VIKTUALIENMARKT - MUNICH

I was in Germany for a week to attend my niece's wedding, and among other places visited the Viktualienmarkt in Munich, a 200 year old market in the inner city, which is very beautiful and rich, ever so colorful, with good smells. It offers a big variety of fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices (and cheese, meat, bread, wine, etc.). Everything was so orderly and pretty displayed. The spotless fruits were arranged in little boxes and baskets, always only a small number of pieces, like they were counted, the stalls looking very artful.

How different from the fruit and vegetable markets here in Israel. Everything is piled in high heaps in huge quantities at the market tables, but in good quality too.

The exotic fruits in Munich were mostly priced a piece each, something that won't be seen here, where it is always per kilogram, and if you would ask for one piece, the vendor would laugh at you and shoo you away or give it to you for free.

And while looking at the prices I realized how lucky I am. Many of those fruits, being so special and very expensive there, I have in my garden, like pomegranate, passion fruit, feijoa, lemons, figs, even olives. And often we have so much of it, that we can give some to our neighbors, and the one on the right presents us in return with kumquats, and the one on the left gives us papaya, guava and mango. I saw in Munich khaki fruit (persimmons) for 3.95 Euro a piece, I can buy more than a kilo here for that money, and cactus figs (prickly pears) grow wild everywhere here in the country, including behind our garden, and we can pick as much as we want, if we don't fear the tiny pricks too much, or we can buy them along the roads from Bedouin boys at very low cost.

Then I could understand why my relatives were so happy and excited about the pomegranates, feijoa and passion fruit I had brought with me to give them, they are a real luxury there.

Photos taken by me.