08/12/2026
👋I’m still not over my two weeks grocery shopping through Europe this summer. (Can you tell?)
I keep coming back to how much what’s on the shelves shapes how a whole culture eats - and how differently it’s done there versus here.
Travel does something a daily routine can’t: it gives you a fresh lens on your own life.
You don’t realize how normalized certain habits are until you’re standing in a foreign grocery aisle thinking, “wait, that’s not how this works everywhere?”
Swipe through for the observations I can’t stop thinking about, and the mindset I’m still carrying home with me.
summerineurope
Switzerland loving real dairy makes total sense once you’ve seen the Alps covered in cows 🇨🇭 But it wasn’t just there, everywhere I went, dairy was treated as something worth doing well: real cheese, real yogurt (so much yogurt), real ice cream, all high-quality, all the default.
What struck me more was what wasn’t there: a huge alternative milk section. Some stores didn’t have one at all.
I don’t think that’s a coincidence. When the real thing is high-quality, there’s less reason to build a whole aisle around finding ways around it.
🥚🥚🥚
Some stores let you buy a single egg. Most cartons topped out at six. Meanwhile we stood there hunting for an 18-count carton that, of course, didn’t exist. We looked like such Americans 🤦♀️
I still believe eggs are one of the most balanced, perfect breakfast foods out there - that hasn’t changed. But this was a good reminder that we probably over-index on eggs (and protein generally) here, and it’s made me more curious about rotating in other breakfast options instead of reaching for eggs by default.
I could’ve spent an entire trip just photographing packaging. Beans and lentils in glass. Granola and muesli in glass. Yogurt, sauerkraut, kefir - several brands in glass.
Where it wasn’t glass, it was paper (some of it waxed, so still lined in plastics but still a step in the right direction).
Glass really is the bes
