Plodine is the name of the local, Croatian, supermarket chain that has quite a few stores here in my area. One of the Plodine supermarkets was built in 2011, on the outskirts of Medulin - the small seaside town where I live.
Since its opening, in June 2011, I have visited that fairly big store regularly but its interior rarely appeared in my posts, because I don't feel comfortable photographing inside the store with the camera. It attracts too much attention.
But today, I went on a photographic expedition equipped with an iPhone I borrowed from a friend. With the mobile phone, spying around is much easier, so I had a lot of fun taking the photographs I'm presenting in this post. Have a good viewing.
This photograph was taken at the indoor stand with fresh fruits & vegetables, at 7:21 AM, but ...
... but it all started a little less than half an hour earlier, in front of the entrance.
A small group of early risers was waiting for the store to open.
In this photograph, I caught that elusive moment when one of Plodine's employees turns the automatic sliding door on, so the shopping can start.
It was time to enter. But before that, for me at least ...
... it was time to take the shopping cart because I had a pretty long list of things to buy.
Soon I stopped for less than a minute while passing by the fruits & vegetables stand. Not to buy something - just to take the above photograph. The watermelons looked great and inviting so I put them in the foreground of the shot.
After photographing this small but lovely collection of colorful, nicely decorated mugs, I returned to the fruits & vegetables place where I took some lemons, plums & peppers, and then ...
... I spent some time in front of the shelves filled with a nice variety of wines.
I took a couple of bottles there, and then I took the following photograph ...
... on the way to the nearby in-store bakery.
After buying the fresh bread and packaged crackers, I passed by the meat section with a small butcher shop.
A minute later I stopped by the big freezer filled with all kinds of ice creams. I mean-this thing is usually filled with ice cream, but today it looked pretty empty. It seems that people got really crazy for ice cream on these hot summer days. The extreme increase in the price of ice cream offered in ice cream parlors and restaurants could also be a reason.
After a bit of wandering around the store, I decided to visit the most colorful and imaginative part of Plodine. The toy section.
Unlike the other stuff in the store, the toys look like sculptures. I mean, they are some kind of sculptures, I guess, so these shelves look a bit like a part of an art exhibition. You can see a bunch of colorful mermaids in this photograph.
These little horses, ponies - I suppose, were created in the same or similar style.
A found a dinosaur too. I mean, I found two. There was this cartoonish blue one ...
... and this slightly more realistic brown velociraptor.
This is a cobra. A dangerous, highly venomous piece of reptilian plastic.
You can see two bears in this shot. A brown and a white one.
You can see another bear pair here.
Here you can take one last look at those bears. That's more than enough about them for today.
Here you can see some cool, probably pretty fast sports cars.
After portraiting this very professional prima ballerina, I left the toy world ...
... and continued my epic morning journey through one of the only two supermarkets of Medulin.
As time was passing, the store was slowly getting slightly crowded.
I didn't buy any meat today, but at 8 AM I photographed some clients of the in-store butcher shop. The product, shown in the following photograph ...
... is Vegeta, a mix of spices with a long history.
It was an extremely popular product in Yugoslavia. Practically a pop culture icon of that socialist, wannabe communist world.
The golden age of Vegeta now lies somewhere in the dustbin of recent history, but you can still sprinkle your dish with the magical spice of communist nostalgia.
This photograph was taken when I stopped to pick the olive oil.
Here you can see a bunch of rolled front door rugs.
They looked pretty abstract and very photogenic from a certain angle.
This shot was taken in the fruits & vegetables area.
After taking another generic shot not far from there ...
... it was time to pay the price at the counter. This photoshoot cost me a little less than 200 euros.
AND THAT'S ALL FOR TODAY. HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE JOURNEY. AS ALWAYS HERE ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS ARE MY WORK.
