Dia

For those of you who read my last entry, I wanted to let you know I’m feeling much better. I have sorted things out to a more satisfactory level at my workplace. Basically I decided to only teach the English class and end my time in their office. I plan on working more at Trisha’s organization as they have a better environment and I feel much more welcomed there. Thanks Tyler and Irene for you supportive comments.

New topic: Dia. There’s this market in Madrid that Trisha and I both love and loathe called Dia. Actually it’s called “Maxi Dia” and it’s a chain all around Spain. Dia initially was as godsend to us as our first experience going shopping for groceries in Madrid was at the Corte Ingles. The Corte Ingles is a giant department store also located throughout Spain that is essentially a Macy’s, Target, and fancy Euro supermarket thrown into one. Its got great stuff, but it’s on the pricey side. Since we are adhering to a budget in order to extend the length of our year, cooking often with less expensive groceries has been our goal. So lucky for us we ran into Dia around our third day here.

We begin our experience at Dia by stepping through the sliding doors and riding up an escalator that appears to be left over from the Franco years. Even though meats, cold items, and the check-out are located on the ground floor, you aren’t allowed to go directly there. You must ride the escalator to the second floor. I tried once to go directly to the meats a few days ago, and got busted by the security guard and was sent to the escalator.
Once we get to the top of the escalator it’s grocery cart selection. There are two to choose from: the red basket with the plastic rear wheels that you have to bend down to roll, and the hobbit-size metal cart that only fits a few more items than the red basket. I always opt for the red basket because it’s still rather novel for me.

After one begins to get the hang of maneuvering the cart, selecting fruits and vegetables is the second major decision. The store is maze-like so the only choice at this point is produce. It is of course impossible to bypass to another section. We initially spent much time in the fruits and vegetable section stocking up on the reasonably priced items. Later we found better produce at the fruiterias located throughout the city, which sell fruit, freshly baked bread, and other essential items. The quality of Dia’s produce doesn’t really compare to the fruiterias or the local farmers markets.

Upon bypassing fruits and vegetables, Trisha and I turn the corner and begin the dry good item selection. (I know at this point your probably saying, “What he heck are you writing about dry goods for? What happened to Spanish culture and art?” And yes, I am kind of bored myself with this section, but hang on because it might get more interesting.) The dry good are set up in fairly typical aisles, but it’s the challenge of sifting through foreign products and labels to find the equivalent of what your looking for that make it fun. Two of my favorites are the bag of individually wrapped chocolate chip bread bars which taste great warmed up, and the tomato sauce box that has plain old tomato sauce inside but I swear tastes better than all the Classico brands I’ve had at home.

Also, this is where you buy milk and eggs. Yes, I said milk and eggs. The eggs are not refrigerated in any market in Spain, and neither is the milk. The milk comes in cartons and just sits on the shelves at room temperature. We do buy both these products, and they taste fine, but the first thing we do upon returning to our apartment is shoving them in the refrigerator to cool down.

Finally when we finish the top floor, we are permitted to head to the meats, cold items, and check-out downstairs. The only rub is there is no down escalator. The only options are taking an elevator down that can only fit three people and two baskets, or lug your red basket down stairs. After finding the stairs on our fourth trip to Dia, we always opt of them and pitty the suckers stuck with the hobbit-size shopping carts who can only wait and take the elevator.

The ground floor isn’t really that exciting. I can only think of three highlights. One, the fresh heads-on shrimp packs are good deal and really scrumptious cooked up. Two, there is a yogurt flavor you can buy called Macedonia (tastes like peach) and another called Galletas (cookies). Three, there are at least 10 different brands of sliced packaged ham on the shelves which taste great on a baguette.

The main thing about the ground floor, and true reason we have come to loathe the Dia, are the lines. The lines are terrible. They are so long and there is no express or “less than 10 items” lines at all. Over at the Corte Ingles, there are never lines, just endless open checkers waiting to take your Euros. At Dia there are like four checkouts and at least 8 to 12 people in each line. We thought that perhaps later in the evening the lines would be shorter, but at 8:30 they seem to be even worse. A few weeks ago we vowed to never go back to Dia because of the lines and instead would take our chances on fruiterias and local markets. That worked fairly well, but Dia has too many essentials. We found another Dia nearby and thought maybe this new one would be better and have shorter lines. It was tinier inside and had two medium size lines rather than four long ones. Trisha and I did all our shopping that time and got in line, only to realize that this Dia, unlike the other Dia, didn’t take any credit cards. So we took another fifteen minutes putting back all our selected items.

Now I suppose we have resolved ourselves to only going to Dia when worse comes to worse. We have the fruiterias, farmers markets, and Chinese supermarkets to keep us going until we have to succumb to another trip to Dia.