It is a very special market, maybe even a unique one.

It is spread over an indecently huge territory with five covered pavilions. Nearby stalls flow like streamlets in all directions.

Moreover, behind the fish market, closer to the railway, there dwells his little brother — “the night market”.

I had racked my brains for a long time asking myself “Why?”, “What for?”, “What is this megalomania supposed to mean?” Finally I just googled it.

Each pavilion used to be a dirigible hangar. They say not many of them are left in the world. And this place is special because it has so many of them together.

Gigantic German zeppelins departed from here to London, Paris and Bombay with a romantic farewell, flowers and tears. You know all that emotional soup…

Hell no! From here they flew to bomb neighboring cities. There was no superb port Riga-London- everywhere. Unfortunately no.

In Riga many things, like owls in Twin Peaks™, are “not what they seem”.

But … the romance remains even though it was never there; it has quite confidently grown there later.

You can feel it everywhere: in the overlappings, in the incredibly large scale, in the entire atmosphere of overcoming, destructive as it was with all the bombs, when the world suddenly became small.

Oh well, back to business.

This is the fucking best market in the world and here’s why.

First, what stops me from shopping in a regular Russian market is something like, putting it mildly, their “oriental style”.

Strong accent, poor language and constant imposition.

A Hell.

I always leave with a lot of unnecessary junk, some wasted money and a bad mood.

Here: Zen technology (c).

Unhurried northern people who sell you things with dignity. For instance, tomatoes; it should be noted right now that tomatoes in Latvia are some kind of a national fetish (why/where do they get it in a northern country?). Black, white, yellow, orange, maroon, pink, purple, violet with streaks of gray, striped (ok, at least there’re no plaid ones), very small like berries, very long like fingers, suddenly resembling a boat, in the form of Aladdin’s lamp (do exist!), flat bagels, huge knotty black and green beans. My personal achievement is a 1.4 kilo tomato, you cut it like carpaccio, and slices cover the whole plate.

Sweet as a plum, tart, watery, spicy, with fractures – lots of natural gluconate.

And you can easily buy only one tomato in one place, another in a neighboring place, and still another from the next neighbor. I like to make salad out of 10 tomatoes each a different type, in season, it should be July.  I walk there, choose one by one and no one is bitching around and trying to force me to get myself a kilo.

Calm northern people™.

These tomatoes are somewhat special, you shouldn’t cut them, but rather tear along the fibers, so that you don’t break the texture and destroy the taste.

And mushrooms? Have you ever seen those boletuses from Latgale, or haven’t you? Fuck the porcini mushrooms! When I enter a plane with a basket full of them, even if I’m sitting in the front in business class, people in the back can still smell them. Can you imagine such a SMELL?

Lactariuses of all types, chanterelles, wild champignons… Have you even seen any of them recently? Honey funguses, gypsy mushrooms (grow almost till winter in dunes on the sand), parasols, russulas of all colors, with red pilei (remember them from my childhood).

Starting from early spring snowdrops – ramson – onion – carrot – new potato – rhubarb – fennel – St. John’s Wort – bilberry – raspberry – strawberry – cherry plum – boletus – quince – asters – gladioli – the second autumn raspberry – sea buckthorn – last xerocomus – lingonberry – cranberry – cloudberry…

… and at the very end of the year, in November, under the bare trees, there can be found the meadow saffron, a huge crocus of grey-violet color.

Ducks and guinea fowls, turkey eggs, crawfish, smoked fish, great beef (it is very easy to fry steaks out of it), rabbits, wild geese, wild boar, deer, black grouse, lake sturgeon, trout. They have everything!

I really love those times in Riga, when I go alone in the morning to get tomatoes, strawberries, some true milk and sour cream. Then I come back walking past Bergs and the park to my house in Dzirnavu street, climb up to my loft with its ceilings 5 meter high, prepare the salad with some 40% sour cream and extremely red onions, mix a glass of strawberry with a glass of milk (it turns out so thick that the spoon can easily stand in it), sit on the windowsill, eat, look and listen to the seagulls.

To those naughty gulls.