Anyway, don't forget to duck into the Ed's chain also while in Paris; if only to pick up a 1.5 liter bottle of store-brand cola for €.47. Tastes better than US Cokes to me, if only because they use SUGAR instead of corn syrup.

If you want to be depressed, walk into a Danish supermarket. Truly awful. Netto or Fakta would be the worst. Super Best would likely be the best, but that ain't saying much. Aldi is pretty much c**p, too. Have never been in a Lidl.>>

obviously, TG, you've never been to Iceland! we never did find out where they bought fresh meat - all that we saw was either frozen or salted. the general standard of veg and fruit was dire too - we saw a local remonstrating with a staff-member in one place about the potates which were so whizzened you could barely use them. and the prices were horrific, though this was just before the crash - they may be better now.

it's a lovely place, but with a few honourable exceptions, the food was a bit grim.

ps - my fave of all time is the supermarket opposite the accademia in Florence. as well as great bread, cheese, salumi, they sell whole frozen octopus.

I'd love to know what the people who buy them do with them.

Both the Aldi and the Lidl in Le Bugue (Dordogne) are about the worst excuses for grocery stores I've ever seen. The Lidl doesn't even have shelves. Everything's in big open cartons except for along the walls and the small refrigerated section. The Aldi's no better. I keep going there to try to find bargains, but I can spend hours sifting through cartons and piles of junk before I find something. And they're both just dirty and depressing. The Leader Price is only marginally better. How come the ones you're going to sound decent?

This thread is beyond belief. I give up.

The best supermarket in the world is Morrisons in Chippenham because I get 10% off with a staff discount card due to my son working at the petrol station there.

StCirq, this sounds like some of their stores with really no frills and I'm kind of surprised that they're dirty. But basically yes, that's their business model and that's why they're called hard discounters.

They don't work by providing their customers with a shopping experience and presenting goods in an attractive way. Their game is to move goods as fast and cheap as possible. For example shelving bulk goods costs money, so they might just avoid it.

Their point is purely that at the end of the shopping you pay much less than in a regular grocery market. They don't achieve this by selling stuff which is of questionable quality, so they're an alternative if you want to save money.

I like visiting supermarkets. I also like visiting public libraries.

Be careful with the photos, though. I wasn't allowed to take photos at a Roman supermarket.

it's a lovely place, but with a few honourable exceptions, the food was a bit grim.

In Iceland, you are safest going for fish.
We had some superb fish there. The cakes and pastries were rather good too.
I rather like mutton too, which did seem to be fresh but the worst meal we ever had was some very tough beef.

>obviously, TG, you've never been to Iceland! we never did find out where they bought fresh meat - all that we saw was either frozen or salted. the general standard of veg and fruit was dire too

Iceland is a subarctic island 2000 km from next continent, where not much food can be produced except for fish. So of course they have to get everything delivered in frozen state.

It is not much better in Norway.

We always visit the supermarkets when we're overseas, it's fascinating and we find great stuff to take home. In a hypermarket in France we were in fits of laughter at the 3 aisles of cheese (my god, there's ANOTHER one), then the 3 aisles of wine, followed by the 3 aisles of bread and pastries. In America, we always buy the Zatarain Gumbo and Jambalaya mixes and are amazed at the drugs you can buy off the shelf.

In Nice one Christmas we shopped at the Monoprix. They had a fabulous seafood selection and great bread, cheese, meat, wine etc. This year we shopped in Waitrose in England and I could have wept at the poor selection. Grocery shopping in supermarkets in the UK is generally depressing, too many ready meals and low quality product. One notable exception was an amazing supermarket in Windermere called Booths which our B&B owners recommended we visit! It made us wish we had a Booths near where we lived.

Another supermarket where we thought the choice and quality was high was Merkur, in Austria. We bought picnic supplies there, they had a terrific range and everything looked so fresh.

Kay

<they sell whole frozen octopus.

I'd love to know what the people who buy them do with them>

In Detroit they throw them on the ice during Hockey (soccer on skates) games - a long long tradition

Carrefour Saran now has self-check out scanners - just 4 of them but i did not see this labor-saving technology used in any other supermarket i visited this time - they are of course ubiquitous in American supermarkets now. Perhaps the labor unions being stronger in Europe are a reason these labor-saving checkouts are not in wide use?

And yes staff roller blading around Carrefour stores has been routine now for at least a decade in this branch.

