German's are Geniuses...when it comes to shopping carts!

One of the most annoying things when going grocery shopping is seeing all the carts left all over the place. Sometimes you even have to bypass a spot or get out and move a cart because some lazy person left it right in the middle.

Here, they have a great system that keeps the parking lot nice and organized. When you pick up your cart you have to enter a 1 Euro coin. That releases it from the line of carts. You go about your shopping, and when you've finished with the cart, you return it to the same place. Once you connect to the other shopping carts you get your coin back. Also, they place where they keep the carts outside is covered so they don't have to bring the carts inside or worry about them getting wet.

The only downside I can see to this is that we don't really have a good unit of currency that will be compelling enough. I know there are 50 cent and dollar coins but most people don't have those lying around. Usually the biggest amount of change people have is a quarter. Some people might not care enough about 25 cents to take the extra time to put the cart away. But, then the people who usually have cart duty can still do it and keep the change or give it to the store. Daniel just mentioned another downside, this system would eliminate jobs.

Tonight we went shopping for stuff for me to do some Christmas baking. We found most everything but the sour cream here is weird, at least the only kind we could find. It had chives and stuff like that already mixed in. It would be perfect for a baked potato but won't work for baking. Daniel kept trying to tell me I could just pick it out, but there's no way that would have worked. Basically they were flavored sour creams. Tomorrow I'm going to go to the other grocery store close by us and see if they have regular sour cream. If not, hopefully I can find some baking powder. I have baking soda but all the recipes I can find that don't have sour cream call for baking powder instead of baking soda.

I hope everyone is really excited about Christmas! Only 3 more days!!!

Merry Christmas!