Flea Market, Negreni 2007

In autum, every year, there's a flea market in Negereni, aprox. 80 km from Cluj, where you can bargain almost everything: clothes (most of them second-hand), shoes, sports equipment (our goal), antiques (some very precious I guess, but also extremely expensive, at least for me) and of course food and drinks. One side of the river:

and on the other side of the river:

We convinced the Mishes, our trip partners, or they convinced us ... it doesn't matter, to leave Cluj for Negreni hoping that we could bargain something to worth it, but cheap or very-very cheap. Anyway everybody goes to Negreni having that in mind. Last year we missed it, so this year will be our time.

We had in mind some skiing equipment for Peter and for Alexandra (skies and skiing boots). The offer was very poor in this field but still, there were some Hungarian fellows which had some good-looking equipment and with whom we could bargain (especially Peter in Hungarian and me in English :)

So in the end everybody got something cheap Peter skies and skiing boots, replacing the old ones and being the perfect present for his birthday. I got some old wooden plate for ornament, Alexandra got skies (her first) and some skiing sticks (lol...I don't know the exact word in English for that) and Mishu I think only something to eat...heheheh (the traditional kurtos kalacs).

Negreni is a mixture of commercial and traditional market. Of course are many sellers with all kinds of counterfeit goods, but also quality things. Some of them as I was saying are quite valuable and precious, but you need to have a good eyes for that. Every year collectioners from all over (Hungary as well) come to Negreni to complete their collections. But for that you need lots of money. A single small bronze statue, that interested me was 100 Euros (yes! the prices were very western only in Euros) which is quite much in Romanian money; and probably it was so cheap because was not that old and valuable...but it was well-made and signed by some unknow artist...for me!

In conclusion, it's worth while visiting this open-air enormous market, but you need patience, feel like bargaining and plenty of money on you! You can really find something nice at a good price. And if not you can enjoy at least the beautiful wild Cris Valley...but maybe not at 2-5 degrees Celsius as we did.