I was talking to a friend and complaining that the nearest grocery store is 3km from me, he says that Europeans consider that a reasonable distance to the store and I’m just being lazy.
I don’t have a car, I don’t have a bike, and the bus only comes by every four hours. Am I being unreasonable for not wanting to carry groceries 3km in 30C weather, or is my friend full of shit? Neither of us have been to Europe.
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800m by foot only.
Or about 50m and 2 tram stops.
edit: counting is hard.
Does the tram allow cargo? My bus won’t let you take anything bigger than you can hold on your lap.
Sure, just hauled home an AC unit on a rolling board using the tram.
There are special areas for strollers, bikes and other bulky stuff.
Does it have cargo space, or do they just let you take up passenger space? Is the tram not full?
Edit: didn’t see the edit lol
Sorry, I was too slow on the edit I guess.
There are special areas for strollers, bikes and other bulky stuff.
Is the tram not full?
Only during peak times. But even then, the frequency is 3.5 minutes, so skipping one or even two is an option.
Dang, that must be nice. The bus only comes by once every 4 hours for me, and it’s always standing-room only.
On the other hand, nothing wakes you up like standing on a bus going 80km/h on a bumpy road.
Every 4h standing room only sounds like you need to try and get the bus coming more often. But that makes too much sense, better add another lane to the highway.
I’ve been denied with luggage by a tram driver once. Moving a 2 person mattress was not allowed on the tram…
Depends on what I want (availability in the shop).
But anything is in a range of about 6km in every direction and reachable by bike.
Got a Lidl, Aldi, Edeka Center, Rewe, Kaufland in my range.
All of mid size.Depending on the weight I am willing to carry the groceries (if they don’t need cooling).
But that depends on how much time I have and if I am in the mood.I have shop few meters away from my home, but I only go there, when I forgot to buy something or just quickly need snacks for a movie or it’s bad weather, but usually I just buy everything from other grocery store which is 2 km away, but I like their food selection more and they got cheaper prices. Sometimes I also walk to big supermarket which is 4 km away.
3 km doesn’t seem much for me or most of my friends,some of them even own a car and still walk 2-4 km to the grocery shop, instead of driving, but some people I know, would rather drive a car or take a bus.
Even fairly rural Europeans will consider that to be at least cycling distance.
I have four supermarkets in a radius of about 500 metres. Not only do I regularly walk, I pretty much buy only what I need for a few days, safe in the knowledge that if I need something now, I can be out & back in under half an hour, also knowing that most supermarkets here are reliably stocked with just what I need.
The closest grocery store/supermarket is around 1km away from my house and a few others are just slightly further away. I could walk there, but I have better ways to use my time, so I just go with my bike.
The pannier bags also enable me to buy heavy stuff without having to lift it the whole way.
I live in Berlin. I can go shopping for groceries, head back home, cook a meal using those groceries and eat within one hour of home office lunch break.
I’ve lived in different places here, currently I have a couple of options in a 400m radius, in my previous house I used to have two options in a 100m radius. Before that I lived in another country and had a small market at around 600m and the nearest supermarket was at 1.5km, I almost never went to the big one and instead had them deliver to my house, but it wasn’t a chore going there, it was just boring and a waste of time when I could just order online.
A few years back I used to live in a small city and my options were 1km for a small market or 3km for a big one, you sort of get used to going the 3km to the big one when needed, but it’s not fun, and I would consistently put out going to the big one until it was absolutely necessary. I believe 3km is bike distance, sure you can walk that much, it’s not that far away, but it takes a long time and is exhausting carrying lots of groceries in summer for that long.
All of that being said, I was not born in Europe, so locals might have different opinions, although I think everyone I’ve talked to thinks that above 1km it becomes bike/scooter distance for routine things (you don’t need a bike if you’re going to the cinema at 1km, but grocery or other routine stuff it’s worth the investment just on the time you’ll save)
Used to be 5km where I grew up in the Netherlands, nowadays living in Germany it’s 1km but uphill (don’t have those in NL!). In either case I don’t want to walk it and there’s not a chance I would if it’s 30 degrees out: that temperature means it’s probably in a month of the year where I burn within 10-20 minutes. I’d have to put on sunscreen for going to the store! They better have a sandy beach aisle
500m to a small one, 1.2 to a fairly sized supermarket, some 3 km to a hypermarket.
Walking to the hypermarket and back is something I used to do quite frequently with a friend or another, but it is a slight chore, and I wouldn’t enjoy going in -25C.
Usually if I have to walk I’ll go to the supermarket, 1.2km is a very reasonable distance to walk.
Or 500m for some quick stuffs like a few beers or tobacco from the closest small store
What’s a hypermarket?
Well a hypermarket is to a supermarket what a supermarket is to a small grocery store.
So just a very large supermarket that families would usually use for “the big shop”. I assume the equivalent is one of those markets you need a card to enter in the US, idk.
Except you don’t need a membership (but usually there’s good benefits if you have one) and you it’s not all family size products.
Oh my bad, actually the definition is just supermarket+department store, basically.
That’s like Walmart or Target here. I don’t think most people have a category name for them. They like to call themselves super stores, though.
