Through Immigrant Eyes: A trolley full of groceries

Viktoriia Kantseva is adjusting to a new way of shopping in Ireland from her old life in Ukraine...

Most of our grocery shopping happens in Dunnes Stores. It’s simple - we like it there. It’s a big shop, good products, a very decent bakery section, and their vouchers and points system is honestly hard to ignore once you get used to it.

At first, I didn’t really pay attention to it, and then suddenly you realise you’re adjusting your whole shop just to use a €10 voucher properly.

Over time, we also figured out our own system. We plan meals for the week and do one big shop. It makes life easier, and you don’t have to think about food every day. You just open the fridge and everything you need is already there.

But the shopping experience itself was something I had to get used to.

The first thing that really surprised me — no storage lockers. In Ukraine, they are everywhere. You walk into a supermarket, leave your bag in a locker, sometimes even because security asks you to. It’s just part of the process.

Here - nothing. No lockers, no one asking you to leave your things anywhere. You just walk in with your bag and that’s it.

At first, I kept looking around, thinking I had missed them. But no.

And after a while, you start seeing it differently. It feels like a very high level of trust. The shop trusts you, and you just don’t break that trust.

No one checks, no one follows you around, and that in itself feels unusual at the beginning.

Another thing I noticed — the trolleys. They are always full.

I’ll be honest, I sometimes look into other people’s trolleys out of curiosity.

And they’re not just full — they’re overflowing. Like people are shopping for weeks ahead, or maybe not planning to come back anytime soon. It still surprises me a bit. Because we used to shop very differently.

In Ukraine, we would buy food for one or two days. Three at most. Shops were always nearby, and before the war many of them were open 24/7, so there was no need to plan that far ahead. You just bought what you needed, when you needed it. If you forgot something, you just went back.

Here, it’s different. You plan more, you buy more, you think ahead.

And then there are the shops that feel a bit like home. Polonez, Polostores — places you go when you want something familiar. That’s where you find varenyky, pelmeni, pickled cucumbers and tomatoes, cottage cheese, buckwheat, Ukrainian sausage… even Kyiv cake.

And it’s always the same feeling.

You walk in, see labels in your own language, and something just clicks. You didn’t realise how much you missed it until it’s right there in front of you. You don’t overthink it - you just

put it in your basket. Sometimes you don’t even check what exactly you picked up, you just know it belongs there.

And then, naturally, you start cooking with it.

So now our trolley is usually half Irish, half Ukrainian. Which, at this point, just feels normal. That’s just how we shop now.