Berkeley’s Farmers’ Market

As promised last weekend, I will write this weekend about what I did back then… Don’t worry: I didn’t do anything special this weekend: just wrapping up things, preparing for Evi’s arrival next Friday and putting the finishing touches to our planned journey of the last two weeks of August. Therefore, from next weekend onwards, I hope to be more or less up-to-date again…

On Saturday, August 2nd, I went to visit Berkeley’s Farmers’ Market with Sofie, Bart and a couple of people who came over from San Francisco. And guess what: Barack was there, too:

On the face of it, this market is comparable to what we know in Belgium:

However, in general, the produce sold here is more fancy and upscale: all organic vegetables:

beautiful flowers:

fancy apple cider—I would call it “apple juice” but then again, that might not sell as well:

decent bread—exceptional in the US, which is why you pay for it so dearly…

and finally, “squash,” a sort of vegetable comparable to eggplant that we don’t have in Belgium but is pretty popular over here:

In general, I felt the atmosphere to be more “recreational” than “functional,” as you could tell from the musicians all over the place:

After a delicious Thai “red snapper” lunch, I saw this lady who obviously took her careful biking seriously:

A bike helmet with lights attached to it! Only in Berkeley… Anyhow, after visiting the market we still hung around a bit and met this utterly charming couple:

She is a Mexican-Californian teacher—how could I ever meet one without giving in to their charm? ;-) She chattered away in her perfect teacher-English, every now and then throwing in some Spanish phrase “like we would say in Mexico,” really refreshing!

As for the old man—which might express physical age, but certainly not mental decline in his case—he was not smiling for the picture. I don’t think he would ever consider wasting his time doing anything else than smiling, with those twinkling stars in his eyes. Believe me, you couldn’t stay for 10 minutes in his company feeling bad. He was infectious… He was special too: a real San Franciscan of over 50 years old! You only seem to meet young people in SF. I guess you come here to work, but once you are retired, there is no more reason to stay and pay the skyrocketing rents…

In the evening then, we had dinner in “Little Baobab,”  an African restaurant in The Mission with nice cocktails:

After the meal, they would just remove all chairs and tables and start dancing. In no time, the place was literally reshaped into an exuberant party-hole.

Because of all the dancing—and the cocktails, I must confess—all I needed the day after was a lazy Sunday. And that’s pretty much what I got, so no more news for now…