Small-town shopping

Last Saturday was market day in La Garriga. About an hour by train outside of Barcelona, La Garriga is the perfect mix of quaint and livable. Big enough that you can buy most anything you would need (cupcake liners notwithstanding) but small enough that all but a few roads close all day Saturday, leaving the expanse of cobblestone streets to walking shoppers.

I decided against my camera in favor of a more genuine and audibaly oriented experience.

We began at the fish shop. A deceptively small street window opened into a long, narrow space complete with a fresh array of more types of seafood than I've ever before seen. As I surveyed the dozens of (often whole) fish, squid, clams, oysters, and the like, I strained to understand the leisurely spoken Catalan lobbed from customers to rubber-aproned shop workers and back. There was something about the weather (to be expected) and some racy teasing of a probably 85-year-old woman when she drew the ticket number 69 (not so expected). Neus, having made her selection for the paella she was planning to cook that afternoon, had the fishy goods wrapped in paper and stored on ice, to be retrieved on our return.

Next was the bread shop, which in addition to lovely loafs of soft, crusty bread yielded rich chocolate sticks wrapped in croissants. Chocolate, I was instructed, is not a dessert but a breakfast food in Catalonia.

As we made our way through the streets to the weekly farmer's market, Neus greeted people here and there and stopped for a few minutes to chat with a friend. But when we arrived to the heart of the market, set up in a rather cramped square, it was all business. After locating "her produce vendor," the same one her family buys from every week, Neus shot questions to him about this week's offering and quickly decided on quantities that were bagged and dropped in her tote while the next selection was made. The bag was soon filled with giant red peppers, kiwis, and avacados, tiny artichokes, and exotic looking greens. Payment was offered over the rising volume of voices around us lobbying for goods and we walked quickly to the outer edge of the stalls.

At the next stand, I sampled four or five of the dozen or more varieties of olives cloaked in dark green, light green, and brown shades, large and small. I would finish sucking the last salty bit off of a smooth pit only to be offered another green-gem-laden toothpick by the friendly olive seller.

In a search for flaneras (the metal cups used to cook flan in), we stopped at a traveling kitchen supplies shop manned by a spry, gray-haired vendor who gave the same offer of marriage to Neus he had just finished giving to a woman twenty years his elder.

Only when it took Neus 40 mintues or so to be served when she was second in line at the meat shop and Zoë was melting down did I see the downside of social shopping (a side that, as a Barcelona-grown woman, Neus herself complained of quite vehemently). But for the most part, it was really lovely--a much more enjoyable experience than my usual run to Smith's.