A taste of tradition!

 We are used to visiting supermarkets to buy our necessities but sometimes they don’t have all the things we need, a good alternative to visit would be a local market! 

While visiting the one in my city, Gjilan, I realized that it had a variety of products, such as traditional Albanian clothes, work tools, kitchen utensils, fresh food, even fruits and vegetables. I kept remembering how it felt when I visited while I was young, and it gave me a feeling of comfort and home!

When you’re about to enter the first thing you see is the name of the local market “Tregu i Gjelbër”, and then you have the division of the different shops in three rows.

At the beginning we have the fruits and vegetables, and by the looks of it they’re as ripe as ever, they look super appealing and delicious to the eye. 

In the first row we have clothes, they differ from age to style and color. All the salesmen and women are super friendly and welcoming, they will show you anything you ask them to. They always have a smile on their faces when greeting shoppers and they always call them friends or neighbors which made me feel really comfortable and welcomed.

As I mentioned in the beginning, in this section we also have traditional clothes, and most of them are hand sown. The saleswomen put a lot of care in the sewing and they try to perfectly display their beauty to the shoppers.

As we can see in the picture, here we have a variety of handkerchiefs in a lot of different colors and styles to match with all your dresses and traditional wear. And the best thing is that they’re only 5€!

One thing I noticed during my visit is that there’s always Albanian folklore music playing either from different shops or from the CD shop in the beginning, which makes the place feel cozier and more traditional all together. Seeing how we come from a country with much history to share and knowing that a big part of our history is shown through folklore music it made me feel emotional because I also remembered quite a lot of our history and personal memories while walking around.

A big part of Albanian homes is also our kitchen! Seeing how it’s a big tradition among us to invite family over for dinner, we pay close attention to our food and the utensils we use for it, and when we’re looking for new kitchen utensils the local market is our destination once again. 

As seen in the picture below, the kitchenware is displayed in such a clean way, you could see that all the dishes were spotless and no speck of dust was in sight. Considering the little space they had the salesmen and women displayed their products in such a lovely, and clean looking way. You have an array of different utensils you can buy and quite a lot of different models to suit the different styles of people.

 

Finally, I would like to say that if you have a local market near you, please do visit. I believe it to be a refreshing experience as you see and also learn things about our culture and tradition. You may find the things you have been looking for a long time or you might find something new that you like. And if not, you can always just go and have a stroll, feel the warmth and kindness of our friends and neighbors, which is something we can never get enough of! 

By Erza Kastrati