March 04, 2004

The Horrors of the Apotheke

This past week, Shelby started feeling a cold coming on, so I put "get cold medicine" on our weekend shopping list. In the United States, this would be a five-minutes-or-less transaction: while you're at the supermarket, stop by the cold-remedies aisle, pick a box from among the multitude offered, and drop it in your cart. At the very worst, you have to stop by the drugstore on your way home from someplace else.

In Germany, no way. If you want to buy something with even the slightest amount of medicinal power, you have to purchase it from behind the counter at an Apotheke.

The Apotheke (I love the word; it just means "pharmacy", but its older, middle-English-connected origins always make me expect a gnome hunched over a mortar and pestle, lit by torchlight, whenever I go in) is like an American pharmacist where virtually everything has been moved behind the counter. The only things that you can pick up and buy are items that can't harm you in the least -- in this case, artsy soaps, vitamins, a stack of first aid kits. For everything else, you have to get in line -- and on a Saturday, it's a long line. Eventually, I get up to the front of the line, describe my particular problem to the white-coated woman behind the counter -- meine Frau ist erkältet -- and she goes off into the back room full of medicine to get what she thinks is best for my needs. After a while, she comes back, gives me a box of pills, and tells me how to use what's inside; then I pay and am out the door.

I'm not sure why you have to recite your malady to a stranger, in front of a crowd of strangers, before you can get even the most innocuous drugs -- maybe it's a "safety" thing, so that they can say you recieved proper instruction in how to take the drug. I'm sure that the unions and/or tradition are heavily involved somewhere. I'll have to ask my co-workers.

Predictably, the no-drugs-except-at-Apothekes system means that all the "drugstores" have a section packed full of truly goofy 'natural' cures. Got a cold? You need these vitamin tablets -- infused with the power of St. John's Wort and crystals!

Posted by Kevin at March 4, 2004 09:12 AM