The "Librería de Avila", a bookshop

On the corner of Bolivar and Adolfo Alsina you can find the "Librerá de Avila". It is a bookshop. But wat a bookshop. It dates from 1785 - when it started as the "Librería del Colegio". This College Bookshop existed untill 1989. Then the bookshop changed its name into Bookshop of Avila. Just look at the pictures and think yourself there with all these books. Everywhere there were little corners. A desk with a lamp. The portret of Borges on an old typewriter. Cupboards with old things, pictures, memorabilia. The huge sofa inviting you to sit and read. Another desk and books, many, many books.... 


We spend some hours there. It was a pitty that they were restoring the café. Now we have to come back......
The Librería has a website.... One thing is obvious: Time didn't fly in this bookshop.

 

Book markets

I Love books, I love book markets, I love second hand book stores. In my lunch hour I went often to the second hand book store nearby just to look at what was there. Mostly I would bring home some books. As I have a lot of books already, I made a rule that I wouldn’t keep the second hand books, but give them away afterwards. There are exceptions of course; I would keep the poetry.

Some years ago, when I was visiting Paris, I went to a  book market in Montreuil. When my memory is right it was in the Parc Georges Brassens. It was like a huge open air bookstore with only a roof. Being there is a memory that belongs to the larger picture: Walking through Paris, writing poems in café’s, talking, being alive.

A few years later I visited Berlin for the second time. There was the book market at the Humbold University. I was accompanied by a friend that had been starving of books the largest part of his life. So we entered there in a kind of “land of plenty”. The joy of visiting a book market is overwhelming.

Now we only went to get tickets (again) for some theater production. But finally we happened to turn up at the weekly book market in The Hague. No greater pleasure than looking at these books. It was a bit cold this time of the year. And there was nothing we really wanted. So in the end we just went to the large second hand bookshop nearby.

Getting back to the train we were happy with our new “old” books. Looking forward to read them in our warm apartment. Tonight, when I looked at the pictures I took this afternoon…. There was this picture of a man at the book market. Was he really the "poet laureate" of the Netherlands a few years ago?