The Biggest Flea Market Of Eastern Europe - MarketFriday

October 2018 · 4 min read

This is the oldest market of Transylvania, it started in the middle ages but was officially recognized only in 1805.

Yesterday we were in the neighborhood and stopped for an hour. An hour is far from being enough, you need days to see everything.

Source

Negreni is a small commune of 2706 inhabitants, composed of three villages and it's situated in Cluj County, Romania. It's famous for its fair which is called Târgul de la Negreni, or Târgul de la Fechetău which is organized twice a year. There's the spring edition organized in May, and the Autumn edition, which always takes place on the second weekend of October.

Negreni is on the European road E60, exactly at the junction of three counties, Cluj, Bihor and Sălaj. You can get there by train, the railway is crossing the market and there's a stop at Negreni. Or you can drive there.

The biggest problem is to find a parking space. The inhabitants are opening their gates during the four day period and offering parking space in their own yard for like 10 lei. There are cars parked on both sides of the road and the police is also present to make sure the traffic is running smoothly.

At the beginning it was just a usual market for people to buy all kind of supplys for winter, especially those from the mountains.

Nowadays it's a four day market, from Wednesday to Sunday but vendors are there days before, setting up their tents and organizing things.

The vendors are from all over the country, buyers as well and not only. During our brief visit I heard people speaking Romanian, Hungarian, English and Russian or Ukrainian.

If you're a collector, this is most definitely a must for you! Real collectors say you're not serious if you don't participate at least once.

If there's to categorize the products, I'd say you can find second hand products, like clothes, shoes, bags, toys, furniture etc.

And there's the other part of the market offering collectibles like coins, stamps, postcards, books, paintings and other collectibles.

We were gunning for postcards, found three or four vendors offering postcards but they had no idea what they were selling. Three of them were offering postcards stored in big boxes, one had them in a catalog. Bottom line, there was no time to scroll through all.

You really need more than one day inf you are looking for something specific.

At a huge market like this I came home with only 64 photos, can you imagine?

At this point I'm wondering if you were able to find something interesting :) Let me know in a comment!

I know many of my friends like ceramics, so here it is a photo for you, enjoy! :)

It's hard to believe but I came home empty handed. This wall clock was gorgeous, would love to have one on my wall but the price was not for my pocket, I mean it did not worth it.