Market Day A long time ago I learned that if I wanted to find an open-air market in Europe but didn’t know the way, I should follow in reverse direction the women carrying full market baskets. Today I did and arrived in a mere ten minutes with not a single wrong turn. Grizzled old men were vending brackish retsina from the backs of their pickups. There were country couples whose sole offering seemed to be sun-dried olives. A woman with brazen blond hair sat behind more padded bras than I could imagine being demanded by the entire island. Backyard tomatoes were so fresh I could smell them ten feet away. Eggplants were lined up in rows alongside piles of fresh herbs tied by their stems with tiny rubber bands. Romaine lettuces twice the size of the ones in the supermarket sold for a Euro less. A dozen different kinds of garlics in wooden crates were priced according to potency. Wooden kegs were filled with elias lada. One spigot still dripped from a recent sale into a buyer-provided bottle whose former store-bought label was now smeary with refill stains. Crete’s great bath soaps made out of pure olive oil were going for one Euro a bar. (It is a good thing they didn’t add garlic to it or I’d have gone around smelling like a pizza.) There were Gypsy women with their Indo-Altaic eyes and their big round gold earrings and their brilliantly coloured densely patterned triple-layered garb, advertising their bins full of cheap millend dresses by flinging them high into the air shrieking, 'Euros! Euros!', the most exotic of all imaginable thrift sales. Then came the vendors of gilt-framed mirrors and screwdrivers and bunches of backyard daisies fading by the minute in the sun.
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