You can tell a lot about a country from its stores. American stores, by and large, are enormous. The Big Box stores rule, in short. The aisles are wide. The shelves have some space at the top — things are not packed into every possible corner.

Stores here are small. Every inch of space is put to use. The aisles are narrow. But that’s only the surface differences.

Look closer and you’ll learn a lot about the culture itself. What does an almost-entire row of various kinds of preserved, canned fish tell you about a culture?

When a village of only about five thousand stretched along three roads has multiple bakeries, and some shops sell almost 20 types of bread, you get the feeling that bread is of utmost importance.

When an entire corner of a store is dedicated to different types of juice, one realizes that everyone, young and old, must drink juice in that country.

But the biggest change since I first arrived in 1996 is the style of the stores: virtually none of the stores were self-service. The salesperson stood behind a counter and all the products were on shelves behind her. It was like the old fashioned general stores of the American past.

Initially that was frustrating; eventually, I learned that it was one of the best things that could happen to my budding Polish language skills.

The only thing that’s really changed since we left Poland in 2004 is the variety.