When we lived in Bolzano we got a machine to make sparkling water from tap water.  That broke, though, quite a while back, and we never got around to replacing it. So here in Tübingen, I periodically lug some bottled sparkling water back from the grocery store, and then take the empties back to get the deposit from the bottle return.

I’m not picky about the brand of sparkling water I buy, nor do I have a preference for the choice between Classic (which has a lot of bubbles) or Medium (fewer bubbles).

And yes, Classic and Medium are the terms used in German for how much sparkle the water has. At least that’s how the bottles are labelled.

BTW, while I’m already slightly digressing, it seems a good time to point out that if you order Mineralwasser, literally “mineral water” in a restaurant in this part of Germany, you automatically get the sparkling kind of water as default; if you want non-sparking mineral water you have to specify that it not be sparkling. This isn’t true across Germany, though. No one has ever offered an explanation as to why that is true here in Tübingen, but several German friends here have explained that I don’t need to specify “sparkling water” if I order my glass of water by saying Mineralwasser.  Which makes things simpler for ordering only if I can remember to get the pronunciation right: unlike in English “mineral”,  the stress in Mineralwasser is on the “al”, not on the “Min”.  If I don’t get the stress right, the waiter usually has no clue what I’m talking about.

Anyway, back to buying bottles of sparkling water at the grocery store. I bring this up because I went this morning to buy some more. As I’ve already mentioned, I’m not loyal to any one brand or type, so I just look to see what’s on sale, which is easy because the sale labels are all in red, and there’s always something on sale. Today’s sale was on Aiwa water, all types. Regularly 50 Eurocents a bottle, today’s price was 33 Eurocents if you bought the Flaschenkasten. The Flaschenkasten is a heavy-duty — and heavy! — plastic crate of 12 bottles. The empty crates really are solid and have some weight just by themselves. Once you pile 12 heavy plastic or glass 1-liter bottles of water in them, it becomes very heavy. Too heavy for me to even contemplate lifting.

However, several times when I had perhaps 8 or 10 bottles in my cart, the cashier would ask, “You have 12 bottles, there, right?” Which made me realize that perhaps just the Flaschenkasten price was really just about buying 12 bottles all at once, even without the plastic crate in tow. Sure enough, that has seemed to work as a strategy: I get 12 bottles at a time but take them out of the crate and put them in my cart, leaving the crate behind (with a stack of other empty crates in the aisle).

Well, it has seemed to work, that is, until this morning.

Today at the checkout, the total bill for the order rang up to a couple of Euros more than I’d thought it would. I’m not good at keeping a precise running total in my head while I shop, but I do at least usually have a general idea of the final cost within less than a Euro or so. I went ahead and paid, thinking perhaps I’d forgotten to account for something. But then before I left the market I double-checked the bill, and I saw that the 12 bottles had been rung up at full price, not the sale price. I asked the cashier, who was by then about to go on her coffee break. She sighed and went and checked the shelf to see the price. She brought back the sign with the regular price, saying that the sale price was only when you bought 12 bottles in the Flaschenkasten, and since I had only brought 12 bottles to the checkout, with no empty Flaschenkasten, I wasn’t entitled to the Flaschenkasten price.

Hmm. So her explanation indicated that the system I have been using is wrong. I.e., when you by 12 bottles, you have to actually bring the physical crate with you to the check-out line to get the 12-bottle price? Seriously? Is this really true? Were the other cashiers just being nice before? Interesting. Today’s cashier told me that next time I should bring the empty crate with me to the checkout if I want the Flaschenkasten price.

I processed this information and looked at her. She looked at me. And there we stood. She made no move to refund the difference in price, as she felt apparently vindicated on how the bottles rang up, since I hadn’t brought an empty crate to the checkout line.  Clearly she expected me to just go away and accept defeat this time, so she could go on her coffee break.

But me, defeated? I think not. Little did the cashier know, she was dealing with a woman who once stood her ground when a store called the police about a missing bag of soap. Today — with no police involved — was even simpler: I just smiled pleasantly as I called her bluff: “OK, sorry about that, I didn’t know that was the system. So what you’re saying is if I go and get an empty crate and bring it up to the checkout now, you’ll give me the sale price, right? So I’ll just go get an empty crate from the aisle now.”

Now remember that the cashier was trying to get to take her break.  Precious seconds were ticking away, and if she had to wait for me to go get the crate, her time was going to be eaten up even more.  With a pained expression of defeat on her face, she not particularly graciously refunded the difference between the regular price and the 12-bottle price: a grand total of 2.30€ (~$3).  It’s not a lot, but it pays for an espresso around here with change to spare, so that’s not bad.

Anyway a little something new at the supermarket today.  It’s so nice that after 3.5 years in Germany, the daily routine is still sometimes anything but…