Comment by cameronh90
5 hours ago
It’s normal in London to live a few min walk to bakery, grocery, deli, so on but we still have supermarkets - from smaller ones to large hypermarkets. Everyone uses them and they sell good quality products.
The same is true in every European city I’ve been to. There’s a large hypermarket a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe and you can hardly say Parisians don’t have a good choice of local bakeries, cheesemongers and butchers.
It’s true you won’t usually get something like a Target or Costco in the central area, but in the slightly further out suburbs (e.g. Z2 in London) where most people actually live, Europe is full of supermarkets.
Sure, Europe is different than the US in many ways. I think most people know that.
What is more surprising to me is that Europe has become relatively homogenous. There are more differences between some US states than there are between some European countries, if we set aside language. A mid size French city vs an equivalent German/British/Swiss/Italian city… they differ of course but Tampa vs Seattle is a bigger contrast to me.