I stayed at a hostel that was within the heart of the Central Market. The market place is made of an indoor centre that is quite large in terms of size and people employed. In the indoor area are traders who sell a wide range of meat products. In the outdoor market area are traders who sell a wide range of consumer products. The main focus on the outdoor market is traders selling fresh fruit and vegetables. The one thing from a sight seeing experience was that the Central Market in Riga provided an interesting flavour of life in Riga, Latvia.
Groceries, especially the fruit and vegetables are cheaper in the market compared to the large supermarkets that I visited. The traders at the market are effectively selling goods that are sold in the supermarkets.
From a location perspective the market is separated slightly from the Old town side of Riga, and people who are near the railway station can access the market by walking through the subway in Central Riga. All the promotion that the Central Market gets, it is set aside from the main city centre. It is easily recognisable as there are around four arched roofs that are visible from the Railway station area.
The types of sellers ranged from young people, elderly and middle aged traders. The range of consumer goods on offer, did not particularly interest me, as I tend to pay higher prices in boutique or department stores in my local suburban location in Middlesex. I do occasionally like to find a bargain, but having looked around the place for a long time, I could find nothing that really impressed me.
As mentioned, the main products on sale on the outdoor section are fruit and vegetables. The one fruit product that caught my eye initially was the grapes which looked very appealing. The strawberries also looked slightly appealing as well. The prices of the strawberries at the supermarkets were around 2.50 Latvian lats for 500 gram punnet box. By comparison at the Central Market, the prices were around 1.20-1.50 a 500 gram punnet box. It seemed at first that the prices of the fruit were slightly more expensive at the beginning area of the market, but more or less the prices were relatively similar. We found that the prices of strawberries on the weekends were lower compared to the week days.
I did buy a pair of trainers. It was not that I was particularly interested, but I did show some interest in buying a pair of trainers. The sales man at one of the stalls gave me a sales pitch which I fell for. Thankfully, I managed to haggle a little and brought down the price paid of a reasonable, although unknown brand of trainers. Other items of clothing such as t shirts, shirts, baseball caps, sunglasses were all on sale here at reasonably low prices. Women’s clothing was also on sale including underwear, general wear such as skirts, blouses, dresses, jeans, and other types of clothing.
I found the Central Market slightly disappointing as I wanted to buy items such as DVD's, and computer games, but the best they could do, was sell DVD's dubbed in the Russian language.
For me, this proved to be slightly disappointing. Regarding sunglasses I found that the non prescription sunglasses to be low priced indeed, where the prices ranged from 3 Latvian lats, and went as high as 6 Latvian lats. As far as I was aware, the sunglasses were unbranded.
The indoor area of the market was interesting. If you ever happen to stay in a good hotel in Riga, then make sure you bring a grill, as the range of meat products is very comprehensive indeed. The choice of meats included liver, beef, pork, duck, and chicken. We noticed that the displays contained very fresh meat judging by the look of the displays. The choice of cuts ranged from just about every part of the animals body. The way the meat was stored and displayed is an interesting part of the sight seeing experience as well. The prices of meat are lower compared to the supermarkets. The size of the indoor market is very big indeed as it is a very large warehouse type building. The appearance of the meat did look appealing. I thought to myself I could have a very low cost stay in Riga indeed, as the prices and availability of the meat as well as the food sold in the outdoor section of the Central Market was excellent. The indoor and outdoor parts of the market would combine well, to having a lot of fresh food that would last the duration of a short stay in Riga.
On the outside section of the market are chalet style shops as well as a few shops that are of a town house style, where they sell a wide range of consumer goods. The clothing disappointed me, as I had a close look of summer style shirts where the prices were low, but the quality I could tell was acceptable, but not within my high quality standards. The fruit and vegetable traders had green coloured table stands which had corrugated roofs. As far as electronic goods are concerned, I admit that I did not see any stall holders selling any. I did witness a stall holder selling mobile phone accessories at low prices. I did not venture into the parts behind the market, as there is a local police station as well as the Hostel to the side of the Market. The Market area I did not find to be quite as big as Wembley market, but on the whole it took me around half an hour walking at a leisurely pace to browse around most of the Market area in Riga. I did not notice pick pockets or trouble makers at this venue during our stay, but I suppose there might have been some of these people somewhere in the crowd. I closed myself away from the pick pocket crowd, as I had my hands in my jeans pockets and carried no bags or unnecassary items. Therefore, I felt much safer by doing this.
