| Go Loony for Booty At Toppila Recycling Centre |
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| By Matti McCambridge | ||||||
| Monday, 31 July 2006 | ||||||
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It may be that our world does not contain a better place for saucepans, swivelchairs, bicycles, televisions, skis and sticks, rowers, crockery, encyclopedias, monitors, toasters, crimpers, kettles, leathers, tablelamps, coffee-jugs, cupboard doors, melamine desks, lampshades, pine beds, cd towers, humidifiers, VCRs, and exercise videocassettes of Hollywood housefrau in blue spandex, than Oulu’s Toppila’s Paakatu 2’s Recycling Center.
Snug between a HalpaHalli supermarket and a gym, the place is so cheap it could rival a family of baby chickens. It’s so cheap it must have Latvian ancestry. It’s so cheap it makes other fleamarkets look like they’re negatively influencing Finnish foreign policy. Whole families of expatriates could furnish their apartments in Toppila for less than the price of a coffee table from Kodin Ykkönen. Floors of offices of modern professionals could type on centre laminate desks and store their folders in centre shelving. Frankly, this is an Aladdin’s Cave for modest western homeowners. A portable colour TV, for instance, 14 inch with scart socket and remote, sells for 15 euros. An exercise bike with lcd display for 25 euros. A four-slice Philips toaster for 3 euros. The staff, a patient bunch, are even prepared to drop the price, to keep the throughput up. They smile and comment on your purchases, replace batteries, reserve items, or spend ten minutes searching for that special request. “It’s amazing what people throw out,” Miika, an employee, remarks “-we get around 140 recorded customers a day.” Elderly families drive up in Volvo sedans to offload working appliances and leftovers from expensive kitchen makeovers. A jolly lady in her fifties comments on why she’s giving away a video recorder. “We’re coming down with them,” she says. “Our children had one each but they’ve moved out and bought new ones. This is working but the buttons are a bit worn on the remote control.” Apart from obvious bargains, there are itemsa discerning buyer might sell to collectors for several times the asking price. A man sorting through a box labelled 20 euros suggests that the package might fetch more than sixty on huuto.net, the Finnish equivelant of ebay. There is, however, a skill to visiting Toppila properly – according to Elsa, 58. If you don’t take your time, everything appears rubbish. The average person’s possessions, piled in a dusty warehouse and priced low, look worthless. The trick, she says, is to spend several hours searching carefully, noticing every item. She just bought an Arabia ceramic sink-stand for a new bathroom conversion, and a food processor that can cut meat properly. So save that wad for a better cause, and take a few coins to Toppila’s recycling centre. Your purchase may smell or otherwise require cleaning, but don’t let that stop you. Remember that the original fleamarket, the Marché aux puces of Paris, sold actual flea-infested clothing – and that with the saving you can always donate to UNICEF, sponsor the education of a Honduran child, fly your sweetheart to Majorca, tithe, or splurge on a week’s beer and makkara.
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