We didn't go anywhere today. Well, Cath went for some food to eat (bread, because it's Sunday and everything apart from the bakery is closed). More things closed than the holiday on Friday.

A few times in the shops I've thought I was missing something. Sometimes we only buy 2 or 3 things. Maybe some muesli and milk for breakfast. We can't carry a whole weeks shopping, so we just get what we need, which sometimes is just a few things. We normally keep an eye on the price of each item anyway, but since the currencies are changing every few days and we can't speak the language - even a few numbers in Serbian - it helps to know how much you're going to need at the check-out. A few times, mostly at the smaller shops, the total has been different to what we expect. Not wildly, but enough to cause confusion. 

Could it be a tax we don't know about? Unlikely, the differences have been without a discernable pattern. 50 cents here, 5 cents there, sometimes the price charged matches the shelf price. And the receipt itemised the taxes. Was there a shopper loyalty card required to get the advertised price (that does happen).

After a few days of this, I finally asked (the exclusively Serbian speaking salesperson), in English, what's going on, when I got the things, with differences of 5, 30 and 55 cents between the price in the receipt and the shelf (ended up at 10% extra). The explanation I got (amidst writing numbers on the receipt, hand waving and a third person getting involved) was the shelf labels had been changed. Que?

No, it's just the scanned price in the cash register was just different to what was shown in the shelf. I got a small handful of change for my trouble (and an annoyed attendant who wondered why I was asking about a price difference of 5 cents...), the difference between the charged and displayed price. 

Now we have to decide if the charged price (which, you won't be surprised, is mostly higher than the price in the shelf) is worth arguing about. It's not. But might be if we could speak Serbian...