Gack's Frische Laden

“For cooking?” she says to me, pointing to my bag of mushrooms.

“Ja,” I nod.

She pulls out a little tub of cream from a drawer behind the counter.  “Sehr gut for cooking,” she say, nodding and smiling.

This is Gack's, our neighborhood grocery store, with food (and locals) packed into what is probably no more than 400 sq ft.  "Mrs. Gack" is very friendly and speaks almost no English--but she always commends us when we show up with a new German word to use.  Her husband can speak English (or so she tells us), but he won't.

She always makes a suggestion to me about what I should do with the food I'm buying, which is great because much of the food in there is unfamiliar to me.

The best part is, the prices are comparable to Aldi prices, and the shop is about a block away from our apartment!