First Weekly Wait, What?! Wednesday

My initial concept for Wait, What?! Wednesdays involved taking down notes throughout the week...things that surprised me, things that weirded me out...mostly just the usual unfamiliar stuff that comes with living in a foreign country.  Sort of a nod to Seth and Amy's SNL Really!?! segments.

I started a list over the weekend...it looked like this...

Wait, what?!
- you have 6 treadmills but only 2 are plugged in?
- you can show full-fledged porn on basic cable, as long as it's after 11pm?
- NONE of your eggs are refrigerated...that is either a really good thing or a really bad thing
- ice water with dinner is more expensive than a Coke?
- Keds qualify as running shoes?  I didn't even know they still made Keds...

- washing your hands after using the restroom in public is optional?  Ok, your lead!  I've been secretly doing this at home for years...thanks for taking the pressure off.

Sure, a list like this gives a decent insight into what living outside of the States might be like.  Sure, some of the items on said list might be interesting to a few.  But what I discovered was that if I went into the week looking for things that were "random" and new to me, with the sole intention of making a joke out of them, I'd surely be missing out on everything that is new, foreign...and shoot, down right wonderful.

So instead of solely putting a negative, laughable tone on things that are weird to me as a non-Polish citizen residing in Poland, I'm going to try to highlight the shockingly GREAT things living here has to offer me. And on top of that, I'm going to Wait, what?! some not so fabulous things that I read about occurring back in the grand US of A.

How 'bout THAT for being unbiased?!  So here goes...

Wait, what?!
- your market has 2 FULL isles of nothing but juice?!  No joke, there must be at least 97 different kinds of juice available...orange, apple, cranberry juice got nothin on their strawberry, blueberry, banana, acai, pear and sweet carrot juice.  Amazing!

This stretches for just over 5 kilometers

- people only use the fast lane for passing and then immediately get back over to the right?
- boots (and cute boots, at that!) for $25?!  I must have died and gone to boot heaven.
- almost every single shopper brings their own reusable bags to the market?  So great!
- Smart Cars outnumber SUVS on the road?!  By the way, we're now officially Smart Car people - and loving it!

And, as promised, a couple Wait, what?!s from back home...

Wait, what?!
- firefighters watched yet another house burn to the ground in Tennessee, over a mere $75 delinquent fee?  See How COULD you, Tennessee???
- states are actually fighting over which looks more like a mitten?!  See First World Problems.