Student Travel in Berlin: Three Berlin BookshopsCategory: Travel & Holidays
Article added by: Paul Collins
You arrive in Berlin for your language course, your backpack overflowing with clothes, music, assorted toiletries and various other (more or less) essential things. Then it hits you: you start classes on Monday, and you haven’t got any books. And it’s not just school books you need, either: what are you going to read over the next few weeks?
Thankfully Germany’s capital is a pretty well cultured sort of place, and bookshops in Berlin are both plentiful and excellent. Here, then, are a handful of places that any student on a German course in Berlin would do well to mark on their city map.
1. Marga Schöller (Knesebeckstrasse 33, Charlottenburg)
The name Marga Schöller is a legend amongst Berlin bookshops. For starters, the place has been around forever (or 80 years to be precise); the staff are also astonishingly friendly (even to the extent of bringing out the coffee and cakes from time to time).
Then, of course, there’s the fantastic selection of books: fiction, mainly, but with an outstanding collection of film literature and political works. English speakers on a German course in Berlin, meanwhile, will definitely appreciate its wide selection of English language titles. All in all, then, it’s not hard to see why Marga Schöller isn’t just your average Berlin bookshop, but a fully-fledged Berlin institution.
2. Bücherbogen (Stadtbahnbogen 593, Knesebeckstrasse 27)
Bücherbogen is triply good news for language students in Berlin, because they represent not one, not even two, but three great Berlin bookshops. The first two are in Charlottenburg: with one focusing largely on theatrical offering and cinema; the other (a couple of doors down from Marga Schöller) concentrates on design, architecture and art publications.
Over to the east a little, in the Neuen Nationalgalerie, the quality of books on offer is the same, but the concentration (naturally enough) has shifted exclusively to the world of art. Whichever one you go to, though, you’re sure to find some book with which to while away a lazy afternoon in a coffee shop.
3. Berlin Story (Unter den Linden 26)
The name and the grand location (on Unter den Linden itself, no less) are a bit of a giveaway, but Berlin Story is another bookshop in Berlin that’s, well, a bit more than just a bookshop in Berlin. It’s a bookshop about Berlin.
In addition to the assortment of books (10,000 and counting) about every conceivable aspect of the city, the staff are almost absurdly knowledgeable, and they’ve got a wide selection of English titles, too. Frankly, as a student on a German course in Berlin, it’s the only real place to start learning about the city.
Posted By: Paul Collins
Contact: e-mail
| About the Author: |
| Travel writer Paul Collins has always loved Berlin. As a former language teacher, he also knows more than his fair share about the best bookshops for a student on a German course in Berlin. |
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