so I want to take a trip. but I do NOT want to go to anywhere in the world that has been taken over by Walmart’s and whatnot…

I went to Mexico the last time, was driving around… bam… giant Walmart. why… why does everything need to look the same, sell the same junk.

is there a list of cities, countries that are still… good that haven’t been visually infected with corporate American trash stores?

  • Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.caOP
    3·
    4 days ago

    lol, wasn’t Walmart specifically but I do appreciate it. just corporate giant slabs of concrete in a jungle/nature setting. always meh and makes me just wanna no go there.

    • Tuukka R@piefed.eeEnglish
      5·
      4 days ago

      In most of Europe you can easily live all your life without seeing those, but they do exist.

      My country, Finland, is probably the most hypermarket-based society in Europe, so maybe you’ll want to steer clear of here if you don’t like hypermarkets :D

      Here’s something scary for you from the capital of Finland, from what I would consider urban area:

      A windowless hypermarket with a big street intersection in front of it

      All of the ex eastern bloc countries in Europe live in a somewhat similar way, but they don’t have it as bad regarding this as Finland does.

      Here’s an example from Poland:
      A parking lot of a Carrefour in Poland

      In Poland those don’t exist half as close to city centres as in Finland, though, so it’s easy to be safe from them!

      Portugal, southern half of Italy, Greece, and actually probably all of Balkan countries have it very well in this regard! I love the tiny shops in those parts of Europe! :)

    • azimir@lemmy.ml
      3·
      4 days ago

      Oh! You mean being somewhere with neighborhood scale markets, not just “fuck WalMart”. (Which deserves it).

      Yeah, Europe is mostly still rolling relatively small grocery stores of various makes and models. Go to a major Germany city on a mapping app and search for lebensmittel (groceries). You’ll get them everywhere.

      I just got back from walking the 80 yards to our local grocery store for a few things to cover tomorrow while I work from home. Total time 20 minutes for shopping because I wandered a bit. It’s wonderfully easy and relaxing compared to when I would do a multi hour Costco->WinCo weekly trip in the US that included dealing with all the driving and stress of huge stores.

      I miss Costco’s polish dogs, but that’s about it. The move to Europe was well worth it.