Mirano Market: when the past embraces you among the stalls.

Last Monday, thanks to a car service and a day of vacation that happened almost by chance, I found myself in Mirano for the weekly market – a leap into the past that took me straight back to the Wednesdays in Abano, when as a child I accompanied my mother or grandmother on that pagan ritual that was much more than just shopping, but an opportunity for pure socialization, with half the town passing by between one stall and another.

The market as a rite of slowness

You walk slowly, without the rush that usually devours us, surrounded by stalls that smell of damp earth, aged cheeses and fabrics that seem to have come from another time; people stop, recognize each other, exchange phrases like "“Hi Toni, how's your leg?”, while young mothers push strollers and pensioners clutch reusable bags, no one with their nose on the screen, no one taking photos for likes – here we live, simply.

Real faces without filters under a gray sky that threatens rain, but no one cares because it is authentic life, the one that needs no captions.

When I was little, my grandmother would sometimes buy me a chocolate egg—small, cheap, but completely mine—so I could stay quiet and chat for hours with the greengrocer. I observed everything, learning a world that wasn't made of apps and notifications, but of calloused hands, overlapping voices, and prices gouged out with a knowing laugh.

From granddaughter with a baby seat to fifty years old with stolen holidays

And now, at over fifty and with holidays stolen from the calendar, there I am again, in Mirano, where a guy shouts “Homemade apples, two kilos for four euros!” and a lady counters with “Three ninety!”, laughing together as they come to an agreement, surrounded by gentlemen holding their hats against the light wind.

No one rushes; time stretches like a deep breath and envelops you without asking permission. I stop, savor the aromas of cheese and salami, listen to dialect voices that I understand and feel deep in my bones; it's a perfect defuse, I pull the fuse of the daily urgency that drives us to rush, call, answer emails, solve problems, post, validate every moment as if our time were simply a commodity.

Because here, at the market, none of that is needed: it's anti-social by nature, made up of crossed glances, casual human contact, and that coffee at the bar that feels like home, far from the digital fences where we accumulate empires of sand that the first wind dissolves.

I think about life today as I walk, and I realize that since I was a child, the market was already a future vision of my creative chaos without needing permission – and today the one in Mirano resurrects it, reminding me that beauty can be found where you least expect it among the stalls, but only if you know how to stop and observe.

Perhaps evoking the memory of grandma with a bittersweet smile.