A weekend dedicated to mountain and ski sports: While the Ski World Cup starts the season with grotesque effort in Sölden, Austria, hundreds of them flock to the grounds of the Blumen-Großmarkthalle in Sendling in Munich on Sunday – and pay homage to mountain sports sustainability. The alpine flea market of the Munich and Oberland Alpine Club section, as a huge used goods market for ski and mountain equipment, experiences a huge rush first thing in the morning.
“The material has become so expensive,” say student Natascha Muth and her friend Jonas De Lorenzo. She is 28 and was a ski instructor; He is 31, and both are critical of buying “brand new ski touring equipment for 3,000 euros” in the store. They find new, good backpacks for 60 euros instead of 300 euros new, and Natascha Muth very soon found some fantastically beautiful touring skis with skins for 320 euros and strapped them to the right and left of the new old backpack. They find the flea market “extremely friendly” and praise the experienced, fair sellers, “the good atmosphere and the honest prices”. They only returned from climbing in Berchtesgaden on Saturday and are now beaming happily in the Munich sun after their shopping.
Jonas De Lorenzo also sees a worrying development in mountain sports. He thinks it’s “really wild that people go to a sports store, buy maximum equipment, go to the mountains once – and then sell it again.” This is also a development as a result of social media, where “extremes are made palatable” on all possible channels. This actually leads to more accidents in the mountains because some people overestimate themselves, even when relying on the expensive maximum equipment. That is deceptive: “The equipment does not compensate for your own performance level.”
This danger does not exist for Tobias Pannemann from Grafing. The young adult looks contentedly at his used white and green Carver, which he just bought for 80 euros. “New skis from the store so you can maybe go skiing, that just costs a little too much,” he laughs. Sabine Pannemann, his mom from Munich, even got some for 65 euros and is now giving up her retro status: her old skis, which she says are 40 years old, are now being retired. She no longer trusts the old bond.
The Pannemanns were there half an hour before opening on Sunday morning and were able to rush through as soon as the barrier tape went up at 9 a.m. They were by no means the only ones, the Alpine flea market with its 86 registered stalls is a hit for everyone who watches the price increases for equipment and lift tickets in horror, but still wants to practice their sport. A quick look at the price table in Sölden, just 200 kilometers away: Adults pay 69.50 to 74 euros at the “lift cash desk”, depending on the low, high or “top season”, young people 55.50 to 59.50 euros and Children 38 to 41 euros.
Daniela Kowitz with her sons Theo (left) and Hannes (right) were successful – they discovered new ski boots, new skis and a sporty toboggan.
(Photo: Robert Haas)
It’s understandable why Daniela Kowitz from Munich got up early this Sunday with her school-age sons Theo and Hannes. You find what you are looking for at a huge dealer stand at a ski rental company in Jenbach in Tyrol and go home satisfied with a pair of skis, two pairs of ski boots and a sports toboggan. “When the weather is nice, we like to go skiing from Munich into the mountains – it’s worth it!” What you save on equipment is available for lift tickets, clear calculation. And probably also a success within the family for the mother, because the sons even got out of bed early. Well, the winter time change made it milder by an hour.
While the saleswoman at the Jenbacher ski rental shop is constantly feeding her fanny pack with new fifty-euro notes because business is obviously doing particularly well in the wonderful weather, Hannah Trowal is also happy at the Alpine Club stand. She is press spokesperson for the Munich-Oberland section and helped organize the Alpine flea market. Trowal reports that there have been many more inquiries from sellers – so word is getting around among sellers about the success of this used exchange.
The Alpine Club (DAV) has been offering this flea market since the early 1990s. Margot Lapp knows exactly what it was like at the very beginning. She is also at the DAV stand, sporty type with the same tan, 76 years young, still active in cycling, skiing, cross-country skiing and climbing. She came up with the Alpine flea market back then and organized it for the first time, “in the Augustiner Hall on Hirtenstrasse”. That was an immediate huge success.
When Margot Lapp looks around in front of the flower wholesale market hall today, she is happy at how much it has developed. She also advertises an analog altimeter to a young prospective buyer, “150 euros, from an older gentleman who no longer needs it.” She has been at the DAV for 55 years, comes every year and helps out, and is also an experienced saleswoman: “People just want to keep bargaining down, but then I’m tough; I’d rather take it home with me.” There is a nearest alpine flea market.
How much the mountain friends care about sustainability with this flea market is also demonstrated by a stand where master tailor Barbara Heinze mends, sews and repairs equipment for free. The Alpine Club booked her for the flea market. The queue at her stand is getting longer and longer, at some point she has to stop accepting items and direct people to her Sendlinger shop at Oberländerstraße 20. There it is expensive, but at least everything is in experienced hands.
Heinze has worked and designed for large outdoor equipment companies and has now specialized not only in custom-made outdoor items but also in the maintenance of often expensive equipment. Theresa Möhrle from the Munich mountain rescue service is just passing her merino wool shirt across the table to be mended – she once bought it at a DAV alpine flea market. Circular economy in the best sense. And somehow the pleasant opposite of the high-speed commercialism that the World Cup opener on the glacier 200 kilometers away represents.