The Market Hall

Whatever the flags say outside, the market hall runs on the older system: pyramids of pickled everything, November apples in enamel bowls, cheese sold by women who let you taste before they let you speak. I shopped slowly, with the seriousness the venue rewards.

The hall itself is a good big Soviet shed, warm with bodies and paraffin heaters, acoustically alive with commerce in three languages. Money changes hands here that exists nowhere else on earth, the local rubles with their own heroes on them, and the trade works exactly like all trade, briskly.

I left with walnuts, a jar of quince, and the market's real product, which is the confidence that ordinary life continues underneath every arrangement of states. It is the most reassuring purchase available in an unrecognized country.