headache

I had a headache at the office a few days ago, so I went out to buy some Aspirin. Aspirin not aspirin, because unlike the US, the name is still trademarked here. I skipped the supermarket, because I knew supermarkets don't carry medication. I went instead to DM, a CVS type drugstore, whose initials actually stand for Drogerei markt, lit. drug seller market. After spending some fruitless ten minutes combing the store, looking through vitamins, health and beauty crap, toothpaste, deodorants, I realized that in this drugstore there was not so much a single gram of actual drugs. I walked across the street to the Apothek (pharmacy) and had to request aspirin from the man behind the counter.

Normally it's not so simple. Usually when you go in this is what happens.

You: I want to buy some aspirin
Clerk: What is bothering you?
You: I have a headache.
Clerk: What kind of a headache? Where does it hurt?
You: It's a normal headache, it hurts in my head. Can I have some Aspirin please?
Clerk: We have many different types of pain killers. Let me show them all to you and describe them in detail what is different about each one.
You: No thanks, I just want a box of Aspirin.
Clerk: what kind of Aspirin?
You: The regular kind. There! That box behind you that says 'Asprin'! Give me that one!

And so on. It's a big contrast to the US, where you can buy aspirin at any gas station, or Mexico, where you can buy it from a street vendor. I'm of two minds. On the one hand, it's personally inconvenient and irritating that I can't get it from a supermarket if I'm already shopping there.

On the other hand, the push for convenience and jamming everything together into the strip malls, Wal-Marts, Targets, shopping malls, drug/junk stores which makes many American cities such dreary experiences. What still exists in Germany is smaller specialty stores woven into the fabric of the city. I can walk to a green grocer, a bakery, a flower shop, a pharmacy, instead of driving through endless suburbia to endless parking lots and big box stores. I definitely pay more in price (consolidation and franchises decreases costs) but it's a trade-off on the experience of the city.