Six-pack Angie

Germany's Merkel 'still does her own grocery shopping'
AFP March 1, 2006

German Chancellor Angela Merkel says she still finds the time to go to the supermarket and do her own shopping.

"On Friday I went to the supermarket and bought Evian water and a few other groceries," the 51-year-old leader told the weekly celebrity magazine Bunte in an edition to be published on Thursday.

Merkel, who became Germany's first female chancellor on November 22, said despite the pressures of her job she also tried to talk to her friends and family about everyday matters.

She said her husband -- scientist Joachim Sauer --, her parents and friends were "extremely important" in this regard.

Merkel has made it clear since taking up office at the head of a left-right, power-sharing government that she wishes to lead as normal a life as possible.

She has declined to live in the chancellor's official residence, like her predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, and has kept her apartment in Berlin's Mitte district, in the east of the formerly divided city.