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Sunday

"giełda" - scheduled for sunday

anyone who ever hunted second-hand things probably had his own week-schedule. while I lived with my parents in koszalin, my hometown, I had mine:

monday – a new delievery hits second-hand shops. the whole assortment from the last week is gone and exchanged for sth you haven’t seen there yet. if this is the kind of shop where you buy clothes per kg, than on monday kg is most expensive and its price goes lower and lower each day till Saturday as there are less and less clothes to choose...

tuesday – a market (rynek). that day farmers used to come to town and sell their products. after a while other sellers joined them. now it is a paradise for everyone who's looking for antiques and second-hand bargains.

wednesday, thursday – take a break!

friday rynek, again. if you overslept the tuesday one (it starts at 6.00 am…), you can take a second try!

saturday – if you’re broke and need some new clothes, this is the best day to shop in second -hand shops, as you pay the least for a kg or just half price for things that are vd. the choice is maybe limited, but for the real hunters that is the best challange! you’ve got to be prepared for crowds, crowds, crowds…

sunday (today!) – GIEŁDA (eng. „commodity exchange”, though it has nothing to do with it). in belgrade on sunday there is a buvljak in zemun and in the majority of polish cities you'll find – most probably in the suburbs - a giełda. the only one I know well (used to know, actually) is a giełda of koszalin: my farther (the great collector and garbage lover) was always a huge fan of it and when I was a kid we would go there like other go to church each sunday:)

if you can imagine a mixture of a market, fle-market, bazaar and an open-air furniture /car /white goods saloon than you know how giełda looks like.
in the early 90’s when there was still no decent shopping malls in poland and we were buying clothes from booths and little boutiques, giełda was a temporary shopping center, a square where almost all the booths’ owners from the town had their stands and you could easily see and compare offers. of course, a very important part of it was the one filled with second-hand cars on sale.
in general, giełda from the 90’s was a great celebration of kitch, disco-polo music, grilled sausages, cheap high heals and garbage of all kind. to explain how popular it was each sunday I have to mention that there were special loud speakers on the square and announcements about children lost in the crowd were read one after another...

later, as the shopping malls came in, giełda still didn’t lose its customers – at least the one in koszalin – as there was a rapid growth of stands with all kinds of second-hand things brought from germany: good quality, good desing and a good price – best combo for each buyer.
once you go to giełda, you have to expand your definition of what „everything” means: cars, parts of cars, puppies, pots, carpets, chinese and turkish clothes, sheepskin coats, coats, sausages, lamps, sweets, cosmetics, films on dvd, music on cd, pottery, toys, decorations of all kinds, clocks, shoes, gloves, fish, washing machines, ovens, tables, jewlery, couches, pies, linen etc. etc. etc. a paradise!

I myself had one experience as a giełda seller: we had puppies and my father made me and my brother stand with them while he was stralling among the stands. we were children, it was bloody november, the wind was blowing our minds away and puppies were trembilng as hell. I wanted to disappear, I wanted to be a lost child from a loud speaker announcement...

well, making long story short - if you like bizarre bazaars and you happen to be round here one sunny sunday, try to find a giełda nearby . it's something between a nightmare and fun;)

-savez

giełda (koszalin)

buvljak zemun
the second pic is just another memory of belgrade's buvljak. shoppin'beograd, hell yes!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Greetings from Koszalin :)

staklene bombone | hard candies said...

who who who?!

Anonymous said...

no to pozdrawiaki dla madre i padre hal i alles gute fur t zum geburtstag :)!
kveras!

t said...

thanks kveras, whoever you are, Mr T

t said...

ale blamaż z tym kveras i postu się nie da edytować, więcej tu nie piszę, zostawię to innym

Anonymous said...

Ty-mi sie nie przejmuj kverasem :)

de pacosciewicz!