After two visits to the public market (Brunnenmarkt) near our daughter’s Vienna apartment, my wife and I are public market experts. Well, not experts, but we did learn one thing:

Always shop at the stands where the little old ladies in head scarves are shopping, but be careful to buy only what they are buying.

We followed the first part of this advice, but not the second, and regretted it. We stopped at a stand being swarmed by old women with head scarves who were picking over a glorious pile of peppers, but instead of peppers (which were the nicest at the market) we bought lettuce, because we needed lettuce and not peppers. After our purchase, we discovered a stand two stands over that was selling fresher lettuce (look at the stems – fresh lettuce stems are white, the older it is the darker/rustier-looking they get) a third cheaper – and that’s where the old ladies were buying their lettuce.