Our local Hoogvliet has several self checkout scanners. If something fails to scan you get it for free at the unmanned checkouts. The manned checkouts tend to be faster however.
A lot of Albert Heijns have them too. Some have them on the trolley so you scan your goods as you put them in the trolley rather than unpacking it all to scan at a checkout.

Here's a couple for all you supermarchée junkies: I remember being surprised on a day trip from UK to Dunquerque in 1993 that scanners were used at check-outs in the hypermarchée; the first time we had ever seen this being done.

In 2000 in Brittany we did a reasonably big shop, i.e. filled a trolley for a family of 5 camping at nearby Carantec, checked it all out & then noticed that the till slip receipt had cunningly grouped together all similar items; all the breads were together, all the tinned stuff together, etc. I'm one of those who checks till slips, but I've never seen this done before or since. Is it done anywhere else?

Of course as most Brits will know it's common for day trippers from UK to head for France just for shopping, especially alcohol. But rather humiliating when you've worked out exactly how to ask a shop assistant for something in your best French, only to be answered in perfect English.

And we saw staff roller-blading around the biggest Tesco I've ever seen, in Podgorze Krakow. Do they need to have accident insurance to allow this?

<they sell whole frozen octopus.

I'd love to know what the people who buy them do with them>

In Detroit they throw them on the ice during Hockey (soccer on skates) games - a long long tradition>.

yes but Pal, that doesn't explain what they do with them in Florence, where ice hockey doesn't happen very often, if ever.

When aldi first opened in UK, the checkout staff had to know the price of every item stocked, as scanners were not used, and they did not use price labels either. They were remarkably fast, and mistakes were few (so far as I know). But scanning was introduced some time ago.

Yes Bert, ditto for Ireland. Although they were very good, it made it difficult for customers to spot any mistakes.

I LOVE visiting supermarkets in Europe. It is an essential element of my travels.

Hi, and until now I thought it was just me! I love visiting grocery stores when I travel. The strangest I thought was France's Picard with everything froze and a vaguely hospital feel to it. Certainly cannot discount the quality and convenience of their product however.

Whole Foods and Dean and Deluca and such amaze me by what they get away with charging for their goods.

sometimes you HAVE to go to a supermarket.

we were staying in Krakov in a B&B with tea and coffee-making facilities, [and indeed tea and coffee] but no milk or sugar.

having no idea what milk or sugar were in Polish, we just had to wander round til we found them - which was fun.

" Perhaps the labor unions being stronger in Europe are a reason these labor-saving checkouts are not in wide use?"

Unions are WEAKER in European grocery stores than in the US. I can't recall a single strike in the past 20 years, and the kind of nonsense Californian supermarket unions get up would be simply illegal in parts of Europe

Self-service checkouts are not very effective (or popular) in shops that cater for really big shopping trips. They take up much more space than assistant-operated checkouts, and they're slower. So in a typical 40-checkout medium-sized hypermarket, you'd need 60 or more self -service units, which would take up at least twice the space. IF anyone had designed a self-service checkout for big shopping trips: most just can't cope, and many are actually designed around everything going into just one bag.

Where they're effective is in convenience-store style operations (which, by European standards, is what many US supermarkets are). So M&S, for example, makes a very high proportion of recently-refurbed checkouts self-service. Ditto in the UK, urban Co-ops.

California is not America and the strength of supermarket workers there in unions is definitely not seen in my area, where supermarket unions have effectively been smashed -no one would dare strike here or they would lose their jobs. Period.

I'd bet Carrefour's unions are more potent than say at my local Kroger - in a way they bought off the old full-time workers by giving them a decent wage but not rarely hire anyone fulltime with such benefits.

"Self-service checkouts are not very effective (or popular) in shops that cater for really big shopping trips. They take up much more space than assistant-operated checkouts, and they're slower."

The lastest innovation in some of our supermarkets (DC area) is that you can pick up a little scanning device at the door and some bags (or bring your own reusable bags), then you scan and bag your groceries as you go, and leave via the self-service checkout by scanning a code on the checkout counter and paying with your credit card. So the capacity of the self-service checkout counter never comes into play.

I saw the type of scan as you go in operation in a supermarket in Florence four years ago - first time i ever saw such a thing and wonder why it has not spread over here - seems to be the ultimate labor-saving device - as long i guess as 'losses' can be controlled.

As I said some Albert Heijns here have them. You may have to undergo a spot check. It is the only way to check for losses, but a total pain if you are spot checked as you have to unpack everything for re-scanning.

"California is not America"

This just gets better and better.

oh how i wish i were so easily amused! So much time, so little to do, right stfc?