The level of trade from what I saw, was relatively quiet on the Sunday, although on the Monday and Tuesday when I also visited there were more people and it looked very busy. Generally the presentation of goods was very easy on the eye and with prices displayed on goods also helped. I visited the market on many occasions and my feelings are mixed overall. I thought that compared to the main market in Supermarket which is on a long street near the railway station in Sofia Bulgaria, the one thing I noticed that the prices of fruit and vegetables are lower in Sofia than they are in Riga.
There was a slightly more favourable feeling that I had in visiting the Central Market in Riga, as the displays were easily identifiable and the prices of fruit and vegetables were easy and clearly labelled. But on some stalls in Riga, the prices of some goods and I visited a part of the Market where the clothing and footwear in particular did not have prices displayed against the clothing. I found that certain market stall holders deliberately try to catch out tourists by not having the prices, and from experience these stall holders should be avoided as they are simply there trying to fool and get money from tourists by having the same goods as another market stall holder with their prices displayed clearly, This point, makes the business of haggling is largely a waste of time, because by visiting a stall holder without the prices displayed, the stall holder without these prices will charge an unsuspected tourist what they like. Even by haggling a few Latvian lats less will not make any significant difference to the price paid of the goods.
Another thing I noticed was that inside the hostel Posh Backpackers, there is a nice Latvian lady who gave me a good haircut for a very good rate of 5 Latvian lats. There was another lady inside the hostel that does manicures and other beauty treatments. Next to the Posh backpacker’s hostel is a nice coffee shop that serves quality coffee for a very reasonable price of around 70 centimes, which is priced at slightly less than £1. I would highly recommend a visit to this coffee shop. Another interesting trader I noticed who was selling fresh orange juice for quite a low price which was very nice and refreshing.
A visit to Riga is well worth visiting in getting a good flavour of Market trading, and life in Riga. I found the experience of visiting, browsing and buying some fruit as well as a pair of footwear that I will just use in the garden area to be a very interesting experience to say the least. It taught me that there are good market stall holders that display the goods, and charge a competitive price for the goods. This compares to the small pocket of stall holders in Central Market, Riga who do not display goods with prices attached and rely largely on an ambitious and simple sales pitch, whereby if you show an interest in a product, the sales man will do his up most to try and convince you that the product you want to buy is for you. A few minutes later of a friendly sales pitch combined with his main selling points, will almost certainly result in a likely sale.
Before I visited Riga, Latvia I read reports that the country as a whole was in recession, I noted this during my four day visit here, and thought that the Old Town part of Riga was quieter than expected, as I guessed that the Market area as a whole was somewhat less busy than I would have expected. I feel that there are times of the day such as post 9am the market place area was busier than, later during the day. I did wake up one morning at around 8am and found that some market stall holders did not have their products on display in the main area, and had to drink cup of coffee and did not see much activity in the Market area until around 9am.
There were not queues of any significant size to note and report, as I feel that the recession has hit people in Riga and many other parts of Europe. Unfortunately I never visited Barcelona's market, although I have visited the long street in Sofia, where during my visit there was a many stall holders selling similar products that you would find in the Rigan Central market.
I do plan to visit Riga at some stage in the near future, as this was a good learning as well as a pretty good observation experience that taught me a lot of things about Market places in general. The layout and general presentation of the Riga Central Market was excellent, as the place was navigateably friendly and a place that is free to browse and enjoy the scenery of Market place stall holders and local buyers in the market. I noted that a lot of local people were generally browsing items as opposed to looking at people buying goods. Maybe the recession in Riga is hurting more than people take note or really care. This was my overall impression of the Central market, that there were plenty of goods and people meeting together. Arguably there was not significant buying activity, which in my view makes the process somewhat disappointing. It made me wonder that the local people must have been lowering the price of certain goods by discussing prices to the stall holders. This was the case in the fruit and vegetable area in particular where I noticed some people were in conversation with some stall holders, I can only assume if anything, that they were discussing prices of the products. Again I can only assume that the price of meat they were selling was cheap, because I could not see the prices displayed, as the quantity of meat on offer was too much to see. The whole focus of the indoor market was on meat products. Any type of meat, they had it stocked.
To the Market's credit I was pleased and was interested in visiting the market on many occasions, largely because the Market was well located, I stayed at a Hostel that was located in the heart of Riga Central Market, and was generally pleased and found this a worth while visit. I found the location a lot more user friendly compared to some of the museums and park areas of Riga. It is probably not a family friendly experience as I feel that the choice of stuff for kids is limited, and perhaps best left to adults who have experience of Market places. The transport links are excellent.
Visited May 15 - May18th 2010
Will visit possibly again in November 2010.
Riga Central Market 
