Vietnamese Markets on the Czech border


Crossing the Czech border coming from Vienna on the E59, the first striking appearances are small shanty-town-like barracks on the roadside right after the Austrian border. Vietnamese merchants are selling garden gnomes, shoes, clothes, knives, CDs, DVDs, fireworks and groceries at their small market stands to migratory customers, keeping the prices negotiable. Extensive advertisements promise entertainment in establishments named “In Flagranti“, “Moulin Rouge“ or “Sankt Pauli“. Passing “Excalibur City” and the Czech border, these establishments are scattered along the highway. The advertisements, almost exclusively facing drivers coming from Austria, promote “neue Mädchen“ (fresh girls) and promise 30 minutes of entertainment for €29. Chvalovice, the first village after the Czech border, is covered with roadside billboards, promising just the same complemented by advertisements for cheap food.

Following the eviction of the German speaking minority after WW II, the area was revitalized by resettling inner-Czech citizens to those border areas. The official population count in 2004 was 446 inhabitants, although the estimates of actual numbers are much higher due to the rapid internationalization after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Prostitutes from former Eastern Bloc countries are temporarily working without residence permits, Austrian women are earning money in anonymity across the border, while a strong Vietnamese minority is living in rented apartments and until 2004 coined the village with their vital trade activities. These border-economies are examples of highly specific survival strategies beyond the “Duty Free” concept, which lost its legal foundations in 2004 with the Czech Republic’s membership in the EU.

The constant expansion of “Excalibur City“ from a single market stand to a shopping complex can be described as a programmatic expansion of its original business area, with a gradual zoning of differing infrastructure and levels of informality. Starting with the newest expansion, the “Freeport Marken Outlet”, an independently run outlet mall of international standards, we can observe a gradual decline of infrastructural services and, vice versa, an increase of informality and decoration. “Chinatown”, the area appearing to be strongly related to informal trade activities, is a canopied market consisting of approximately 120 market stands mostly run by the local Vietnamese minority. The organizational structure of this market seems to be similar to the roadside markets across the border. These small-scale retail activities seem to be a widely spread phenomenon along the Czech border to Austria and Germany, as well as a characteristic of the Vietnamese minority in the Czech Republic.


Studies