Worldbuilding Exchange

In the midst of wrestling with French bureaucracy (you'd think I was the first person ever who moved to France), I have been incredibly disappointed in the selection of fruits and veg in French supermarkets. My local grocery (a non-chain Asian store) is better for veg, especially East Asian cruciferous vegetables, but doesn't really carry fruits and a penguin wants an orange sometimes, ok? Yesterday I learned that the general horrendous state of fruit and veg in supermarkets is because it is all processed through a central processing station, most likely also frozen, and in general about a million years old before it hits the shelves. This is fine for e.g. ginger, but cucumbers? Lol no.

So the locals go to various farmers' markets, usually on Sundays. I generally go to one in Little Africa, and, while usually Paris has Way Too Many People for me, this is fine somehow, despite having a larger concentration of people than Paris usually does. I did a bit of introspection while I was chomping on my (delicious, delicious) orange, and then realized that it's a tori! Sure, the Finnish ones are on a square, and this is a bit more cramped due to the fact it's on a street, but this is a healthy marketplace where people sell stuff like fruits and veg, and there's just this fundamental sense of Rightness that I get when buying stuff from such a market: this is the way things should be.

(You could also make much about how I feel more at home in places filled with other immigrants/minority cultures even when physically I look less like them and more like the local majority, but that's a deeper can of worms.)