Lidelle

On my way home from the Centrale there's a conveniently placed Lidl right on the way. I go there quite often to fill up my cheese or soap or whatever, so I know the place well enough to compare it to German Lidls, which I think is quite a good way to show differences between Germany and France.
Lidl itself could never been created in France, though. For a start, it's, well, little (sorry, couldn't resist) and French love huge supermarkets. But I want to show what France has done to our Lidls to adapt them to the local habits.

The first thing you notice are the hours: Lidl's open from 9-19.30 (less on saturdays), which is a bit less than German Lidls which are open from 8-8 everyday but Sunday. I couldn't really care less, though, so lets enter Lidl, which looks quite much like a German Lidl from the inside. Even the products are the same, often enough even the same brand (obviously imported). Most of the time they don't even bother with French labels, making me wonder if everyone in France knows the words Christstollen or Spekulatius. But you can get German beer (altough I've gotten used to French beer, even if 1,97€ for 10x0.25l should make you suspicious). Of course, there are differences: The cheese section is more adapted to France, you can get several sorts of Coulommier (Which's ammoniak emmissions I can smell right now, hmmm...), there's no bread (bread is a no-no for shops without their own Boulangerie) and you can only buy sweet cereal (which is why I always liked the family holidays to France, but right now I'd like some plain müsli). The veg section is nowhere near as good as the German one's (although I can't really compare that having only been to one Lidl) and CD-Rs are much more expensive than in Germany.

There are more typical French supermarket influences. First of all, there's the security guy. That's someone who basically just walks around with a 'Security' anorak and a walkie-talkie (no idea who he could contact in a Lidl?). Don't ask him where the eggs are, though, he doesn't seem to serve any active purpose. The more hyper supermarkets in France get, the more security guys they employ. The local Carrefour has whole armies of them running around.

Something's missing, though... ah yes, the hectic atmosphere. Unlike at home, it's not necessary for everyone to be in rush. People just do their shopping and then go to the till, no hurry. I like that, but the best bit is when you're actually queueing up. For my German mentality, this was really difficult to grasp, but once you get to the till you just take your time. If you take 5 minutes just paying, no-one will launch medium wars towards you like at home. OK, when you're in a hurry it's really annoying. But here, no-one seems to be in a hurry (unless they're driving). Paying by cheque would be banned in Germany if it would still be done just for being so slow.
The staff seems more relaxed, too. Wild stories of Lidl staff being timed at the till and having to do a minimum of X articles per minute certainly aren't true in France. The most funny incident I recall was when a woman who was already queueing up asked for an article and was directed towards it by the woman at the till (who could obviously not run stuff past the scanner at the same time), helped by the other to girls at the tills (who couldn't do anything else either) and was watched by all the customers (well, they didn't have anything else to do waiting at the till). When she finally found her on-offer batteries or whatever it was, I felt like cheering.

But everytime I come out of Lidl's, I can immediately see what's missing: bike stands. No-one here seems to use bikes, so outside supermarkets lamp-posts have to do.