Shopping

Today I headed out to Metro. The sign alone might give you the impression that you are heading toward the city's metro (train) station. But, Metro is actually a large store very similar to Sam's Club. It's the best place in town to buy everyday items in bulk (paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc.). 

 If you don't already know, Islam forbids it's followers to eat pork as it's considered an unclean meat. And since 99.9% of Turks claim to be Muslim on their identity cards there's not a lot of pork being sold or eaten here. Every so often, however, we'll come across a package of bacon or ham, as was the case today. Upon closer inspection though, I realized this bacon was a fraud. It's "Dana Bacon" which means it comes from a cow. Do you see the price tag at the bottom of the picture? It says 61.99 lira. That's $38.71. Only a sucker would spend that much on real bacon...not to mention fraudulent bacon.   

 Here's another import item. A package of grated parmesan cheese...for 42.99 lira ($26.84).

 This might be one of the biggest differences you'll find in a Turkish supermarket. This is a partial shot of the yogurt aisle. The PLAIN yogurt aisle.

 And these, my friends, are the 18kg buckets. That's 39.6lbs of plain yogurt.

I went into the butcher's area looking for a corned beef (because how can you celebrate St. Patty's day without corned beef and cabbage?!?). I didn't find a corned beef. I did, however, find several sheared-eyeballs in tact-packaged sheep's heads!! I wanted to snap a photo but the butcher was standing next to me and I didn't want to creep him out.


The only thing to top the sheep's heads "excitement factor" today was seeing men working on the blue building across the street. This blue building will soon sport gold accents and the beautiful name, IKEA! That's right, IKEA is going in about 5 miles from our apartment. I'm afraid Zach and I will never go on a real date again. Instead we'll put our children in the play area (free), stroll through the housing displays (free), and dine on $1 Swedish meatballs and chicken wings. I'm not sure if that's sad, or exciting.