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Life in Berlin for Booklovers

· 5 min read
Nahiyan Kamal
Nahiyan Kamal

I realised a very important thing very late after coming to Berlin, is how easy it is to get books here 🤓. Imagine all the nice books that you are trying to read and then you look for it online to buy it. Sometimes you end up buying but never reading..And sometime you don’t buy it because it’s too expensive…Well there are better ways.

Library

I will only focus here about affordable and more environment friendly ways of getting books.

Library card​

Card

First thing you need to do is get a library card. This costs around 10 euro per year. (even less if you are student) Im talking about, Association of Public Libraries in Berlin (VÖBB) ✌️

They have amazing website where you can search for books before you goto that Library. https://www.voebb.de

🃏 What is included in this Card?​

Audiobook, Online reading books, Books with CDs, Magazines, Using Computer while you are at the library etc. Funny story I bought a TV recently with a DVD player and now just taking DVDs from Libraries and watching them home

📚How many books I can lend at a time?​

Max number at a time I think is around 60 (but please check the web for updated info)

🔍 Is it easy to find these libraries around where you live?​

There are maybe around 50 libraries that you can access in just Berlin with this one card. So it’s quite easy to find one near your house. My favorit one is Gedenk Bibiliothek because its the biggest one and I can get many books in one go

⌛ How long you can keep the books?​

around a month and after that you can renew for around 2 more months online. So there is literally no catch at all about rushing you to give back all these books. If you still want to keep the book after reaching your max extension then you can easily goto one of the libraries and extend it again for another 3 more months. I have once kept a book for around 6 months like this. All this for just 10 Euro per year is just priceless. 🤑

😈 Is there a catch anywhere?​

Most books are in German 🇩🇪 so please have patience if you are looking English books. Geez I should have written this Blog in German 🤦‍♀️

Staats Bibliothek (SBB)​

Its not exactly same as Bibliotheken des Verbunds der Öffentlichen Bibliotheken Berlins (VÖBB) Staats Bibliothek are more focused for educational materials. They are a little expensive but have lot bigger collection with really nice study environment and WIFI. It’s one of the largest libraries in Europe Whenever I go there there is always lots of students studying.

Second Hand Books​

Old Books

In Berlin there are many Second hand book shops. One Problem with these is that it’s hard to find what book you are looking for. My choice is a website called Medimops. Good thing is if you order for more than 10EUR you get free shipping 🚚. So I find it cheaper than amazon. They have really good collection in Germany and price is really good. If this does not work out for you, try amazon.

😔 Finished Reading! now what?​

Its not easy but if you don’t have much space at home then you need to get rid of it. So I always stick with Option 1 (Library). You can also try donating books by just contacting the Public libraries. They accept only new books or children books. Otherwise you need to put it on the street with a zu Verschenken sign. Last time I took bunch of Books to some second hand shop and they bought all of them (they were good English books though so had good Demand)

Book shop​

Ah right I said in the beginning I will only talk about env friendly ways and affordable ways 😁 don’t worry Im sticking to my promise There are book stores in Berlin that is worth visiting. It really inspires me just to browse the books because the way they are presented gives me my next target book. If you are trying to read a recently published book it will be hard to find it in Public library.

Book shop

Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus​

I think this is the biggest bookstore in Berlin. Its a 4 floor building with huge collection of all kind of books. I go there always to checkout the best recent selling German books.

There is no other better Book Advertiser for me than Dussmann das KulturKaufhaus. It’s one of the nice places to visit in Berlin for Book readers. They have very comfortable tables for you to take a look at the books in peace.

Happy Book Reading!