Visiting Primark in Saarbrücken

On Saturday a friend and I took a trip to Saarbrücken. I needed some boots for an upcoming trip and we also wanted to visit Primark, an Irish clothing store that is similar to Old Navy in its offerings (inexpensive sweatshop stuff). I popped into the Frankfurt store once but was so frustrated by how busy and crazy it was that I popped right out again. This time, I planned better and we had a more peaceful visit.

For any newbies to Primark, I would suppose it is a good idea to prepare yourself first. Seriously. Blogger Charlotte from Sherbet and Sparkles wrote a helpful guide here. I had read this before my trip to Frankfurt so when I checked out that Primark, I kind of knew that it would not be enjoyable to visit on a Saturday afternoon. Thus, I knew that my next Primark visit would be early, not too long after opening.

We arrived at the Saarbrücken Primark around 9:40 am. I marveled at how pleasant it was to move freely through the store and for the most part, not having the other shoppers slam into us. We enjoyed ourselves, oohing and ahhing over the velour-lined fleece leggings. I absolutely had to buy some; wearing them is what I imagine being a teddy bear must feel like. Or maybe not, since their velour is on the outside? Hmm...

A display of animal-shaped mittens and hats captured our attention for way too long. I was deliberating over which pair of mittens to buy when I solved the issue by choosing none of them because I remembered that I hate wearing mittens. I should have thought of that sooner.

Following that, we lost ourselves in hilarity. There were escalators throughout the building; the main floor to the next floor had a normal sized escalator but between the next levels there was an escalator for a height of seven stairs! It seemed so ridiculous for such a short distance (and of course we rode it, giggling all the way).

Really? An escalator for this short of a distance?

I then managed to get semi-stuck in a sweatshirt while trying it on. It didn't help that it was a cowl neck sweatshirt and I couldn't breathe for an interval. Even worse was that once I could breathe again, I was doubled over, laughing because it was so ridiculous. I finally got it all together and my friend helped extricate me from the sweatshirt.

We then found an even more "charming" sweatshirt:

How special is this? We both lived through the 80s and remembered when people would cut off the sleeves of sweatshirts (but we were both too young to know why this happened). This Primark sweatshirt is awesomely retro and has the cut off sleeves, just like in the 80s...but then has additional sleeves sewn back in. Even though I'm an adult now, I can't explain this phenomenon. Is it an Irish tradition, perhaps?

After the strange sweatshirt, we hit the jackpot: a whole wall of weird adult-sized footie pajamas that were also costumes. Oh my awesomeness. If I didn't panic when I wear such things, I would have really had to hold back from buying one. I missed out as being Spider(wo)man, Super(wo)man, Santa Claus, or even a tiger. Darn!

We felt that our opportunity to shop in a less hectic environment was waning so we scooted downstairs to pay for our choices. It was in the nick of time, too; more people had flooded in during the forty-five minutes when we were shopping. We were pretty excited about our purchases: awesome velour (and non-velour) lined leggings and a cowl neck sweatshirt (that actually fitted me). Then we got the heck out (we both realized that we don't enjoy shopping a lot, even factoring how much fun we had with exploring the store).