Many of you (nobody) asked how moving from a 3.8 million inhabitants city to a less than 100,000 inhabitants city is treating me. In the last couple of months, I went through quite a lot of thoughts and emotions and arrived at some new opinions that surprised me. I won't be able to fit them all in one coherent post so here you go, in no particular order and in good-old blogging style. Welcome to part one of who knows how many instalments of IMHMAO.
Today: Local Retail.
I wasn't expecting this, like at all, but I seem to have demands for the quality and diversity of stores around me. Every time I tried to buy something in a store in Schwerin, I wasn't able to find what I was looking for. We're not talking about heavily exotic stuff here. Pants, for example, were nowhere to be found. None of them fit me, they were all far too big. I'm not weirdly shaped, on the contrary. It won't get more default than me. I ran out of stores to try before I found something I liked. That never happened before. Another time I tried to buy brushes: Nothing. Same for sketchbooks. Same for pretty baskets to store stuff in or colorful decoration. Nothing.
This might seem like a small matter but I like walking somewhere, browsing a limited but plentiful offering of wares and going back home with whatever I needed as the result. It makes me feel connected to where I am.
It doesn't help that online shopping became a pain in the ass at some point. There's just too much to choose from, everything, even Amazon, is full of scams and I hate the whole process. Choosing, ordering, waiting, tracking, receiving, returning. I don't need that noise.
So that's an insight: I would not have guessed that a heavily limited selection of stores would influence my mood this much but it does. The more you know!