The particular character of bookshops
I don't really feel like I've started to get to know a place until I've stepped across the threshold of a bookshop. It's like a steady handshake and a direct look into the eyes. Hello, Ler Devargar, I see you.
This particular bookshop is making the most of its warehouse setting, in the midst of a trendy complex called LX Factory. Food and fashion galore. Ocourse, the bookshop, wanting to make the most of the crowd, stays open until 11pm and sells Super Bock by the bottle for 2 euro. Today's host of page dwellers feel like they've been written. A couple sit a few tables away from me, silent and doleful. Every now and then one of the young hopefuls ever so gently touches the face of their companion, who continues - studiously - to be disinterested and postured. Its compelling because the performance is a vacuum of noise and it's like the world doesn't exist outside their unavoidable youth-shells. Meanwhile, a man with deliberately tousled hair and rolled up sleeves is variously sitting and standing on the staircase whilst a strong flash bounces from a reflector that gives us all a sense of being papped. A tall man with a tiny bundle peering over his shoulder asks if there is a baby change area. The woman behind the bar apologises that there isn't, but tells him he can change the baby anywhere in some attempt to redress this oversight. On the balcony, someone is jumping. The books sweep the wall at least twenty feet up the wall, and this ambitious person thinks they might be able to claim the edition that has caught their eye without a ladder. There is another man in the shadow at the end of the bar. Standing. Smoking. He is imperious in his right to smoke inside. Near books. In spite of myself, I admire this about him.
Livraria Bertrand, Lisbon: Guinness Book of Records for oldest operating bookshop
Presse Librairie/Berriketa (depending on your tastes), Hendaye
Now that we've just about recovered from the experience of a (not) sleep seat, we're back on the tracks tomorrow. Book shop recommendations for Madrid my way, please!