Cicilie among the Parisians

See more photos from the local food market here.
It’s around midday a sunny Saturday in October. The terrace of my regular café-cum-office is still in the shadow, so I decided to take a stroll up the food market which is situated in the middle part of the boulevard. I’ve probably written about these foodmarkets before, but I’ll do it again – this time coming straight from Eastern Oslo and I find their abundance even more striking.

The stretch of boulevard (de Charonne, de Ménilmontant, de Belleville and de la Villette) going all the way from Place de la Nation until Canal St. Martin, houses three food markets, each organised 2 times a week. In addition, there are of course other local food markets all over the place. And we are talking a quite hard core East End, popular area here, and it’s that I find so fascinating. Oslo has the same social fracture between east and west as Paris (and London as well), with the East end being far poorer and far more disadvantaged. According to a newspaper article I read some years ago, the fracture in Oslo in fact mounts to a difference in expected age of no less than 10 years between East and West! I’ve heard surprisingly little talk about it, and I don’t know if the truth can be really that extreme. However, I keep on thinking about the eating habits of the traditional eastenders in Oslo and how different they must be from what they eat here. The food markets here are bourgeoning with fresh fruits and vegetables from all over, with an unimabinable variety of olives, nuts, beans all that, with fresh fish and shellfish of a variety I’ve rarely seen, meat, flowers… everything, and very appetising indeed.

The east end in Oslo has of course changed a lot after the arrival of the immigrants and their fresh fruit and veg shops. And even these shops has spread far into the west end and surroundings now, it’s still a small phenomenon compared to the large outdoor markets here. But I really wonder how my life in Oslo would have been without these shops…