The man who runs the corner shop next to my apartment building has a very strange approach to business, whereby he literally just changes the price of all of his goods every day.
I will go in and buy a chocolate bar and ask how much it is and he will ponder it for about five seconds and then just say a random number. A real conversation, as follows:
(All conducted in Turkish)
Me holding Kinder Bueno: How much?
Man: Hmmm…Five Lira.
Me: Right. Sure. Five lira? But it was three yesterday.
Man: What? No. That was something different.
Me: No… It was this chocolate bar. From right in front of you. It was 24 hours ago. The exact same one.
Man: No… I don’t remember that.
Me: I come here every day 🙁
The curious thing is that sometimes things actually cost less than the previous day. This shows a very poor set of negotiating skills, or maybe he is genuinely an amnesiac, in which case he probably shouldn’t be in charge of the shop. Either way, the pricing of goods in Turkey continues to confuse me.
Attempting to make a soup, I first indulged in the Carrefour supply of vegetables. 4 carrots, 3 potatoes, 2 zucchinis and an aubergine cost me 12 lira. Across the road, at the local Ortaköy grocery store, I chose the same items. “Uc bucuk”, said the vendor without so much of a blink. Under a dollar for all of that? I’ll be making soup more in future, that’s for sure.
Disclaimer: There were spices in the soup and it tasted better than that random assortment of vegetables.
