Yes, I am quoting myself. Is this vanity? Perhaps. But it's good background info.
In case you have not yet memorized my post from November 29, 2012, here goes:
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Hannover, like many other cities in Germany, has free bookshelves. In addition to the public library system, there are bookshelves out in public areas where passers-by can take a book home, bring it back later, or donate their old books. Here's some info from a 2011 AP article featured in The Guardian :
Associated Press= COLOGNE, Germany (AP) — Take a book, leave a book. In the birthplace of the printing press, public bookshelves are popping up across the nation on street corners, city squares and suburban supermarkets.
In these free-for-all libraries, people can grab whatever they want to read, and leave behind anything they want for others. There's no need to register, no due date, and you can take or give as many as you want.
"This project is aimed at everyone who likes to read — without regard to age or education. It is open for everybody," Michael Aubermann, one of the organizers of the free book exchange in the city of Cologne, told The Associated Press.
The public book shelves, which are usually financed by donations and cared for by local volunteer groups, have popped up independently of each other in many cities across Germany including Berlin, Hannover and Bonn, and also in suburbs and villages.
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| Public bookshelf in Hannover |
Cool idea, right? Way to make literacy accessible to everyone. Until somebody steals all the books. Except that doesn't happen. Really. People actually bring the books back or replace them with other titles. Except for my friend Kaska's mom, who is Polish, and took a couple of books home to Poland with the explanation of "at least I will USE them". In the U.S., the books would not always come back, even in a nice neighborhood. They'd turn up at someone's house or a used book store. But in Germany, that's not a problem.
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Hannover, meet Mikhail. He's a classmate from my German course. On the first day, Mikhail introduced himself and explained that his profession does not exist in Germany. Therefore he has not worked for the twenty years he has lived in Hannover. Mikhail was/is an ice dancer and comes from St. Petersburg, Russia. He has a white-man afro hair and dresses neatly in a flannel shirt tucked into dark jeans. He always wears a fanny pack around his waist. I would not have guessed he was an ice dancer, but how would I even know what one looks like? Mikhail sometimes does ballet stretches during our 15 minute break.
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| Is this how Mikhail looked in his heyday? |
On one of our first days of class, Mikhail showed me a list of all the public bookshelves in Hannover and their locations. Then he started to bring a big shopping bag full of books to class. He offers them as gifts to our classmates, in stacks of three or four. He has even given thought to who might be interested in which titles - the parents in our class get kids' books, others get novels, and since I once said that I like to cook, he offers me cookbooks. I am now the owner of two German cookbooks, published circa 1979, that were gifts from Mikhail (one is a selection of German traditional recipes that might as well be called "200 different ways to eat pig"). As an unemployed ice dancer, Mikhail is not buying these books. He's swiping them from the public book shelves around town.
Mikhail's generous habits support my theory that the book shelf idea would not work in any other country A rule-respecting German might select a book or two. Then he or she would replace them with old books from home, or just finish reading and put them back on the shelf for someone else. Whoever came up with the bookshelf idea probably didn't take immigrants into account. A frizzy-haired Russian is now systematically raiding all of the city's book shelves, searching for fairy tales, schnitzel recipes and best sellers from 1972. All of these books are out there for the taking. And like Kaska's mom, Mikhail just wants someone to use them. If they all vanish in a few weeks, at least he got a hold of them before it was too late.
I've turned down several of Mikhail's books. Today he tried to give me a how-to book about bowling. I politely refused. Slobodanka, the Serbian woman who sits next to me, is not as firm with him. Yesterday she ended up with three abridged Hitchcock mysteries and a recipe for how to make buttermilk concoction that's good for the skin.
Is Mikhail a smart man? It seems so. Is he eccentric? Definitely. Is he thoughtful? Yes.
Is he German? Not in the least.
Mikhail was probably quite an ice dancer, too. If I were his unemployment counselor, I'd encourage him to pursue a new career in used book sales.
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