MARKET ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

borjan (78)in Wednesday Walk • last year

A couple of Wednesdays ago, I visited the open-air market in Zminj. Zminj is a small town in the central part of Istra, about fifty kilometers north of the place where I live. The open-air market happens on the outskirts of town, every second Wednesday of each month. For the rest of the time, the place is a parking lot for busses and trucks that can't enter the narrow, winding streets of the old town, which still holds a lot of its Medieval charm. I spent a few hours in Zminj, I walked the narrow streets I mentioned before, but I didn't take any photographs there. In today's post, I'll show you only the part of the walk that regards the outdoor market.

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In this opening shot, you can see more or less all there is to see; The market stalls and booths in the foreground, the old church tower of the old Zminj in the background, and some fairly big newer buildings in the middle. The post could probably end here, you would have less to read before the evaluation of the material & an eventual upvote, I could go searching for insects right now instead of going an hour or two later, and everyone could live happier, but nope - I'll make this thing a bit longer against everyone's best interest.

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This place has seen better days. I mean, better Wednesdays. That's the first thought I had ...

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... when I saw the degree of emptiness in the marketplace area.

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The relative lack of merchants and customers meant probably a lean harvest for the first and considerably less fun for the second, but the way things were was just fine with me. There was still enough to photograph and post about.

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I was there primarily to walk around and observe, but when I came closer to the colorful stuff shown in this and the previous shot ...

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... I decided to buy a bit of fine plastic for the kitchen and bathroom.

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I mean, I didn't make the transaction myself. I sent a friend to do it ...

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... so I was free to photograph the epic moment.

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I was cruising the parking lot very actively so I passed by every merchant quite a few times.

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That allowed me to notice some cool details I otherwise wouldn't have seen.

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Stuff like these two heads sprouting from a sea of caps and hats. Mannequins and their body parts are prone to accidentally create surreal atmospheres. I can't always explain what makes a mundane scene like this special, but I can recognize its visual appeal, and that's enough for me. The same can be said about the scene shown in the previous and the following photograph.

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There is something epic in the three small humane figures approaching all that market stuff.

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Here you can see some colorful clothing. In the following photograph ...

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... I zoomed in a bit to accentuate the abstract pattern created by those t-shirts. The items of clothing were used as the building blocks, some kind of "bricks" for the walls of the little market booth. I like to see fashion becoming architecture every second Wednesday of the month.

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Here you can see some slightly different pieces of clothing displayed in a slightly different way.

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Meanwhile, the flower lady was reading while the flowers were chirping like little birds.

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Here you can see the handbags that resembled the inmates of some ugly, crowded prison. I saw people crowded in an incredibly similar way in some documentaries.

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