Oh geeze, we don’t make a distinction between a supermarket and a grocery store either, lol. Most ‘grocery stores’ in the US are apparently supermarkets because they sell stuff like dog food and laundry detergent? I don’t think we have any stores that do just produce, at least not in the few states I’ve lived in.
Going off the wiki link, it looks like I have a hypermarket ~25km away.
Well no, not just produce. You’ll find a section for general shit even in the smaller stores. Like tape, glue, underwear (at least for women, usually really thin cotton ones and I’m furious they don’t sell the same for men, but I’ve still used them very comfortable). You can find basic household items like cleaning stuff and diapers and everything you need. but like the selection of tapes or glues won’t be anything akin to a proper department store or a hardware store.
You can definitely find dog food and laundry detergent in all stores. And I mean it, I’ve worked in a bunch basically Kwik-E-Mart style shops and they all had those as well
But hypermarkets will be like almost on the level of specialised hardware stores in their selection of actually usable things. And they’ll have bikes and whatnot.
Basically the sizes go with the square footage of the market in Finland at least, I don’t think it’s to due with what is being sold. And at one point only smaller stores were permitted 247 opening hours or sunday opening hours, whereas larger stores would only be open from 7-21 or something. Nowdays they’re actually open 247 as well.
But they can only sell alcohol from 09 to 21
Yeah, the store I’m thinking is a hypermarket sells groceries, but also clothing, toys, furniture, garden plants, tools, etc. We still call it a grocery store, lol.
My town’s store doesn’t even have its own bakery department or meat counter, but the bigger one next town over away has a bank branch and a starbucks inside, but doesn’t sell the range of the big one mentioned above.
Is that close to the grocery > supermarket > hypermarket scale?
Most people would still say they’re going to a grocery store, they wouldn’t specify “hypermarket”.
It’s mostly to due with sizes. There’s three levels, and the leading chains in Finland both (or “all” before one got bought up by the second biggest and now there’s generally only two) have a small store, which have their own names, Sale/Alepa and K-market, then there’s the larger ones, S-Market and K-Supermarket (formerly KKK-supermarket, really), and then the largest ones, Prisma and K-Citymarket.
It used to be only the small grocery stores had the longest opening hours, but some years ago they released those regulations and now even the hypermarkets are 247. But the small and medium sized usually don’t. Some small ones are in larger cities, I think.
But yeah it’s generally just about the size, and “just” supermarkets not having department store shit as much. Like the supermarket K-Supermarket 1.2km away from me has their own fish& meat counter for instance.
The grocery store near me has a pharmacy, but the hypermarket has a pharmacy, a few restaurants, large deli and meat counters, and of course an a liquor store as in a government store that sells specifically alcohol. They’re allowed to sell any alcohol, whereas grocery stores are just allowed to sell drinks up to 8%, and that’s up from like 4.9% for the most of my life. Some years ago they changed it so grocery stores can sell up to 5.9, then when that didn’t break society, it took like 2 years for the limit to change to 8%. And I’m pretty sure someone’s gonna push for it to go to like 14 so we got proper wines in grocery stores.
The 8% crap is just awful wine. But drinkable if you carbonate it a tad. Sounds weird perhaps but I enjoy it.
Anyway the department store part of the hypermarkets is often kinda meh. Like if you want electronics or something, you’ll usually go to a store that specialises in them. Like a large electronic store for clothing store or whatever. But you can sometimes get decent deals or some store brand clothes for a nice price. But like in general electronics, hardware, general hardware. There’s kind of a lot of places with a lot of stores like that.
Like 2km from me by bike is an IKEA and then lots of similarly sized stores selling hardware / electronics / and always a few competing ones. Like there’s several furniture stores within literally a stones throw from the ikea parking lot. (You’d have to be pretty good at throwing, but I maintain the assertion. Like frisbee golf throwing distance, definitely.)
Same with electronics stores. Like three huge stores in the same area, all within like 2-3min drives from each other. Some almost next door to each other.
Also hardware stores.
And sports stores.
Tons of others.
There’s even I think like a horse-supply store, but that’s a bit to the side. Not as mainstream.
I live in Los Angeles and just happen to have a grocery store within easy walking distance. Like 0.5 km. But I don’t, because the old nice little convenience store got turned into stupid Whole Foods. Or Mold Foods, as we started calling it after trying some of their groceries. Now I drive a mile to where I can get fresher produce and dairy, and paper towels that don’t disintegrate with the first touch of liquid. Or we get our groceries delivered.
Vilnius, Lithuania. 3 different shops 5 min walk from home. And its not even high density urban area. I shop almost every day
Hunter-gatherers used to forage in a radius up to 10k 😁
I recently moved somewhere a little further from the shops. I can take the bus part of the way but still need to walk around 1km each way, so I’ve invested in a Clax trolley to carry my groceries.
If I was in your situation, I would buy a light, foldable cart, take the bus to the shops, and walk home.
I live in a very small town, the closest one is 300m, it’s a rather small grocery store good enough for daily stuff. Once a week or two I take the car to a bigger store 10km away for stuff that I can’t find in the small store or is cheaper there.
I draw the line of the unladen (not for leisure) walking distance at 25 minutes. That can be reevaluated in case of necessity.
500 meters give or take.
