here you can sell your soul

On Fridays there is a Turkish market by Kottbusser Tor, one of the many markets you can find just about any day of the week around Berlin (and, I think, most European cities). This one, running along the south ‘Ufer’ river bank in Kreutzberg is the place to go for olives, nuts, dried fruit, rolls of fabric, rose flavored ground cow bones (ok, ok, actually just the gelatin of turkish delight), grape leaves, spices and lots of kakis (a persimmon fruit that I have been obsessed with for the last month. They are the most amazing experience ever if you can pick a good ripe one.
Unlike persimmons that I’m used to, they don’t need to be soft to be ripe; certain varieties can be still pale yellow and crunchy and be ready. But unripe, OH they are so astringent which, if you don’t know, is just awful….where was I, ah at the market).
I like how it is almost too crowded to walk down the row of stands. Not that there are that many people but the space is comfortably narrow and I am cramped between the bags of rice and grains on one side and on the other, milk white stacks of cheese behind glass. I can’t really tell the difference between the French sheep cheese and the Bulgarian sheep mountain cheese; it’s all feta to me, but I go with the mountain cheese.
The fruit and vegetable stands are green and so much orange. Besides carrots, there’s clementines and satsumis and oranges and more oranges and kakis and mangoes and papaya and pomegranates and humongous slices of butternut squash. The stand owners call out, ‘best price for sharons, here here’, or ‘scarves, gloves, everything, one euro one euro’.
At home I am surprised to realize I bought almost exclusively tropical fruit, walnuts, and three small squares of turkish delight, rose flavored.