They usually joke about pickles

[palominocorn]

I think the funniest culture clash, for my family back home, is "I went to the 24/7 drugstore in the middle of the night to get ice cream, toilet paper, a pack of stamps, and a toy for my toddler" because back home, drugstores are only open during the day and they sell drugs and THAT'S IT.

Comments

[yvannairie]

Yeah, realizing that that word meant more like. A kiosk shop, was pretty wild. I'm to this day not sure if that means there's no real pharmacies there.

[palominocorn]

I'm guessing you're used to pharmacies looking like this, give or take? https://omsi.in/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Online-Pharmacy-Serbia.jpg Small room with a bunch of medicinal stuff on shelves? That picture looks pretty close to all the Eastern European pharmacies I've been to - 95+% of the store is medicines (with maybe menstrual products and some toothpaste thrown in). You tell the pharmacist what you need, they give it to you, you pay. Last time I got prescription stuff there, the prescription paper was just... the doctor writing down the name and dosage, but that was like 2004 so things have probably changed since then.

Something calling itself a pharmacy/drugstore in the US is like... 20x bigger, generally. They have 2-6 aisles of OTC counter health stuff (cold medicine, acne creams, ibuprofen/aspirin), a pharmacy-pharmacy in the back (ALWAYS in the effing back, for CAPITALIST REASONS) where you drop off your prescription and wait half an hour for someone to give you the pills, and then a toooooon of other stuff. Makeup, small toys, a small selection of food, stuff for whatever the holiday du jour is, office supplies... like, a bunch of basic everyday items, basically. In some states they sell beer/wine and in some places they don't because you need a special license for that, and to this day I don't know which of these is more normal.

Grocery stores are more and more putting pharmacies in their buildings, claiming it's convenient - drop off prescription, shop, get prescription, save yourself the extra trip/time - but it's actually NOT, because grocery store pharmacies NEVER have what you need.

But yeah. You can get drugs here in the US, they're just horribly expensive. (Previous statement was written with me giggling my butt off.)

[yvannairie]

Pharmacies in Finland are usually 1st storey stores, and are likely to carry moisturisers, soaps, coughdrops and vitamin supplements but otherwise that's pretty accurate. I remember doing a double-take when we went to get drinks for the night and my friend was like "I gotta pick up [meds]" and then they just had a separate medicine isle in the store, like, what? No pharmacist in Finland would deign to work like that, not only do they have very strict licencing for selling medicine, but they also need to know a bunch about the other products b/c they're often specialised stuff meant for people with highly specific allergies.