Culture in shopping

One thing that is true of moving from any culture to another is that there are always things that you just cannot get.  It is a testimony to how much smaller the world is getting as new items show up on the shelves of stores that did not used to be there.  Even though I’ve only been in Israel about a year and a half I have noticed some things that are appearing that did not used to be sold here: root beer, ginger ale, and blackcurrant squash are a few of the items that have shown up recently.  Last night I decided to purchase a can of root beer as a treat (at almost $2 a can it definitely falls in the treat category).  When I was at the counter the checkout the items the cashier picked up the can and looked at it, turned it all around, reading the Hebrew tag, and then looked at me confused and said, “is it beer?”