Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Good for Business, Markets and Companies, Tourism

Sadamarket.

The Tallinn-based Sadamarket is often visited by Finnish-speaking customers, and the shop assistants speak the language as well.

Pensioner ladies Oili Haakana and Eila Suhonen and their husbands, from Parikkala in South Karelia, had come to Sadamarket for four hours. The ladies were doing some shopping, while the men were obligingly carrying their rucksacks. Haakana bought some linen towels and shoe wax, writes LETA.

Before the departure of the ferry home, the party still had time to stop for coffee. At a Finnish service station a cup of coffee and a bun will cost a customer four euros, but at Sadamarket's cafe one had to spend only 3.60 euros for a cup of coffee, a bun, a bottle of water, and a sandwich.

Beauty and styling services are also demanded by Finnish tourists.

"In Finland a haircut would have cost me 40 euros, but here it costs 15 euros", said a pensioner Leila Stolpe from Helsinki, who paid a visit to a hairdressing salon in Tallinn.

Buyers at Sadamarket praised the friendly service but some of them were alarmed by the vendors' aggressive sales techniques and the way products are pushed at the buyer.

For many Finns, the price was not the main thing, but the selection of goods that was better than the one back home.

"I do a lot of impulse buying. I buy things that are not available in Finland. Pulkkila is such a small place that there are not so many things to buy or places to buy them", said Anna-Liisa Vatanen, a librarian from Pulkkila in Northern Ostrobothnia. "This makes one look slimmer, hiding the tummy", sales assistant Helju showed off a greyish-black tunic that cost only 20 euros. The 20-euro tunic ended up in Vatanen's shopping bag.