What is a flea market? A place where you can rent a smaller or bigger area to sell your few or many used or brand new things to people who believe or know that they or the people they are buying for need the very things you don’t. This is all too little and too much in its entirety. So, let’s stick with flea markets being venues that offer an opportunity to look around, browse through and bargain leaving behind all traces of compulsive shopping. What follows are three such places for such and similar occasions.
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The deceptive treasure of the City Park - Petőfi Csarnok
Petőfi Csarnok awaits its visitors with a flea market on Saturday and Sunday mornings. At the second-hand market in the City Park there are much more new (but Chinese) pieces than antique. It's something like the subway at Nyugati without ruckus or a party in the country without techno. You can find old books and magazines, tourist-dizzying Hungarian Young Communist League pins, passports from the time when Hungary was still People’s Republic, fake paintings, porcelain devoid of any value, cosmetics, underwear packaged in 5+1 packs or chocolate in 2+1 packs. Oh, and phone cases and CDs in incomprehensible numbers. This is too much for us really, though it shouldn’t: “There are 12 million cell phones in Hungary.” (Hungary’s population is less than 10 million.) Still, why the so many CDs? After going some circles to find something old and exciting, a good deal but we were without luck except for finding condoms for 50 HUF apiece... But we didn't mind, the City Park was near.
Petőfi Csarnok - PeCsa (closed)
Address: 1146 Budapest, Zichy Mihály út 14.
New Address: 1183 Budapest, 2-10. Balassa Bálint Street
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The queen of flea markets - Ecseri
You could say that an Italian tourist needs as much time to get to Budapest from Rome as much time it takes for them to get to the from downtown. If they are the fussy type and transfer is included but the trip will be much more problematic here due to the blue metro line and the walk from the bus stop to the market in the highway. But it’s all well worth it! Or so it is said by the hundreds of people wearing either running shoes and backpacks or suits collecting works of art who consider the second-hand empire in Nagykőrösi út one of the must-see places in Budapest. And we can only second it, having been there more times now and still not feeling the slightest boredom. For, here, you can behave like a tourist, if you like.
If you don’t look for something in particular (for example, a good-looking red star or a teddy whose skin has hardened somewhat), it can be a real recreation. A little getaway, peeking around, eavesdropping, time travel and enlightenment. These are indeed here, now, at us and for us (too). A tourist can feel as if capturing the Hungarian past (or present?). More socialism is found here than in Memento. What’s more you can even take it home. (Discount: 1 Hungarian pengő=10 000 HUF, 5 Hungarian pengő=15 000 HUF.)
And we are mesmerized by either the arsenal of objects reminiscent of attics, cellars and grandparents’ houses or nostalgia, that turns into curiosity about historic times as the person in question is younger. If you are a collector or something, it’s even better, that is, if you are able enough to find the needle among the toothpicks. But there’s something else here that cannot remain unmentioned: our own parallel reality. There's life at Ecseri: happiness, fun, laughing, crying, weeping, eating, drinking, friends and enemies, Hungarian and foreign, winners and losers, flashes and 'no photo', nice and ugly, order and filth. There's good business here with a lotta fun.
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The palace of markets – Bolhapalota
Bolhapalota is indeed everybody’s market. Here you can buy and sell whatever you wish, whether it’s a good-for-nothing knick-knack, an ornament, a piece of clothing, a jewel, something antique or something actually useful. The shop opened in Anker köz last July reinvented the concept of flea market. You can rent the various shelves to sell your things you no longer need (minimum 1600 HUF per week). Who is it good for? Everyone who wants to sell something but doesn’t like standing in one place. It’s idelovebudapest.cweal for those too who would like to browse through goods hunting for rarities in a sophisticated way. Handmade objects, the most popular of which are jewels, are also sold here.
Whose idea was all this? A Dutch and a German man, who live in Hungary and aimed to bring something new into what Budapest has to offer complementing each other's ideas. Thus came about the smoothly working shop of many second-hand goods in such a nice environment. There are some who rent for months and some who displayed their goods they got bored of during their one-month stay in Hungary. Though you can’t expect the market experience, it’s here that you can find little treasures in the most convenient way.
Bolhapalota (closed)
Address: 1053 Budapest, 20 Irányi Street
