Appenzeller, Emmentaler, Forsterkase... Oh my!

Yes, those are all types of cheeses. I just returned from a trip to Migros to pick up a few grocery items. While I was there, I ventured into the cheese isle... Oh yeah, they have one whole isle dedicated to cheeses. You have your soft cheese, hard cheese, shredded cheese, sliced cheese, semi-soft cheese, sheep cheese, goat cheese, cheese spread, cheese from France, cheese from Germany, cheese from the Alps... and the list goes on.

So, I stand there gazing at this array of cheese and realize just how impossible this is. Sure, my first stares are at the Migros brand and the cheese that's on Action, but I don't even know what I'm buying. I know it's cheese and by analyzing the texture I can come up with a good guess whether it's hard or semi-soft. My best bet is to look at the Italian labeling, because at least that's pretty close to Spanish and with the very little Italian I know, I can get some words translated, or at least enough that I feel comfortable buying it.

There's just so many different kinds! To think, that in the States, we categorize that cheese with the holes in it as Swiss cheese and that's it. I also noticed that most of the cheeses are white, with not many yellow cheese options. The fact that everything is the same color, doesn't help me much either.

I stood there, for probably about 15 minutes, just reading... or trying to. Other people passing by, grabbing the exact kind of cheese they want. Out of all the people that passed by (and there were a lot because it's a Friday evening) only one person stopped to analyze the difference between two difference cheeses. Two!? I'm trying to take this whole isle and figure out what to put in my little basket!

Sure, once you get some idea of what type of cheese you want, then there's the price. So, now I'm trying to compare prices with types and sort of mixing in the equation of the cheese that's on Action. The problem is, the Action cheese isn't always going to be your best bet, so then you got to figure out the amounts of cheese that's in the package. Alright, so this is where I started going crazy because since I went to school in the US, we were only taught pounds and ounces... Everything here is in metrics! Ah!

I understand most of you are thinking, why is this one trip to Migros so difficult. 1) I was buy myself and didn't have Leve to ask to translate and 2) I wanted to buy a different cheese than what we had been buying before.

It's amazing the little things you take for granted when you are living in a country that speaks your first language. How easy would it be to go to the nearest Copps or Pick n' Save and say "I'd like a quarter-pound of cheddar please"? Oh yeah, too easy! Anyways, the cheese that I ended up getting is...

And I still don't really have a clue as to what it is... I could Google it, but I'm too hungry to do that now. I'll let you know how it tastes later. Dinner time!