MARKET FRIDAY : A RURAL MARKETPLACE AND THE TRAVELLING TREE

On Wednesday 14th of September this year, I drove to the inland area about forty-fifty kilometers north of my hometown, in search of some nice place in the woods or in the meadow, a place where I could find interesting plants, insects, or spiders to photograph through the macro lens, but ...

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... but quite unexpectedly, I stumbled upon an open-air market ...

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... that appears only two times each month, always on Wednesday ...

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... so I ended up focusing on pigs, chickens ...

... people, clothing ...

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... fruits, vegetables ...

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... and other colorful stuff displayed on the stands.

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Later, at home, I found out on the Internet that the open-air market in Zminj happens every second and fourth Wednesday of the month ...

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... but on the 14th of September, I was there by chance.

On the road northwards, from the outskirts of Pula, the city ten kilometers north of my hometown, a truck was driving in front of me.

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There was a tree on that truck, so the scene looked slightly surreal.

I imagined a seed falling in the back of the truck and the tree growing with the driver completely unaware of the situation.

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This olive tree was probably being transported to some park or someone's yard where it will serve primarily as a decorative piece of vegetation. In the following photograph ...

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... the focus is on the marketplace again.

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A friend who was there with me ...

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... was buying some colorful objects made of plastic. It looked like a collection of oversized children's toys for little giants.

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Later we came across a different kind of stand ...

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... with the stuff made of wood and wicker.

After an hour of shopping and exploration ...

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... we took a walk around Zminj.

The old center of the town.

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The Parish Church of St. Michael is the biggest building in the old town.

It was built in the middle of a former medieval fortification that stood there before this Baroque building with Renaissance elements ...

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... and it looks like the time stopped at 1: 12. AM or PM? I don't know.

The church as we know it today was first built in the period from 1632 to 1635.

From 1709 to 1713 more work was done, and the building was almost finished.

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The front facade was completed in 1717. That was it. The Parish Church of St. Michael became what we still can see today.

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Here you can take an up-close look at the small detail found on the less exuberant lateral facade.

I have more details to show, but I will leave that for later. Because now ...

... is time to go back to the marketplace. This is a Market Friday post after all. Here you can see the place where I parked the car. There was plenty of free space, but an hour later that improvised parking lot was very crowded. Not far from there ...

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... under the old oak trees ...

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... trucks with sleepy pigs were parked.

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There weren't many visitors there. From that area ...

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... I walked to the nearby place with the chickens.

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I saw three types of chickens there.

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There were some robust ones with white feathers ...

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... slightly smaller ones with brown feathers ...

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... and these lovely dark chickens with a combination of black and brown feathers.

In some cages, there was a multicolor mix of various chickens.

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I took plenty of photographs while walking around this place, so I have more chickens to show, but now ...

... let's go back to the traveling tree.

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When the truck with the tree on its back drove through the fairly narrow street that leads through Vodnjan, a small town about twenty kilometers from where I live ...

... the branches of the traveling olive stroke the branches of the trees along the road creating a short whirl of falling leaves.

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In this photograph, you can see the entrance to the area of the marketplace reserved for fruits, vegetables, kitchen stuff, clothing, and everything except the pigs and poultry.

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On one of the first stands there I saw a colorful collection of children's stuff. Most of those toys were still and silent, but some of them were dancing and two small dogs in the lower part of the picture were barking.
In the following video, you can observe things in motion. You'll see cactuses dancing. You'll hear the electric bark of the puppies on batteries. People won't be frozen in time anymore. You'll see them walking & talking, and I hope you'll enjoy the overall atmosphere. Have a good viewing.

▶️ Watch on 3Speak

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This is a walk through the open-air market on the outskirts of Zminj, a small town situated in the central part of the Istra peninsula, about fifty kilometers north of my hometown.
While fairly long, the video is just a small fragment of a much longer Market Friday post in which you can see more details and read a bit about the place and the situation.

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▶️ 3Speak

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On an ordinary day, this part of the open-air market is just an ordinary parking lot.

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I always see a bunch of trucks and buses while driving by on my way from Zminj to Barban, another small town about fifteen kilometers further. The following photograph ...

... will resume the walk around the old town, suddenly interrupted earlier in this post. This is another detail from the church's lateral facade.

Here you can see a balcony on the only remaining tower of the old medieval castle that is visible only through the remains of its outer walls. And this tower.

In the small park under the tower, I came across a petrified man with a discreet smile on his face.

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This is a portrait of Drago Gervais, a poet, and writer that often used the local dialect in his work.

Here you can take a look at one of the small sidestreets across the main square with the Parish Church, the park, and the remains of the old medieval fort, while the following photograph ...

... leads us back to the chicken.

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For this set of photographs, I put the camera down on the ground and followed the action around the cages from a very low angle.

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Always from the same ground-level perspective, I took this portrait of a rooster. One of the very few beautiful roosters mixed with the chickens.

Among all those chickens ...

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... I found a bunch of ducklings too.

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They were fairly quiet in a crate with no cover to prevent the escape.

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Meanwhile ...

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... someone bought two chickens on the neighboring stand, so the seller had to pack them into a cardboard box.

A bit later, during a similar transaction, one of the chickens managed to escape. Here you can see the moment when it was recaptured.

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Here you can see one of the poultry sellers waiting for a customer.

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When a customer arrived ...

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... the two talked a bit. I followed the situation for a couple of minutes but I didn't stay long enough to see if some of the chickens were bought or not.

After this pretty long segment dedicated mostly to chickens ...

... it's time to continue the walk around the oldest part of Žminj.

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These beautiful old wells ...

... decorated with hanging flowers ...

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... were photographed near the Parish Church. Just across the street from the most iconic building in town.

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Thirty or forty meters from the platform with two wells ...

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... a sleepy cat was resting on the flat rooftop of a small building that looked like some kind of garage.

I used the zoom of my camera to get these two photographs. Didn't walk in that direction ...

... but back towards the marketplace instead.

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Here you can see a pattern made of a fence and a nice collection of women's handbags behind it. In the following photograph ...

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... you can take a more up-close look at the same scene.

On the way back home, while passing through some small villages in the Zminj area, we drove a little less than a kilometer behind a small tractor.

Later, while approaching the town called Vodnjan ...

... a small green truck was in front of us.

It was transporting a load of logs. With the traveling olive tree still fresh in my mind, I thought: " Look, the trees are traveling again. But in pieces this time."
At that point, we were only about twenty kilometers from home.

AND THAT'S IT. AS ALWAYS IN THESE POSTS ON HIVE, THE PHOTOGRAPHS AND THE VIDEO ARE MY WORK - THE END.