From Tesco to Tesco

Tesco is a public limited company founded in 1919 by Jack Cohen — son of Jewish migrants from Poland. It has stores in 12 countries across Asia and Europe and it is the grocery market leader in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, Malaysia and Thailand. So it has 97 years of history! It’s a supermarket, hypermarket, superstore…

While being there in Cambridge, we often visited Tesco just to have fun or shop or hang around. It was a great place for us and, at the same time, it was really close to our host families’ houses. Well, I told you, some of us were in neighbourhoods and so in the evenings we would gather together and just fool around nearby. We had lots of fun activities to do and visiting Tesco was one of them. We could just walk to that grocery store, or just take a bus. But we preferred walking to taking the bus. We had a healthy lifestyle! (“Oh, good for you! ”). As a medical student and a future doctor, I would recommend to all of you to lead a healthy lifestyle, because, first of all, that’s what our ancestors did and they were superstrong, I can say. Just trust me in this. I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it, “I’ve been there, done that” — well, not exactly, but I knew my great grandparents and they were like supermen and superwomen, you wouldn’t believe! Secondly, wherever you go, the very first thing every doctor recommends to patients is to lead a healthy lifestyle, because any amount of these fries and burgers and fizzy drinks and stuff like that — you know what I’m talking about — is killing you. I’m not saying that you’re immortal or something. And, maybe, you shouldn’t think it this way, that if you’re mortal it doesn’t matter what kills you. Leading a healthy lifestyle lowers the risk of getting so many diseases that you can’t even imagine.

So, the thing we loved in Tesco was that we could wander around there all day and nobody would say anything! And there was plenty to see! It had so many divisions and so many stuff you wouldn’t get bored of looking at them and trying things on and stuff like that. So it was really amazing to be there. You know those huge stores, where you can buy anything? That was Tesco! The first time we went there, we were like holding those large maps of Cambridge and we played some little pranks of the staff and we would ask them if they knew some imaginary street or address or something and they were thinking so hard, and maybe they were like "why don’t we know that, we have been living here for our whole lives" or something like that and they actually thought very hard and they were very determined to answer our question, but then at the end they would understand that they couldn’t answer us and so they would say “sorry, I can't help you, I have no idea where that might be” or some phrase like this and we would thank them with our hearts and move on to the next one. Don’t get me wrong, those kind of things people do all the time. And it’s not like we did something bad! We just had a little fun and that’s all.

Unfortunately, it was not open 24/7, so we could just be there for a period of time and then we had to leave, because it closed for the night. There was a big parking lot outside the grocery store and a lovely bus stop. And there were many trolleys outside... It was somehow cozy around and you wouldn’t want to leave that area.

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