is a little different than its American counterpart. We’re used to express lanes and in-and-out shopping. In some supermarkets now, you can theoretically do all your shopping without interacting with a single employee. Just swipe your ATM card at the self-check-out and off you go.

Not so in rural Poland.

Until recently, even the notion of a self-service shop was unknown. Shops were organized like the old general stores we see in westerns: a counter, with all the goods on one side behind the owner, with you on the other.

Such was the setup in Poland when I first arrived. I went to the store and instead of shopping, told the shopkeeper what I wanted, and she ran around behind the counter gathering my purchases. It was strange at first, but excellent for my early language acquisition.

There are more and more self-service shops in Poland these days, and virtually all the shops in larger towns and cities are self-service.

But the old mentality lingers:

• Some older women have a habit of doing their shopping as they check-out, so they bring a few items, then continually run through the store, getting this and that, while I stand, all my items in the basket, waiting.
• Some much older women ask the cashier to run around the shop doing their shopping for them. Old habits, I guess.

Despite its inconvenience, I miss the old shops. You had to interact while you were shopping, and as a foreigner, the more the better.