You know, sometimes, in discussions in their hearts to send to North Korea next lover of the Soviet past. Like, what are you doing here anyway, go to North Korea – there here you will have authentic USSR. But something about yourself all understand that this is still more a figure of speech than a real identity. But looking at this photo of a typical North Korean grocery store I’m like a time machine in the Soviet era moved. Authenticity – complete.
This here is a typical Soviet pretentious marble-concrete scope in extremely poor, almost beggarly range of products. Photo made this year photographer Michal Kuniewicz, which describes the history of the photo, he managed to deceive the accompanying guide and went to a regular store to ordinary citizens of Pyongyang where foreigners usually try not to let. And there imperceptibly took that picture. Of course a pity that only one, but its enough.
No, you can’t say that the store is completely empty. There, tempting lie the roots of something like radish and green onions. And on the rear rack is a cabbage, and something like fennel. And two pumpkins adorn the landscape. And the buyer takes the bag of green apples. About those green apples! I think I even remember the taste – always sour, but even acid these apples were some not pronounced (not like, say, Antonovka). Apparently the variety of these apples described in a work of Karl Marx. Well, no, I can’t believe that in North Korea, 2016 accidentally so accurately reproduced that variety of apples, which is usually only sold in the Soviet stores of the Brezhnev era. This is clearly a standard described by the classics.
A little further is counter-refrigerator. Its shape is original. In the USSR, these shelves were somewhat different. But the range is not particularly affected. What is there? Like frozen fish. Just remember the Soviet model set: hake, Pollock, capelin, herring. Although it is strange that in the vegetable, the fish is sold. It may not be fish, and some local vegetable exotic. But looks like the carcass of the fish.
Still a little more red. Do the tomatoes? So, too, in principle, for the summer in the USSR, not exotic. Here in the winter in the USSR fresh tomatoes not sold. Don’t know how the situation in North Korea.
Well, then what is impossible to discern. But all that is dull and unattractive. That is what it looked like in the USSR. In order to defuse a grocery store mediocrity draped in flowers. Wonder – live or plastic? And is still visible and the queue at the end of the store. Probably in cash. But the counter – marble! How nice for marble the counter to buy ice cream Hyuk and green apples. And I really feel like I remember that specific odor, which almost always stood in the Soviet grocery stores.
And yet we must note that the photo was taken in Pyongyang, Pyongyang – the capital, the city with the best living conditions in North Korea. And shops in the capital, of course, also much better in its range than in the province. Here, too, to complete the authenticity, if you compare with the Soviet Union.
So really I wonder why those who constantly sighs about how good it was in the Soviet Union, not seek to move to North Korea. There is in fact no worse than it was in the USSR. Absolutely.
