Your aisle-land destinations await
leisure travel: supermarket tourism. This unassuming hero of travel experiences offers a passport into the everyday life of a locality of a city or country you are otherwise unfamiliar with.
Forget queuing at museums like Copenhagen's Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Instead, stroll into a Spar, a Carrefour, a Lidl or an Inageya, and amble through the aisles of these supermarkets.
These are real-time cultural parks bursting with regional tastes, quirks and demand-supplies stacked right before your touristy eyes. Hike through aisles, scan racks, decipher labels, wonder about the provenance of odd snacks, splurge on local delicacies, and check out the kind of healthcare products 'real' Thais or Swedes use when they're home.
Grocery-store tourism isn't just about shopping — it's anthropology, with a side of different flavours of crisps and snacks.
Compare cornflake brands, marvel at seaweed varieties or cackle with delight when you spot a rack full of garam masala at a Viennese store. Oh, and it's wonderfully wallet-friendly, too.
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