Tere!

How often do you go to the market? When I was 12, I went to Oregon, the US and experienced a proper market because in Japan supermarkets are apparently more popular. In Estonia, there are quite lots of markets (which is called “turg” in Estonian). Of course not all the Estonians go there, and in winter the vegetables, fruits and flowers shops are closed. 

However, in this season (summer) all the shops are open and I went Nõmme turg to buy something for the first time in an Estonian market. This time the article is about my discovery in the Estonian market.

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Table of Contents
1. Meat
2. Fish
3. Veggies and fruits

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1) Meat

When I want to buy meat at the supermarket, I tend to choose poultry due to its cheaper price, but from time to time I want to eat something else. If you feel like eating beef, go to the market.

In my opinion the beef in the supermarket costs as expensive as the one in Japan, but in the market the most costly beef is approximately 8€ per kilo!

But!

As going to a butchery shop, I had no idea which part I should have bought, so I chose the one with bones in 6€ as a trial.

That was good though.

The shop is called Sigwar and the owner can’t speak English. This means it was a great time to try my Estonian! I said:

Ma võttan ○○.

Üks kilo.

I still don’t know how the third case of this part of beef is. Probably I made a mistake, but it didn’t matter in this case. If you want to try, you just can say something you want in ○○ when you make an order. The direct translation of this sentence is “I take ○○”. Besides, they sell meat kilo by kilo, so you simply can say how much you want. Then they will scale the weight and you will pay.

I didn’t have any difficulty in that, and since I’m non-Estonian, the owner seemed happy as well (to have communicated with me in Estonian).

By the way, this meat available in Nõmme turg is from Latvia according to my friend.

This is probably because historically the Estonians seem to eat more pork than beef. Of course nowadays it seems that they eat beef also, but I guess the Latvians eat more.

Which do you prefer?

I prefer fish.

2) Fish

Another day I went to Nõmme turg to buy some fish.

But! 

In the shop, the fish names were written in Estonian, and I could recognise only a couple of types of fish by their looking, so it took time to make a decision.

In this shop at Nõmme turg, a fish that looked like makarrel was sold, so I decided to buy one. I had an experience to buy salmon at Rimi (supermarket), and I remembered I could get only from one kilo, ergo I was worried about the amount. Anyways, I said:

Ma tahaksin △△. (I would like △△.)

Then the owner asked me:

Palju? (How many?)

Üks. (one)

Then she took one makarrel and scaled it.

It cost around 2€.

The makarrel in this shop cost 4 euro per kilo, so it presumably weighed 500g.

She sold me the fish even though that was way less than 1 kg (unlike Rimi).

After getting home from turg I sliced the makarrel into three, and cooked half with miso which is a Japanese seasoning and grilled the other half with only salt.

Yam.

3 id=”veggies”) Veggies and fruits

Finally the article is talking about the veggies and fruits. The veggies and fruits look more fresh than the ones at supermarket. Perhaps because of this, they are more expensive than the ones in supermarkets.

At that time I really wanted to buy cherries.

Usually they sell berries in huge boxes, but really occasionally they have smaller boxes. Or maybe you even can ask them.

But! 

I forgot how to say “box” in Estonian, so I looked around and found one shop that sold cherries in a small box. This time I didn’t have to say anything to buy.

However, it seemed this shop accepted only cash. Although it’s said that Estonia is a digital nation, once in a while you may need cash.

That’s all about the story that I went to Nõmme turg!

I recommend you to go there if you like seafood as they have much more options than supermarkets!

Aitäh! 🙂