7 Km: the Container Market

This past weekend, Arun and I decided to go to the famous 7 KM Container Market. As the name would indicate- the market is located 7 km from the city of Odessa; a distance most locals consider way in the outskirts. Apparently, you can find ANYTHING in this marketplace- from hangers to leather coats to tweezers. Now, the reason it is called 'Container' market is because they literally take items out of shipping containers (see image below pulled from google images)

and then they sell them directly OUT of the shipping containers themselves. See image below from google (Sergei Leshchinsky)

On weekdays, the market is only for wholesalers. I imagine, people paying rent for actual stores in the city come out to the container market on these days, buy up goods and then quadruple the prices to offset the price of rent.

On weekends, however, the aisles teem with people. There are individuals with little carts selling hot tea and baked goods. And shoppers abound! (Now I know where they buy all that pleather!)

Here's some answers to questions I'd imagine you may have:

• Yes- there are a TON of knock-offs. And not nearly the cut-rate prices we saw in China
• It's mostly new items. But yes, there are also second-hand goods sold.
• No, there's really not too much haggling.
• Most of the containers are staffed by Ukrainians and Moldovans. Off to the sides we saw people from Arabic countries and Central Asia. They were more likely to haggle. They probably didn't have connections to actually get a container. And local Ukrainians tended to avoid them.
  

What was funny was that when I was hanging out with Mascha (from Arun's work); she couldn't believe we would venture out to 7km alone (and without knowing much Russian). She insisted on accompanying us since she had to buy a few items herself. She warned us of pickpockets, and looked genuinely worried for our well-being. Well, once we got there, Arun and I realized that it was a very familiar scene: much like Namdaemun in Korea, or the Silk Market in Beijing, or any alley in Benaras. As for communicating- well, that's where writing and punching buttons on calculators come in! So we really wouldn't have had trouble at all. Still it was a nice outing with our Ukrainian friends.

Oh, and we did buy a lot of great stuff :)