Mega Image is a series of convenience stores owned by the Dutch Delhaize Group. Bucharest + its suburbs, Ploiești, Brașov and Constanța are the only 4 urban areas that boast with 3 or more Mega Image stores, with a few more spread here and there around Bucharest, making their distribution highly localized, with their density within the capital being huge. It has become a running joke with Romania’s main satire-news site, 3% of their articles poking fun at the retail chain’s tendency to open one store next another, similar to the Lewis Black’s old “Starbuck’s next to a Starbuck’s” stand up.

The distribution of the stores outside the capital seems to follow the holiday habits of the native Bucharester. Outside the capital, they are found in Constanța, on the seaside, and on the Prahova Valley-Brașov area, in the mountains, both popular weekend getaway destinataions for folks in the capital. For most of the rest of us, Mega Image is just an obscure thing, people from the capital joke about, a Bucharest meme that hardly makes sense outside the capital.

My map is meant to represent the isolated patches of civilized land, where one is never too far from the presence of a Mega Image.

Made with QGIS and Inkscape. Inspired by this map.