Flea-bitten

Many expats and foreign visitors to Moscow are familiar with the open-air arts and crafts market at Izmailovo - also known as the Vernissage, to distinguish it from the massive clothing market nearby that's frequented by many Muscovites.

I have spent many pleasant hours meandering the among the stands at Izmailovo, from the tourist-oriented section heavy on cheap tchotchkes and pirated CD's near the entrance, to the "upstairs" section (you do have to climb a flight of stairs, though it's all outside) which features painters and craftspeople selling their own art and works, an extensive selection of carpets, and a couple of rows of antiques presented in flea market style.

There is also an area at Izmailovo (in between the upper and lower levels - if you've been there, you know what I am talking about) which functions more like a true flea market, with stuff that's of more questionable value and utility than the handicrafts and antiques. I have to confess that this is the area where I'm able to spend the most time at Izmailovo, but for whatever reason I had never (until last weekend) sought out a true Russian flea market. These are known in Russian, I believe, variously as a bloshinyi rynok, literally, "flea market"; a barakholka, from the word barakhlo, meaning useless junk; or a tolkuchka, from the word tolkat', to push, since, I suppose, if the market's crowded you have to elbow and push your fellow customers around to get the goods, and if it's not crowded you have the sellers desperately pushing their wares on you.

A couple of months ago, we went over to our friend Leigh's apartment for dinner and noticed that she had quite an impressive amount of Soviet-era artifacts on display. She mentioned that she frequented some more authentic flea markets than the one at Izmailovo, ones where there were bargains to be had. I extracted a promise from her to show me these places at least once. Leigh has been in Russia for some time, so I knew she wouldn't bug out for the States without following through on this commitment. Digressing for a moment, Leigh runs a company that provides serviced apartments in Moscow and St. Petersburg - if you are ever visiting one of those cities and want a reasonably priced accommodation option, you should contact her company, Pulford - they have great apartments (no, she did not put me up to this - it's a sincere testimonial!).

Anyway, last Saturday we rather spontaneously arranged to check out one of these flea markets, located far out Dmitrovskoe Shosse (luckily, Leigh has a car). Although I was a bit late, as we arrived there were still lots of people standing around in the snow selling such a wide array of stuff that I don't even know where to begin to describe it.

You can see from these pictures that many of the sellers were already packing it in for the day by the time we arrived and made our way to the main area of the market (the whole road approaching this area was also lined with sellers) - about 2pm:





Later, we made our way to a more upscale section of the market - with permanently installed tables for the flea marketeers' convenience. That was where I located my principal find of the day - an item sufficiently interesting that the seller wasn't even lying when he said it was totally unique. More specifically, it was a 1944 page-a-day calendar (but with large, A4-sized pages - for you Americans who don't know, A4 is the European answer to letter-sized paper - almost the same size but just different enough to confuse printers at multinational companies the world over) published by the Soviet Foreign Languages Publishing House for the USSR's English-speaking World War II allies. Check out one of the first pages (some of the pages in the middle are more interesting and have color inserts, but are impossible to scan without damaging the binding):



The guy wanted a cool c-note for it at first, but I got him down from sto baksov (slangy way to say $100 in Russian) to 1000 rubles (about $35 at the current rates) by using some market tricks my wife taught me, such as leaving for awhile and coming back with the same offer. Plus it was sort of chilly and I think the guy just wanted to make a sale.

On the way out, I closed the deal on a more bulky purchase which I had been thinking about since seeing the goods for sale - the 20-volume set of Melodiya recordings of Vladimir Vysotsky, on vinyl - on the way in. Spent just over $10 (300 rubles) on that, now I just need to find a turntable.