Laundromats or service laundries were available in a lot of places. I tended to find it worth it to pay the extra couple of euros for a full-service laundry. For me, the time saved by being able to drop it off in the morning and pick it up in the evening was more precious to me than the little bit of money.

When I got really desperate I’d wash a few items in a hostel sink using biodegradable hand wash detergent, and then just hang stuff wherever I could to let it dry. This didn’t work so well unless I was going to be in a place for a few days cause things take a while to dry.

If a hostel has a laundry, and some do, that’s a huge plus for me. When deciding on places to stay, you might like to keep this in mind.

Otherwise I take the two hours or so out of my day and go to a local laundromat, which is always an interesting experience. You should be able to get a recommendation from Lonely Planet or from the hostel itself.

I would go to those drop-off places that segacs recommends, but I haven’t had an opportunity to try that yet.

Unless I happen to be somewhere with a washing machine (hostel/campsite/friend’s place), I always just do my clothes in the sink. As segacs said, this is best done if you stay somewhere for 3 nights or longer, or if it’s warm and dry and you can hang your clothes outside. I’m sure there’s plenty of laundromats in the places you mention though.

Laundrimat and sink. In may cities it seems like there is a laundrimat on almost every residential street. People are helpful all over.