Belgium - Netherlands - Germany (Northeast) - Czech Republic - Austria - Germany (South) - Switzerland (border) - France (Capital) - Spain (North) - France (South) - Italy
Supermarket is absolutely the best-friend of backpackers/budget-travelers, and in some cities I even found most of travelers purchase their souvenir in the supermarket (e.g. chocolates in Brussels) !!! In Europe, supermarkets are not hard to find in city center, especially you are living in the hot connection point in the city, for example, nearby rail station, tourism circle, public transportation termini, etc. Supermarket, Mini-market, Tobacco shop, are the main three types of places where you can buy your daily stuff. And normally the later 2 ones run till late night (not very late as in Asia!!!).
SUPERMARKETS
Normally, there’re quite a lot supermarkets (not discount one) around city center/old town area of each city. Regarding to the village/town, the supermarket-discount is always located in the outside part, while you can also find the normal ones in the center of village/town. The difference between supermarket-discount and normal one is the products/brands those you can select. The discount one has less product selection and you'll find the limited brands are offered, but the price is always attractive. Oppositely, normal ones have a wider collection and the location would be much better and convenient as well.
Besides local brands, you can also find some private Chinese supermarkets in Asian street/area (very easy to recognize them by the Chinese names). If you really have home-sickness on the food part, go for those ones and they are cheaper too. As my experience as a bread-lover and dairy-product-fan, supermarket can feed me very easily and you will find those yogurt/cheese/bread are incredible cheap (1/3 price or even more) comparing to the prices in Hong Kong (Kind of heaven to me :P)
The only thing I want to remind is all the supermarkets will remain CLOSE on Sunday and in the special days (equal to the public holidays). So if you are traveling during local holidays, make sure you have prepared enough daily products.
Some brands I remember and could suggest to you as following,
> Supermarket-discounted
HOF (Vienna | Austria)
NETTO (Germany)
LIDE (Germany)
ALDI (Germany and maybe Austria)
> Supermarket
Carrfour (Belgium)
REWE (Germany)
I cannot remember those in France, Spain and Italy, but basically they are all similar to the European style. Well, as for Spain and Italy, it is a little bit different from north Europe. Those supermarkets are in smaller scale and not so frequently-seen in the streets. Interestingly, the mini-market and sometimes even little cafe or bar are in bigger scale and richer product collections, in some terms, they take the role of supermarket in some neighbors. Plus, they have specialized fruits market/ shop.
MINI-MARKETS & TOBACCO SHOPS
As for the mini ones, normally they're run by Asian/Turkish owners (you will also find a lot of souvenir shops are owned by middle-east people in Europe). The price would be slightly expensive than big markets, but still acceptable, especially most of them open till late night. Tobacco shops is much smaller coz it gives large space to cigarettes as you know, and I find it is more popular in South Europe, especially in south France and Italy. As the special culture of 'Having espresso while standing along the bar' in Italy, you can also do little daily shopping, buy your smoking stuff and enjoy a cute cup of espresso while talking to the shop owner or other customers in the shop (but normally local Italians don't speak English), quite interesting :D
A little reminder for you is, don't expect you can buy all the products to support your whole trip in mini-markets (not even tobacco shops). For example, in some countries/ cities, you cannot find towel, face cleaning milk, face cream, tooth brush and paste there (but in general they do have). I can only guarantee that foods and drinks (limited selection) are available.
Hope this blog is helpful to you :)
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