Supermarkets: Where To Go – By Adolfo Canales

Hello again everyone, this time I wanna talk to you about one of the common things here in Uppsala if you are a foreign student, doing grocery.

There is a big debate about which supermarket have the best prices, and of corse when you are an international student you try to save as much money in grocery to spend it in beer at the nations, at least from my experience jajaja.

If you are a one of our faithful readers in #taggedforuppsala, then you know that the coolest neighborhood in Uppsala is Kantorsgatan, or Kantors for the homies. And it happens that is the place where I live, and this place happens to be relatively close to the two supermarkets with the best prices and good quality in my own personal experience, so let me tell you about this places.

When I first arrived to Uppsala I was told that Willys was the shop to be if you wanted to get the best prices, so I went there to do my first grocery, the walk from Kantorsgatan is a 20-25 minutes walk, if you want to take a bus to get there, you might do more time, so the best options it to walk.  Once you arrive to Willys you will see that is very crowded, and a lot of people is going in and out, the supermarket is relatively big, and the prices are not that good,  they do have very good promotions, but if you can’t find any, you might pay the price of any other place at least from my perspective. The Swedish have a weird tradition of buying candies before they go to the line to pay for their shopping, very weird, but they all do it.  Once you pay make sure to bring, all your ids jajaja, and even your passport, at least if you are an international student (not from Europe), they gonna try to check that all the information on your cards matches you ids, and believe me it takes time, and it happens every every time.

After about one month of doing my grocery in Willys I was talking with one of my roommates from Spain, and he told me that there was another supermarket even closer than Willys, and with good prices, to be honest I was very happy, I did not want to continue walking to Willys. So I decided to give it a try and I went there. To be honest went I first crossed the doors of Lidl I knew I was in the right place, small supermarket, so you don’t get confuse with so many options, not a lot of people, good prices in almost everything and every week they have different promotions which are really good, and the most important every product is a quality product, so you will spend your money in a good way.  I did a similar grocery than the ones I used to do in Willys, and I paid almost half of what I used to paid in, so yes good points on that, they have one section only for Mexican products, where you can get flour tortillas which believe me is like gold for a Mexican in another country so good points on that too,  the employees in Lidl are really really nice, they are all really hard workers, they are polite, they help you out with your shopping and some of them even take their time to say Hej Mexicano!!! Lidl has also their candy stand for Swedish locals if you were wondering, and the lines to pay can get a little bit long, but when that happens the employees open other cashiers and actually they are really fast so don’t worry about that. If you are an international student (not from Europe) and pay with card, they will just ask you for an ID with your date of birth, which is less bureaucratic than in Willys.

So if you come to Uppsala then you must definitely try Lidl.

See you around.

Tack sa mycket!

/Adolfo