Shopping in Czechia

Today: A post about getting your rations in Czechia spiced up with a little price comparison to Germany. I'm surprised myself that it's possilbe to write about this topic.

As a cycling traveller, shopping is not as much of an easy matter as you might think. After all you're carrying quite a lot of baggage and you can't just lock it all up or take everything into the shop. So if there's no company you have no choice but to just leave most of your stuff outside, hoping everything's still there when you're back. Maybe leaving the bicycle in a location you can easily view from the inside. And don't forget to wrap a rain protection around the handlebar bag if the sky suspiciously looks like rain... unless you have one of those completely waterproof bags. I don't.
What else: Bulk buying isn't a thing, space is limited after all. And of course all goods have to be transportable without issues: If a juice carton gets squeezed too much in one of your bags, the outcome might be not so great...

Well then, in Czechia you're paying with this (mouseover or tapping to flip sides):



The Czech koruna (Kč). A few years ago there were some small heller coins as well, the equivalent to our cents (100 heller = 1 koruna). By now they got abolished though, so the smallest piece of currency is a full koruna. Interesting enough, prices in the shops still got decimal places. After adding up all prices they're just rounding the sum at the checkstand. About the prices themselves: Compared to Germany quite a few things are considerably cheaper. That's why many Germans living close to the border like to go shopping or fueling over here. A scoop of ice cream costs 50 ct (converted) instead of €1, meals in the restaurant are about €2 to €3 cheaper as well. Another prime example are the Czech bread roll sorts Rohlíc und Houska: Each is Kč1,5, which is just 5 cent. Okay, the price for a single one would be rounded up, but if you buy more it works out.

Houska on the left, Rohlíc on the right

To get a better overview, I collected some of the prices for several foodstuffs and converted them to €, in order to compare them to the German ones. They're mostly from the same supermarket chain, so that the comparison at least makes kind of sense. My selection isn't exactly large and varied, I just went with whatever cought my eye. Normally I noted the cheapest product if there were several of the same kind. All in all very unscientific, but doesn't matter.

The exchange rate at the moment: Kč 1 = € 0,03591 € 1 = Kč 27,8119
Also: € 1 = $ 1,32 = £ 0,8

	Price in Kč	Price CZ (€)	Price Ger(€)
Whole-grain bread roll	4,50	0,16	0,45
Nutella (450g)	79,90	2,87	2,49
Alternate nougat cream (400g)	34,90	1,25	1,15
Vanilla popsicle covered in chocolate	13,90	0,49	0,49
Fruit yoghurt (250g)	18,90	0,68	0,29
Bananas (1kg)	26,90	0,97	1,15
Apples (1kg)	19,90	0,71	1,69
Oranges (1,5kg)	49,90	1,79	1,49
Lemons 500g	37,90	1,36	1,79
Chicken breast fillet (1kg)	185,00	6,64	5,99
Chicken drumstick (1kg)	88,41	3,17	2,79
Milk 1,5% fat (1l)	17,90	0,64	0,65
Milk 3,5% fat (1l)	18,90	0,68	0,69
Apple juice (1l)	14,90	0,54	0,75
Orange juice (1l)	18,90	0,68	0,89
Flavored Water (1,5l)	12,90	0,46	0,49
Shandy (0,5l)	5,90	0,21	0,39
Most expensive beer (0,5l)	22,90	0,82	0,79

As you can see, not everything's cheaper after all. The nougat creams for example are more expensive, maybe because they're getting imported from Germany? (Chicken) meat costs more as well, and I'm barely seeing any keeping of farm animals around here... But there's alle the more cornfields, so bread buns are ridiculously. The apple price is varying a lot even in one and the same shop; when I collected the Czech prices, they just had some very cheap local apples. The expensive yoghurt is the only one I saw in a different supermarket chain, so maybe that's a reason for the difference as well.
Of course those prices don't represent the whole country and sometimes there are notable differences between the supermarket chains after all.

Speaking of supermarket chains: For a German there are many familiar ones. Most well-known discounters like Lidl, Aldi and Penny Market are around as well, looking the same from the outside and inside. Only the Swiss company Coop was new to me.
But another thing that catches the eye are the lots of small, private shops or mini markets around every corner. You can get pretty much everything you need in daily life there as well: Beverages, fruits, instant meals, sweets, detergents... In villages they're small huts, in cities you find them downstairs in the townhouses. You usually have to look longer for a shop in Germany, normally for the closest branch of one of the large chains. The owners are mostly Vietnamese, some are so diligent they're working even on Sundays. Great for a traveller.

Less great is my knowledge of Czech language. Well, I can barely say hello and good bye, so I have no way of knowing what the heck is written on all the items I'm buying. And that can get pretty troublesome. What, you say it's easy to see what you're buying? Yeah, most of the time, but not always.
After seeing a lot of bones I wanted to do something for my own and drink a liter of fresh milk. So I bought a bottle of what had the words "acidofilní mléko" written on it and happily took a sip... well, let's just say it wasn't exactly a great experience. The reason: Acidofilní means acidified, so I just bought some horribly sour, yucky §$%& that probably is intended just as an addition to coffee and the likes. Bah. But always remember:

So I'm bravely taking another sip... and another one...
Whatever the case, here' my first little purchase. With Czech writing and stuff.

FUCK YOU, milk.

By the way, I intentionally went for that amount in order to get a 20 Kč coin as change. That one was missing above. Now here it is.

Well then, in order to bring this incoherent mess of a post to a close, have some Czech ska. Isn't related to the topic at all (at least I think so) but... enjoy!