X ~ eXtapris = Extra Price #atozchallenge

All Aboard! "It's Very Swedish..." a train on a cultural journey through Sweden, exploring the differences big and small between American and Swedish culture.

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Yes, I admit that I'm totally cheating. We all know how hard X is, and I will freely admit that I've had the advantage of using either a Swedish or an English word the entire Challenge. However, that does not make X any easier, in either language.

I probably didn't need to translate my title for you, since it looks and sounds about the same in both languages.  (In Swedish, the "price" part is pronounced as in "priest", just forget the "t".)  It does though sound like you'll be paying an extra price.

Not so.  In Sweden, the extrapris is what you are looking for the.  The price was "extra special", as in the sale.  I remember shopping with Farmor in everything from those small, neighborhood grocery stores, to what is similar to a Safeway or King Soopers, (or whatever THE big chain is called in your town), to the mega-store in downtown Göteborg where it was pretty much a day long commitment to finish the major trip.

Those trips to Saga (which literally means "story") were an adventure of epic proportion.  Long lists. Markers to check off items.  Multiple carts and two cars: ours and Farmor and Farfar's.

I looked up extrapris in Swedish on Wiki, and they freely admitted that these are below cost items designed to lure you into the store. Here is America, those of us who are, shall we say, rather, um, organized about our grocery shopping, know that the front and back page items on the "weekly specials" inserts in the newspaper are the "loss leaders."

These are the items to get you in the store, and if you're like most people, you really don't want to go to another store for the rest of the non-sale price items on your list, so you just buy them there.  That's what they count on, and of course some of those prices are raised to make up for the other "loss".

It's all a game.  There's even a website, The Grocery Game, dedicated to helping you outsmart the system.  I don't go the extremes of some, but I do try to be a smart shopper.  It's rare that something on my receipt is full price.  I've had to have the manager come over to override the transaction because the amount I saved was more than my total owed.  Love winning like that.  (It's that insatiable competitive streak in me...)

Are you the grocery shopper in your family? Or do you not cook at all? There are many nights when all I want is a double cheeseburger, STAT, and man, you can get one cheaply at McDonald's, and they hit the spot at the end of a long day of A-Z wrangling ;-)

Two more days!  You CAN do it!

~Tina, totally tired but I AM going to finish this thing...and then finish visiting you all...thanks for all the wonderful comments and new followers.  You are much appreciated!