The previous weekend I bought a bike. I was actually looking for the Flomarkt in Sachsen Hausen but I turned up on the wrong weekend. The Flea Market is only every other week and I had missed it. So I was directed to another Flomarkt across town in Ostend (EastEnd)… ‘great’ I thought – a Flea Market with the EastEnders. Just by being given directions I felt the dodgy-ness of the whole situation. But somehow, after 45 minutes of walking in the wrong direction into the Financial district and then taking a tram in the freezing cold, while having a hangover (I had gone out the night before… but this is for another post) I found myself in Ostend.
Now have you seen EastEnders? The UK soap opera that makes you depressed (it truly is the most miserable thing on TV – I don’t know how people watch it and are not on Prozac)… well the Flomarkt was like this… only… well… a German version which was even scarier as I only have AS German and I must have skipped the chapter about bargaining in a Flea Market*.
There were people screaming; clothes pilled up on the floor (who would buy clothes that look cheaper than Primark? Or am I just too bourgeois?) and bikes.
Firstly I have an issue with bikes that are stolen – unless I am stealing it myself (LOL). I didn’t want my bike to have been someone’s stolen bike. But how do you put forward a comment like this to a dodgy car boot sales man who would seemed more than capable of stealing a pensioner’s false teeth in broad daylight in front of their dentist. He said he would sell it to me for €150. ‘Did I look like a millionaire?’ I wanted to say. Actually… compared to the rest of them, I did… so I bargained with him… and just then a German kid came to buy the bike, so I quickly named my final price… fine €100. Deal or no deal? DEAL! Ok… so I bought it for €110, just when the kid said he would pay more. So I paid, got on the bike and rode away fast, almost falling over as I was still hung over and had not ridden a bike in 3.8 years!
*And PS Flea Market was an appropriate word for the place, given the amount of bugs there… I hate to sound all bourgeois-y again but why can’t markets be like Borough Market, where, let’s face it… other than the odd lost hippy and dappy tourist, it is frequented by Champagne Socialists (I think I prefer EastEnders come to think of it) and people who think that ‘letting the yellow mellow’ is saving the world…
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