Kuznechny Market in St. Petersburg Russia

When I visited St. Petersburg (My Trip of a Lifetime), I visited the most unimaginable places, went to strange districts and tried to see and feel as much as it was possible during my brief stay. One of my surprises were Russian markets. Those are giant halls where people sold vegetables, fruits, crops and meat. The one I went was called Kuznechny Market (or rynok in Russian). It's located between St. Vladimir Church and Dostoevsky's House. There's a monument to Dostoevsky nearby and the whole street scene outside the market made me really recall characters from his novels: eternal beggars standing by the church entrance, loitering old folks, hopeless street vendors selling handless dolls and bicycle frames along with silver spoons and old photographs. A man in worn out clothes fearfully squeezes a little dog of an unknown breed. Very strange but quite interesting.

So you enter the market. Immediately you are knocked by the sweet intoxicating scent: everything's fresh! From the dark aisles you get into the bright hall filled with counter rows. One section sells fruits, the other vegetables and so forth. You want to buy everything you see, especially when the sellers enthusiastically invite you to try this and that. Apparently they allow you to try fruits and vegetables before you buy them. They would cut you a piece of watermelon or let you try grapes. Some people just go there to try food and not to buy anything. You can buy fresh products that were brought from not only nearby fields and gardens but also from such far exotic places as Kazakhstan and Georgia. You can buy giant melons looking like a 10-time size cantaloupe, apples, pears, plums, grapes, pomegranates, apricots, peaches, tomatoes, potatoes, beetroots, peas. The sellers used different kinds of scales: from modern to very archaic and funny-shaped, like two pan balance looking like it came from the 1950s.

 Russians have a tooth for salted foods, that is, cured with salt. Everything seems to go thru salting: cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms, meat and fish. And the market is the place to buy those products. You see mountains of different kinds of pickles. Everything is handmade. I personally don't fancy salting that much but I understand that in severe Russian climate that is the best traditional way to preserve food for long periods. You can also buy fresh meat but you have to be an expert cook to know what part to take and how to define the quality of meat.

In the dark vaults along the hall walls there's another kind of sellers: those are 'babushkas', old women who sell mushrooms and wild berries they picked the night before in the forest. Apparently they do it illegally because as soon as we saw the police, they immediately disappeared into shadows.

When we came out on the street, I was struck by the most beautiful sounds I ever heard in the air. I kept asking what it was and my husband pointed at the nearby church. Inside there was a choir and they had a speaker over the church entrance that was broadcasting the liturgy. There was no music, just voices and it was surreal to hear that ancient hymns in the center of the city. We wanted to come in but there was no way: it was so crowded that we just passed. And we heard the singing for a long time echoing the streets.

So if you ever want to buy fresh food in Russia, markets are a really interesting experience.

For many years farmers markets have offered exotic produce but at pretty steep prices. Kuznechny Market is considered to be one of the best, if not the best in quality and selection.

The vendors will try anything to get you to taste their wares in order for you to buy, so haggle furiously, especially in the meat department where they not only carry Japanese deli food but also korean food.

Their hours of operation are Tuesday-Saturday 8 am- 8 pm, Sunday 8 a.m- 6 p.m. Kuznechny is about five minutes from Nevsky Prospekt, which happens to be one of the most popular shopping areas in St. Petersburg.