I'm not amused. This is the most boring subject I've ever seen, certainly here. I dip in occasionally to see if I can spot what the point of it is. I haven't spotted it yet.

Lots of time, thank you for asking, but plenty to do. Unlike some it seems.

well if you have not got the point yet i'd give up trying rather than being a A #1 ........

actually stfc - i retract my last post or would if i could - why do i care what drivel you say - actually kind of fun. Carry on

@stfc; for someone not interested, you spend an awful lot of time here..... :-)But hey, everyone their taste!

That being said; I too like roaming around foreign supermarktes. Especially the large French hypermarkets are a real treat to someone fromt the Netherlands, where supermarkets tend to be rather small(ish).
French hypermarkets are big and sell so much more products, a lot of which you can't easily buy in the Netherlands for instance.

My local Albert Heijn also has self-scan where you take a hand-scanner at the entrance and just pay by card at the other end. Very easy, even for the weekly shopping.

So yeah, I do understand this topic and topics like these are what you could caal 'the power of the internet'. Before the internet existed, you would think you are the only one with an 'obsession' like this. With the internet, you discover there are many many more like you!

stfc - Tommie said it all

Capiche?

Ever tried crème de cassis with sparkling white wine?
Yawn.

Pal - is this still going on? Hell's bells. Right, I shall put my cards on the table.

Firstly, 'Tommie'. I don't know who on earth he/she is and I am sure he/she has no idea at all about how long I spend each day looking at Fodors so no, I don't 'capiche' whatever that post is going on about. But anybody who has and 'obsession' with supermarkets and gets excited about self-scan checkouts has a problem I suggest.

To the main subject. There are supermarkets all over the world, they are all essentially the same and are owned by very few multinational companies. They all sell the same things, and we all use them. I can assure you that the Carrefours in Muscat and Singapore are very very similar to all the others I have been into. Identical products are available everywhere, internationally. It's a fact of the 21st century.

The only slight difference from place to place is that some products local to the country will be added in, and it is blindingly obvious to say that tourists generally will go in to buy something 'local'. I do, you do, everybody does, experiencing different things is why we travel.

Supermarkets around the world are not interesting at all. I've been into many. That is my opinion and I have seen nothing here in 70+ posts to change my mind. But I'm ever optimistic. Alles klar?

stfc: I may not be a 'regular' on this forum like you, but I do spend enough time here, to get a basic idea who you are. Btw: I am a 'he' from the Netherlands, but you may have already guessed that. To learn more; just click on my name!

It is obvious you don't get the point of this topic. You have said this over and over and the remarks in your last post make this clear ones more. Point is clear, but frankly your opinion on this matter, doesn't interest me that much, probably just as much you are not interested in this topic, as you keep saying, but keep returning nevertheless.

Other people do like this topic, and if that means I have a 'problem', so be it. if that is my only problem, I can conclude I live a good life at the moment!

Let us enjoy our discussions and find some other topic to nag about.

What's more to the point:

<b> Where are the bloody trip reports PalQ was going to write? </B>

Promises, promises...

Tommie, good morning. It's nice and quiet before America wakes up.

"Let us enjoy our discussions and find some other topic to nag about."

Yes please. But not 'paint I have watched dry'.

stfc, if you find the topic boring, why don't you just stop reading it?

I mean, every day there are a few hundred posts on this board which I don't find interesting. The key to happiness is that I don't read them and so I avoid the frustration of being bored. Thus I also don't feel the urge to post a dozen times that the subject isn't interesting to me.

To be quite frank, this would be an advantage to everyone since I find any post about a supermarket a lot more interesting than a post about your feelings in regard to this topic.

Fair enough, I'll piss off now. Nobody has explained, as I originally asked, why supermarkets are being talked about on a travel forum so I won't bore you any more.

I need to go to my local Tesco Direct to get a newspaper now. Have a nice day.

stfc: discussion closed as far as I am concerned. And indeed; always very pleasant to read and post in our (EU) morning!

Back on topic:
My first visit to a hypermarche I am really aware of, was in 1986. Hypermarche Mammouth near Montpellier. My parents and I stood on a campsite nearby and went to the Mammouth a few times. Shops like these did not exist in the Netherlands. I remeber being flabbergasted by the 52 check-outs, all the things that weren't sold in the Netherlands and the overall grandness of the store. Since then I am hooked on visiting at least a few supermarkets and hypermarkets on my vacation. So one way or antoher, that first visit got me hooked.