Where a carrot is never just a carrot

If all you can say is ‘fresh from the wholesale market’ then you have to be cheap and open all hours, at night for emergencies, in case the organic eggs run out in the penthouse. Uygur opens almost round the clock now. He has stopped going home, he sleeps in his shop. You can search for a long time without finding the trapdoor in the floor, hidden among the beer crates, where steep wooden steps lead to a cellar with bare, slum-like walls. In the middle a mattress. Here Uygur sleeps for three or four hours before he sets off for the market again, or rather he dozes, because the trains make the floor shake. “Nobody on this street lives like me, nobody in the year 2007,” says Uygur. Outwardly he maintains the dignity of the businessman, but inside his merchant pride is wounded. He is in the right place with the wrong strategy. He has no idea that he has to serve a lifestyle here. A better class of food for a better class of person. He thought it was about ordinary food: carrots, leeks and onions.

Organic or Bust in Prenzlauer Berg, playground of the post-hip.