Riga, Latvia
Aug 9, 2025
A row of what looks like airplane hangars lines the edge of the canal next to the bus station. It is the Central Market. It spills outside with the stalls lined in regimented order, segregated by category. It is very much like Chorsu Bazaar in Tashkent or for that matter, like the markets in all the other ex-soviet countries. Clothes, bags, pots and pans are sold in the outside stalls and around the corner is a stall selling honey.
But I see something new; some opaque milky fluids sold in plastic bottles. I find it is birch water! They tell me that in early spring, tapping a birch tree yields this fluid believed to have beneficial properties. It can only be obtained for a couple of weeks and only in spring.
Around the corner, the courtyard is set up for fruits and vegetables and they look too fresh to pass up. I happily select my salad ingredients.
The first hangar is huge and all of it is meat of various kinds. There is fresh meat but also smoked meat of a staggering variety. The smoked pork is mouthwatering!
The next hangar is equally cavernous and is given over to milk products and cheeses. I also see trays of olives and they look delicious! There is none of the bustle of bazaars and souqs in other parts of the world. This is the same as going to a supermarket but they do let me buy smaller amounts. I am on a tasting spree.
The fish market is in the last building. Ready to eat seafood salads share shelves of caviar in tempting arrays. But smoked fish is king here; there are more varieties than I have ever seen at any one place. I cannot resist buying a bit of this and a bit of that.
Seeing a huge splayed smoked fish, my mind flashed back to riding the Trans-Siberian twenty years ago. And how Sasha had swaggered into the compartment with a fish just like this. I remember his earnest desire to teach us how to eat “Russian Style”. I do not do Russian style now but cannot resist a plate of salad and salmon. Yum!
ITCHY FEET TRAVELS 