Homesickness is starting to set in (and ends up in a rant)

With all the excitement of our June travels, and then returning to Minneapolis in July to pick up the life we left over three years ago, I haven't had time to be "homesick" quite yet. Today has been a slow day, and I guess that was enough for it to sneak up on me. 

Yes, Sweden was a home, and it was a pretty darn good one. Tonight I want nothing more than to hop off the subway, walk 20 steps out of my way to visit the neighborhood grocery store, pick up something simple and go home to cook. A glass of smooth red wine on the side sounds heavenly.

The fact that I travel (by express bus) from Minneapolis downtown to St. Paul downtown and don't have one reasonable option for buying groceries along the way really bugs me. How do people handle downtown living in these cities? The downtowns sure have a lot of nice life to them, but they're missing the one thing that would make them truly livable. There are plenty of apartments and condos in each city, the population density would surely support a few real grocery stores. Over in Minneapolis you can find a few stores just a mile or two out of downtown, why not in downtown? What about St. Paul? Do I just not know the areas? I've walked or driven pretty much every street and skyway, but haven't found what I'm looking for. Over-priced corner markets just don't cut it, I'm talking about a store that sells fresh produce, meat and pastas, not just milk and canned/boxed goods. In Stockholm you'd normally find a decent grocery store every quarter to half mile; spaced a bit farther out in the residential areas. They had everything you'd ever need. They might not have 100 types of pasta sauce or 200 types of sugary drinks, maybe only 10 and 40 respectively, but I felt like they had a better food selection than the suburban Cub Foods.

Here, if I want real groceries I have to hop in a car and drive five miles out of my way to go to some over-sized grocery store where I'll buy enough groceries for a couple of weeks in order to save myself the hassle of making the hellish trip any time soon. It's too much work. I just want simplicity. And healthy food.

I'm just thinking of the superior bread selection at the local Coop supermarkets near our apartments in Sweden and am at a loss for words. I just wish I could describe how much better they were than the bread aisles at the chain grocery stores here in the Twin Cities. I don't even eat much bread, and I'm still drooling just thinking about the selection of breads they had there.

Maybe my problem is that I'm going to the wrong stores. I should try out Byerlys, Lunds or Trader Joes. I'll just need to drive an extra five to ten miles to get to one of those. No thanks.

Except for the heat, humidity, junk/fast food and the lack of willpower needed to stop me from eating crap, it really is good to be back, but I'm really longing for the best of both worlds right now.