Today I share the scenes I harvested at the Big New Year Bazaar -- back in December of 2019, just one month before the shit got onto propeller, and we were doomed to self-lockdown. There is not a single mask in the post!!!!!!! I spent two days at the St.Petersburg bazaar, taking pics - and got away with folders and folders... unbearable task to edit and share all of them, so I still hoarding. Maybe its a right moment to share some of them, since it is pre-Christmas fever time again.

The 1st part I posted a while ago, was about the Christmas tree Glass-blown Russian toys. Part two is about all sorts of food stuff.

---

I cant think everything will be easigoing again, as we figurally are sitting on the ruins of our economy.. Ah this is not what I wanted to tell at all.

During the Christmas and pre-new year weeks the folks enjoy doing a massive shopping to cheer themselves up. Russians are no exception from this rule. And probably this will never be erased from our culture. So, people willingly and with pleasure visit all sorts of Fairs -- food, book, gifts fairs... Buying foods is the most popular of them, I should say.

I borrowed 3 lens with me: 50mm (used it to get more quality captures of certain objects), 16-35mm 2.8L and Zenitar 16mm - a manual fish-eye lens which I love more and more each time I do a photosession with it. The corridors of the expocenter were very tiny and it was the only way to capture the whole picture, the scale of the event.

The "Gifts of Abkhazia" counter offered pomegranate juice, oil, a lot of sauces: different types of adjika, different types of tkemali (local plum sauce), a huge range of spices (the most important thing is they are fresh, tasty smelling spices made by own hands, not the ones that have been stored at warehouse for 10 years). There were smoked mild cheeses with a surprisingly fizzy smell and the most seductive look!

---

---

Dried fruits and nuts were sold at this counter, and many others. Check the differense between two lenses: Zenitar 16-mm fish-eye (above) and Canon 16-35mm 2.8L (below). Technically, L-lens is far superior... but the Zenitar's results are more artsy, creative, unusual and (sometimes) more convincing. Which you should prefer to work with? Well, I'd say: both! Crop each plot with a proper lens :)

Nuts, peanuts, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, cashews, several kinds of currants, dates, figs, dried persimmons, dried peaches, melons, pears, several kinds of raisins - dried grapes, halva, churchkhela (Georgian sweets made of hazelnut and grape juice), and much much more...

---

The abovementioned 'Churchkhela' (Georgian sweets).

---

the spices, they are countless!

This foto is my entry to another round of '52 weeks' contest by @wwwiebe. Week's prompt was 'Food' -- it is a huge field, and now you can tell, I do have something in my pocket to share! I could not but thank you @wwwiebe for this week's topic -- it helped me to break my author's blok and eventually to finish and release this endless post I started eons ago. An endless job will require an endless time, right?

ExpoCenter,	St.Petersburg, Russia	December 2019	lamps lighting
camera/lens:	Canon 5D	Sigma 50mm 1.4	raw-conv.
f/3.2	t 1/50	ISO 400	---

---

coffee? yes, sir!

Well, I should admit: Russia is not a country of coffee, like, say, Brazil, Indonesia or Guatemala ... and not even like Italy. Coffee was present at the exhibition, but not in the same quantity and quality as I would like :) 'PROBAR' is extremely small company (less then 5 folks!), I am in the know of it for a long time, maybe they produce the best coffee at St.Petersburg... the quality costs money - alas, I can not afford to buy it. (Personally, I consume varieties a-la "the best of the worst", i.e. the cheapest. I try to squeeze out the quality out of the process, not just buying the most expensive sorts).

---

This seller suggested very expensive, very exclusive, artsy-packaged, hand-made ecological natural-only candies... priced like a personal jet! I didnt go by what he said :P

honey, sugar-sugar...

Very sweet place! One hundred kinds of honey to your attention... Okay, not a hundred - but fifty kinds, for sure! / Очень сладкое место! Сто видов мёда к вашему вниманию... ну ладно, не сто - но пятьдесят видов уж точно!

"Armenia" -- says the cardboard banner handwritten with an ordinary marker. The economy must be economical! It seems that marketers and advertising industry services were not demanded here. A good product and happy customer is the best advertisement, and this product seems does not need any special advertising. Here it is modestly sold, hand-crafter home wine and the Georgian grape vodka - "chacha". The words "Armenia" and "chacha" mean a quality product, this is clear to everyone.

---

The meat counter was crowdy all of the time. I took the pics blindly, just directing the camera equipped with a fish-eye lens from the height of my lifted hands. Quite a kind of street photo here, isnt it?

something fishy!

Salty and smoked fish is a favorite delicacy of Russians. Well, one of the kind. I spent more than 30-40 minutes near the fish counters, it was impossible to pull myself off and stop watching it, stop taking the same pictures -- cause the seafoods and fish were so splendid, so beautiful. Luxury and delicatess as it is :)

The assortment was very large. Trout, sockeye salmon, chinook salmon, muksun, coho salmon, catfish, tuna, herring, mackerel, halibut, omul, beluga, smelt, squid ... and of course grainy red caviar. You may see all this luxury concentrated in just two photos!

---

Let's conduct a mental experiment, put yourself in a customer's shoes. Fish seller takes the product out of an antique, vintage-looking barrel (your merchant-grandfather could use one by 100 years ago; of course, the barrel is all wooden, natural and recyclable) ... or its an ultra-modern, inhumanely effective antiseptic-vacuum plastic packaging, which is not eco-friendly and increases the level of debris on the planet. The Question: which of two products will you choose? Marketeers and advertisers have long exploited the idea of "naturalness" and ecology... Sellers of fish love to lure customers with the appearance of such vintage barrels... I could not but admit -- it's indeed a good eye-catcher and worked on me too :)

---

There are a lot of preserves here, too. There are mountains of tin cans, all the sorts. This improvized makeshift 'display' is here to face the goods to the customers in the most vivid way, it presents the appetite inner content of all those tins - instead of their great 'outer design'. Old folks aware that a great package design does not necessarily means the product is good... especially when you cant see whats inside of the tin, and judge for yourself. So, this is (almost) the best kind of promotion.

Natural gifts

Herbs.

The store's name is "The Gifts of Nature from the Vologda Region" (its a north-west region of Russia). Dried herbs are sold here, which most likely one cannot find at a local grocery store: thyme, birch buds, black currant leaves, lingonberry leaves, linden flowers, willow tea, Icelandic moss. Jams from Cherry, cranberry, sea buckthorn. Wild berries: wild viburnum, lingonberry, cranberry. All kinds of pickles and marinades. The main part of the assortment, of course, is mushrooms: salted, pickled, dried. There is also a medicinal tinder fungus "chaga", @ruta-rudens wrote a post about making a useful mushroom tea from it. As for the mushrooms assortment, you better examine it in another close-up photo.

---

@ruta-rudens' post about making medicinal tea from a chaga tree mushroom.

---

Mushrooms!

Dried, salted and pickled.

Salted ceps mushrooms (as well as pickles) are the best appetizer for vodka (which is a must for a new year celebration in Russia). So, there is a big demand for this product, these huge barrels of salted mushrooms will not remain unsold.

The seller stretches out the pickled mushroom as a demo - try it, it's very tasty! The First Doze We Suggest for free!

---

Ok, a lot of subjects left untouched, but one cannot fit unfittable, right? so, part 3 will follow... one day!

PS. My badge -- it was actually the 1st time I was taking pictures with an official badge on me ;)