The European Experience: Part 1

Shakespeare & Company
Paris

Weave through the masses of Korean tourists, stacks of new-releases & up the narrow stairwell, and you will find the magical world that is Shakespeare & Company. It is all that a literature lover could dream of; translucent in dream-like quality. Ridiculous as it may seem, stepping into this tiny English bookstore in Paris felt like it was the entire reason I was in Europe; the endpoint of the crossing of continents.

There were tiny, handwritten notes everywhere; stuffed in between wood cracks or strung across walls, left by inspired travelers. It is amazing that ordinary people like you and me can leave our mark where revolutionary writers once lived and breathed and wrote: the likes of Fitzgerald, Joyce, Hemingway, Burroughs... the list goes on.

Perhaps one of the most wonderful things about Shakespeare & Co. is the civility it inspires in people. It seems that everyone is able to sense the magic that is happening in this two-level antiquarian bookstore: even young children or usually-noisy teenagers are quelled the minute they enter. It is as if a pin-drop could shatter the beatific atmosphere. Seeing a queer combination of young girls, children and old men sitting in plush chairs and quietly enjoying the dusty tomes of Sylvia Beach's private library... well, it was a lovely sensation trickling down my spine. I could have stayed forever.



So I bought some A.S. Byatt, a Pablo Neruda poetry medley and a French story collection, to name a few: a burden that Luki unfortunately bore all the way back to Singapore. It's not usually a good idea to buy massive novels whilst backpacking across Europe, but for this, you'll have to make an exception :)