Berlin Libraries and Bookstores

 Hi Everyone!

It is just over one year ago that I returned to Canada from my year in Berlin, Germany. I have to say, it feels like it’s been a lot longer, considering how many things have happened since then!

To commemorate this event, I thought that I should write a blog entry about some of my favourite bookstores and libraries in Berlin, which I think about every so often as I visit my favourite bookstores and libraries in Canada.

Within the first few weeks of arriving in Berlin, I was able to briefly attend an event called the Long Night of Libraries (Lange Nacht der Bibliotheken). This is an event that goes on annually, where people can pay one admission fee and be able to explore as many libraries as they like for the entire evening. Similar events go on throughout the year in Berlin, such as the Long Night of Museums or the Long Night of Sciences.

I was only able to visit two libraries that night, but enjoyed them both immensely (but unfortunately did not bring my camera inside with me!). The City of Berlin Library (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) was gorgeous, and houses an amazing collection. Here are a few photos of the outside, at night and during the daytime. The feature I enjoyed photographing the most, as you can tell, is that it is so close to the East Berlin TV Tower.

The development of this library was hindered by WWII. There had to be an evacuation of the entire collection, and it was housed in 30 monasteries, castles, and shut-down mines. After 1945, only some of the library’s collection was returned to the original site, which was in East Berlin. Many of the volumes were moved to a new location in the West, which was the one I visited. In divided Berlin, both sites continued to maintain their collections, and since 1992, the reunited Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin provides services at both of its sites.

For more information, feel free to visit http://staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/about-the-library/ . Also, here are pictures I stole from the internet of one of the reading rooms.

The second library I visited was the library at Berlin Technische Universität (“Volkswagon Universitätsbibliothek”).

This wasn’t quite my favourite library that I’ve ever seen, but it was quite nice! Those lights on the left side of the photo changed colours, and the library itself was spacious inside.

I revisited this library for the Long Night of Sciences a few months later. They were hosting a Silent Disco, which was quite appropriate for a library. A Silent Disco is an event with two or three different DJs, and everyone wears a set of headphones and dances to whichever DJ they choose. So if you take off the headphones, you’re in a room full of people dancing to absolute silence (or occasionally, people belting out the lyrics of whatever song they’re hearing). It feels slightly awkward to dance knowing that there is silence around you, but it’s pretty cool to immerse yourself in the music, being able to control what you’re listening to and what volume it’s at. But it does mean that people are dancing at different tempos a lot of the time.

My absolute favourite library in Berlin was that of the Humboldt University. It was located right near Friedrichstrasse, and I was able to look into the windows of this library every time I took the train to work. When it was dark outside, I could look at the windows zoom by, with all of the rows upon rows of books illuminated inside. It’s hard to describe, but it was one of my favourite things to see from the train! Humboldt University actually had a partnership with the high school I was working at, and I was lucky enough to accompany a few grade 12 classes to the library for a guided tour. During the Long Night of Sciences, I was able to get a demonstration of how the digitization of materials at this library works. The demonstration was in German, but it was still informational!

The library is on the left, and the train track is on the right. The windows were all long and horizontal, which made for a cool view as you zoomed by. And there are a series of restaurants below the tracks.

There were several levels to this library, and the quiet study space spanned several floors and was separated from the stacks of books which lined the exterior walls. In the picture above, you can see the desks lined within this inner space, and outside of the borders of this room there are rows of bookshelves (sorry you can’t see them in this picture, though!)

I have a friend that was attending the Free University of Berlin, and she offered to provide me with a tour of the library, which she thought I would find interesting (and rightfully so!). In this case, I was able to take photos, so I’ll let them speak for themselves.

Yes, that building is the library! You could enter it from the main building – there was a sort of tunnel entrance into it.

Here is just outside the entrance into this library.

In this library, I found a set of Canadian Encyclopedias, and used it to find out that Dalhousie University was established in 1818 (this was right before I was set to begin my degree!)

In my opinion, the most amazing bookstore in Berlin is Dussmann – Google says that the complete title is Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus, which I understand as Dussmann Culture Store. The store consists of six stories, if I remember correctly. There was a separate part of the store dedicated to music scores, and part of the first two floors was dedicated to CDs and DVDs. The other part of the first floor was dedicated to popular fiction and things like stationary. The second floor consisted of children’s materials, which is where I went to get a German copy of “Alice in Wonderland” and “Peter Pan” so I could start reading in German. I can’t quite recall what is on the third and fourth floors, but there were two floors dedicated to learning materials such as puzzles and globes, and textbooks for school (I know this because I had to visit one of these floors to pick up my textbook for my German class – it took me forever to find the right place!)

 

As you can tell, the view from the upper floors looked all the way down to the first – it was quite an open setup.

My favourite part of this bookstore was walking past the main floor, and going to the entirely English section which was set aside in a separate part of the building – it was two floors, and basically a bookstore all on its own! My most memorable purchase from this bookstore was the book “How to be Vegan” which I bought when I started thinking that maybe I should adopt a vegan diet. But I visited this bookstore often and spent many hours wandering around and enjoying the wide selection.

The cookbooks are right at the top of the stairs straight ahead – not that I remember or anything! The bookstore was one of my favourite places in the city – a place where I could continue to learn German but also escape into my English comfort zone and browse around.

I would like to give a quick “Shout-out” to two other cool libraries I saw during my adventures in Europe. The first is the library at the Amsterdam Airport. I got to visit this library on one of my trips from Germany to Canada (go figure!). This library does offer a variety of books, but the most notable feature I could see was that it offered places for people to sit, relax, and also reboot their technological devices if they liked. It was a bright and colourful space, and was really cool to see! It spans beyond what my pictures show, but you get the idea.

The other library I wanted to mention was the Herzogin Anna Amelia Bibliothek (Dutchess Anna Amelia Library) in Weimar, Germany. This library was once a personal collection of the Dutchess Anna Amelia, and it is amazing to see it on display. People cannot freely touch the materials, but can request to use them in “the reading room” on the third floor.

So there you have it. These are some of my favourite libraries and bookstores that I was able to visit during my time in Europe – there are others, but I wrote about them a fair bit in my other blog, which you can find at robynpippin.wordpress.com. There are many aspects of life in Germany that I miss (the Christmas Markets, the ability to travel amongst different countries cheaply, Potsdamer Platz, the vegan cuisine…) but it is particularly nice to reflect on this one in this blog.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my reminiscing! Thank you so much for reading 🙂

Auf wiedersehen!

-Robyn