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Portrait of a German bookstore, Dec 2006
Dec. 28th, 2006 10:07 pm(Occasional commentary on What I Love about This Country)
People (and strollers and dogs) fill the three-story bookstore so tightly that they can't move without touching another customer This is not a special sale day, and JK Rowling is not here on tour. It's just your normal pre-Christmas Saturday. On a bench along the window, oblivious to the crowds, sits a Turkish family. The mother and daughters wear matching head scarfs. All of them are reading.
In the children's section a trio of Italians try to decipher the correct order of the Harry Potter books in German (they aren't labeled by number). A bookstore representative listens to a mumbling parent's request of "I'd like a detailed book about *German* trains for my toddler." The representative reaches through dozens of titles for Ravensburger's Wieso, Weshalb, Warum series and produces Alles Uber die Eisenbahn, by Patricia Mennen and Wolfgang Metzger. She knows the books in her department because she's read them.
Customers with armfuls of books wait in trailing lines to check out. Business is heavy. It's hard to take a break. But each customer gets a smile, a calm greeting. How do they do this? I would be screaming after ten minutes. But maybe it's handling all those books, maybe feeling all those pages, greeting them and sending them to a happy home, that keeps them smiling. Because of all the stores I've been to, it's the bookstore people who are always friendly.
Sometimes I wish Gutenberg could come back and see this.
People (and strollers and dogs) fill the three-story bookstore so tightly that they can't move without touching another customer This is not a special sale day, and JK Rowling is not here on tour. It's just your normal pre-Christmas Saturday. On a bench along the window, oblivious to the crowds, sits a Turkish family. The mother and daughters wear matching head scarfs. All of them are reading.
In the children's section a trio of Italians try to decipher the correct order of the Harry Potter books in German (they aren't labeled by number). A bookstore representative listens to a mumbling parent's request of "I'd like a detailed book about *German* trains for my toddler." The representative reaches through dozens of titles for Ravensburger's Wieso, Weshalb, Warum series and produces Alles Uber die Eisenbahn, by Patricia Mennen and Wolfgang Metzger. She knows the books in her department because she's read them.
Customers with armfuls of books wait in trailing lines to check out. Business is heavy. It's hard to take a break. But each customer gets a smile, a calm greeting. How do they do this? I would be screaming after ten minutes. But maybe it's handling all those books, maybe feeling all those pages, greeting them and sending them to a happy home, that keeps them smiling. Because of all the stores I've been to, it's the bookstore people who are always friendly.
Sometimes I wish Gutenberg could come back and see this.
