Getting rid of the fleas

It is amazing how much stuff one is buying throughout the years and either not using it at all or not using it anymore while very often the items are in ok to good condition and it’s a shame to throw them away. Hence we are collecting such treasures in boxes and every two/three years we are selling the stuff on the most busy flea-market in Vienna – the one at the Naschmarkt. The slots are being sold 6 weeks in advance and during the high-season (April-September) they are usually sold out within minutes of the opening of the online registration on Monday morning. Maria managed to get us a spot six weeks ago for the past weekend and hence Mirko, Geri, Stefan, Viki, Oliver and Markus met at 0430 in the morning starting to sell all our “unwanted” goods to interested buyers. The first few hours are probably the most stressful as professional traders are immediately surrounding the cars, browsing through the boxes and are more or less acting like vultures over a dead animal in the desert.

We did almost everything to get rid of our stuff!

The good thing about that early appearance is though, that a large bulk of our stuff – ranging from clothes, shoes, bed linen, toys and dishes to more demanded good like bikes or electronic equipment – within the first hour. As we were lucky with the weather – it was sunny and warm – we saw a beautiful sunrise at ca 0630 having a healthy breakfast with sausages and beer and that was also the point when we started the more aggressive mass-sale process where pieces of clothes were offered at between 0,5 and 2 Euros in order to get rid of them. By lunchtime, after a final push in the “Happy Hour” (1 plastic bag filled with whatever fits in for 1 EUR) we finished, went for lunch in Kunsthalle Cafe at Karlsplatz with our revenues and enjoyed the rest of the warm early-summer afternoon. Judging by the relieved faces of our neighbour sellers they were glad to see us price-dumpers disappear as we probably destroyed their market pricewise. As we won’t be back for at least two years we have had no hard feelings though.

Jakob, Kerstin & Markus