am good in complaining *hhok*
Only five steps away, the stand from the famous “Niederegger Marzipan” [© J.G. Niederegger GmbH & Co. KG · 23560 Lübeck] tempt us to try their offer: marzipan cappuccino! Sounded strange to me, but was incredibly tasty!! The prize was not good though…four Euro for a package with 10 cup fillings. Hmm…my cup of cappu is so hot that I take it with me, that my dad and I can look around more in the big big supermaket for our next ‘attack’.
Oh, I forgot the special offer of “Alpia” chocolate [© Stollwerck GmbH, Stollwerckstraße 27 - 31, 51149 Köln (Porz-Westhofen)] at the beginning,
right after the espresso. The special deal was 20 bars of chocolate for 5 Euro…quick calculating…damn, that is 25 cents each! Gimme all!!! No, not really, but I took…like…ehm…12 or not more than 15.
Ok, we were already almost at the end of our “shopping tour”…in front of the check-outs were loooong lines (of course). We got at the end of one, for us shortest, line and I saw the woman in front of us having one of these very delicious 
[©Masterfoods, 41728 Viersen] little chocolate sweets in her hands. Where was that from? I haven’t seen this stand? My dad saw my nervousness in my face, I started to sweat but he released me from my slobby *lol* He said, just behind us was a guy giving free examples of this nice little chocolate thingy and we just went by…oh really?…*running back*…Yeah – I got two! Snickers and Twix. *glad cola*
In the end we had a match, a competition, with the older couple standing in front of us in the line. We decided to take the next line to the right of us and asked: who will be at the check-out first? Was funny..hehe. This couple were giggling about my dad and me because we calculated every step of every move in our and in their waiting line.
But finally we won (of course-haha) and the big surprise was: there was a second woman af the check-out who put all our bought things in a bag. WOW! Haven’t seen this (service) in Germany at all!
But, for all people who want to go shopping from now on only here at “Famila” – a big SORRY, because it was only for the day of the opening 
:( Why?
Famila, you were so close to get a new customer – me!
Yes, I saw this service in Australia the first time and you can get used to it so easily.
They do it there without any problems. They even have a friendly smile on their face when they do it!
But unfortunately Germany has to take more lessons about “how can I make the customer happy that he’ll come back by oneself”.
Bye Famila – and thanks for the gifts =)
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