[spwa4]

I also live in a small European town and there is a convenience store and a hairdresser. Oh and restaurants. That's it. Doesn't matter if you go to neighboring towns, they're the same. One of the neighboring towns has a supermarket, an Aldi.

I am also old enough to remember what it looked like in 1985.

[regexorcist]

Sounds like a very small town? In general most places are filled with shops you can walk to. In southern Europe in particular it's almost overwhelming the amount of options you have.

[spwa4]

Depends what you mean by very small town. It's about 30k people. So are the neighboring towns.

The nearest bigger town (~120k I believe) is about 25km away. Not quite walking or biking distance, but a short drive.