Saturday 11 April 2015

Fabric market - Stoffmarkt Holland

Today we went to Weil am Rhein, a small market town just across the border from Basel, Switzerland in Germany. I had never heard of this market, until my friend Undine, who lives in Germany gave me this tip. I looked up their website and was pleased to see that there was one taking place near us.

This is their website, in case anyone is interested: Stoffmarkt Holland.

The market would be open from 10 AM until 4 PM. I picked up my friend Jenny at 9.30 AM with the aim to be at the market more or less when it opens.

When we were about 5 minutes away from the market, we got stuck in a queue. We noticed that there were a lot of Swiss cars with number plates from all over Switzerland and I jokingly said to Jenny that they must all be going to this fabric market. After standing for about 30 minutes we convinced ourselves that some other fair must be taking place in Basel and people were just looking for parking places, or, that the low € price must have brought all Swiss out to go shopping in Germany! In the end, a stretch that should not have taken us more than 30 minutes, turned out to be more than 2 hours!

When we were getting nearer to where the market was taking place, just across the Swiss/German border, we noticed that cars were parked all over on the side of the road so we feared that it might be extremely difficult to find a parking space and I could already see us, after spending so much time in a queue, to drive straight back home again! (The queue was caused by people wanting to go to this market.) However, there was a large parking place, very well organised by marshals and enough spaces still available.

The market was packed full with women! I never realised how many people sew and how far they are prepared to drive to buy their fabrics! Okay, I have also found that in the Basel area there are not many fabric shops and of course the ones that are there charge Swiss prices!

After shopping for just over one hour we had enough and drove back. At that time there was still a queue from the Basel side, well into Basel. There was no longer a queue from the German side.

We talked to a local woman who gave us the tip that next time, leave the car in Basel, take the train from the Badische Bahnhof and the first stop is Weil am Rhein. And even better, the station is just next to where the market takes place. She also told us to take a shopping trolley on wheels with us and true enough, we saw quite a lot of women with small suitcases on wheels!

Here some pictures of the fabrics I bought. I set myself a limit of not more than € 200 and I did stay below this and I have some lovely fabrics!





No comments: