There is much that is grand and beautiful about Trieste. There are also telling and fascinating details that are the reward for keeping eyes and mind open, as a few previous posts have shown. Sell-all shops, usually Chinese-run, are another example. They catch the eye with displays of curious and colourful of geegaws then reveal themselves as bazaars for all needs. Want a watch, a radio, a scarf, a jacket, a fishing reel? Come in. Maybe a bra, a bag, a blouse, a harmonica, an abacus, a Barbie doll, a micrometer, a snow dome or a blood pressure monitor. Yes. Curious phenomena set under the towering late 19th Century Austro-Hungarian facades. Yet, they oddly echo that time. Here’s Jan Morris in Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere (p.29): ‘At first it [Trieste] was essentially an emporium, a market-place where good brought by land or sea were assembled for sale, and then sent off again – a kind of permanent trade fair, with transport facilities.’