The Death of Fresh

I've been here a fucking long time, over seven years now. It doesn't often seem like so long, however, for a number of reasons -- things changes completely every couple of years, from my friends and colleagues to the shops and buildings and even the bars we go to.

Five years ago there were no supermarkets at all, or at least not any big or modern ones. You had to buy your produce and meat from the old women at the outdoor markets, which was great -- they were always pleasant and the fruit and vegetables and eggs were unbelievable fresh and tasty and flavorful.

You generally bought canned, packaged and bottled stuff -- of which there was a very small selection, canned tuna only appeared in about 2003 -- from the 24-hour produktis, which were cramped little shops staffed by haggard and bad-tempered middle-age women. Everything was seperated from you by a counter, so you had to ask for what you wanted, and they usually ended up yelling at me for not speaking clearly -- nobody every though I was American, just some moronic Estonian or something.

Now there are 4 huge ultra-modern 24-hour hypermarkets within a few minutes' walk of my apartment -- they are pretty much identical to their American counterparts, although of course a lot of the food is labelled in Russian. And they sell books and magazines and DVDs and toys and electronics and all that crap, too.

The vegetables you buy at the hypermarkets all taste like the plastic they are wrapped in, and never seem to rot -- I've had part of a head of lettuce in my refrigerator for at least a month and a half, and it's not even brown.

But, fuck it, the hypermarkets are just so damn convenient. I do most of my shopping there.

Let that be the epitaph for humanity: IT WAS JUST SO DAMN CONVENIENT.