El Corte Ingles

Imagine if Wal-Mart and Macy's had a baby and the baby was 10 times the size of both of them combined and on every other street corner. This is starting to not make sense but long story short, I'm talking about Corte Ingles.

So the story begins with Morgan, Jordan, and I deciding to venture for our first time into Corte Ingles to get straighteners, hairdryers, etc (none from the US work over here) a few days ago. We walked in and stared at a sign for about 10 minutes (while narrowly avoiding being trampled by the constant Black Friday-esque crowds continuously going in and out) until we figured out where hair supplies were and ventured over to that section.

The first thing that we noticed was very different than Wal-Mart, Corte Ingles doesn't put prices on anything. You have to individually take each product over to a bar code scanner that will then tell you how much it is. So I finally settle on a decently priced hair dryer and straightener (it was stil ~70 euro for both) and then am going to get shampoo/conditioner etc from the other section when one of the ladies who works there comes up to me, says something really fast in Catalan, and then takes the hair dryer and straightener out of my hands and walks away. I had no idea what was going on, so I followed her to a little cash register set up randomly by the hair supplies and she proceeds to put stickers on each of the products and place them under the cash register. I still had no idea what was going on and tried telling her in Spanish that I wanted to continue shopping, but she just kept. speaking. in. Catalan. a million words a minute.

Finally giving up, I decided to get the rest of the things I needed and go back to the cash register in hopes of her ringing everything up and letting me pay and take my stuff. I mean, you'd think this would be a relatively easy process, right? Wrong. After going through an entire section of "Veet" looking for just one pack of disposable razors (apparently they're crazy about Veet over here) and having absolutely zero luck, I just wanted to pay and get out of there. Not only did the workers not speak a word of English (expected), they didn't/wouldn't speak any Spanish either!

So I take the rest of my products over to the same random little cash register and try reminding her about the products under the register and telling her that I wanted to pay for everything. Instead, she puts everything in a bag, gives me a receipt (still without accepting my money), and starts walking away really quickly with my bag. By the time I find Jordan to ask if I should follow the woman, her and my bag are nowhere to be found. So now I know that a bag with EVERYTHING I want in it is floating somewhere in this gigantic store. When the lady returned, I asked her where I should pay and she just pointed the opposite way into the crazy jumble of people and unconventional shopping displays that is Corte Ingles and says something about "2 floors below" (we're on the first floor).

Set on finding my bags (Morgan and Jordan both were able to pay right at the cash register and got their bags given to them right away), we took the escalator down as far as we could go...only one floor down. Confused, we decided to walk around and see if there was another escalator somewhere. When we all of a sudden started seeing random dogs, we figured we must be both hallucinating and nowhere near where we needed to be, so we walked back up to the hair section and tried asking someone else where I could pay for everything and find my bag. In the proceeding 2 minutes or so of rapid Catalan, we managed to pick up one word...elevator. After about ten minutes of walking around and asking anyone and everyone, we finally found an elevator (not exactly what you would consider centrally located...or efficient for that matter) and got on and pressed -2, the mysterious floor 2 floors down that somehow and for some reason now had all my bags.

We got off the elevator and went into the biggest room we saw and followed procedure by taking a number. We still had no idea what was going on and no one was speaking anything but Catalan. Morgan asked the woman waiting next to her if she spoke any English, and the woman managed to explain to us that if you show them your passport, upon returning to your home country and going back through customs, you get refunded all the tax money you paid. I don't know if I was looking extra foreign that day or why my stuff got sent down there while they could pay for theirs, but I didn't even have my passport on me, I just wanted to pay.

After waiting for about 30 minutes, they finally called my number and I explained that I didn't have my passport, didn't care about paying taxes, and just wanted to pay for my things. The woman kind of laughed at me and finally let me pay for all my stuff. She then was gone for about 20 seconds and somehow magically returned with my bags! Feeling completely overwhelmed, Morgan and I got out of there as fast as we could and took the metro home to take naps haha. Needless to say, I think I just experienced my first "culture shock" moment.