Small restaurants offer traditional Viennese food such as kaiserschmarrn or palatschinken in Naschmarkt.[Photo by Wang Shanshan/China Daily]

Browsing the Flohmarkt

We were lucky to visit the city on a weekend. Vienna's Flohmarkt, or Flea Market, pops up every Saturday, opening at dawn and closing at four in the afternoon. It is the largest flea market I have ever seen, much bigger than the ones in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn in New York City and in Portobello and Greenwich in London.

The market lies just on the border of the city center. We took the subway line U4 from downtown and got off at a stop called Kettenbruckengasse, which is also the name of a street. When we got out of the station the expansive market spreading before our eyes was quite a sight.

Half of Vienna seemed to converge at the market. The street was wide, and four or five lines of stands took up more than half of it. The narrow pathways between the lines of stands were crammed and the sounds of people haggling prices filled the air. Colorful textiles, in Middle Eastern and South Asian styles, made a sharp contrast with the solemn white and gray buildings on both sides of the street.

Antiques, or just old stuff, were a large part of the market. I was immediately attracted by a stand selling old silverware. There were lamps, plates, forks - even toothpicks. After some bargaining, I bought an elaborate scarf ring for 10 euro. It was cheap because it was not genuine silver, the owner told me.

Next to the stand, a man with long blonde hair was selling old gramophone records of rock music. Another man was selling prints, mostly framed, of sketches depicting European landscapes. They all looked old and had writing on the back of the frames. The stand next to his had thousands of used postcards piled up on the ground, each selling for five cents.

Added to the crowded scene was the fact that many goods were piled up chaotically on the sidewalks. Some stuff was plain junk, making me wonder why anyone would buy it at all.