Verona. Sunday. Bookshops

Last Sunday was one of those days when I wanted to be around books. As libraries are usually closed on Sunday, I decided to visit the next best thing - bookstores. The nearest city to me where there are English bookshops which are open on Sunday is Verona, so I hopped on a train and arrived there.

If you arrive in Verona by train, the first bookshop you encounter is the Librerie al Giunto, located inside the train station. I call this chain of bookstores "station bookshops" because you can find them a lot at train stations.

This particular shop has two floors and the majority of books there are in Italian, well, we are in Italy after all. There is a small section of books in foreign languages: English, German, French and Spanish. Surprisingly, there were more German books than English ones when I dropped in last Sunday. I spent some time wandering around the shelves, but as my level of Italian is not ready yet to read Italian books, I didn't buy anything and went further.

Verona train station is located a bit far from the city centre, if you walk, it will take about 15-20 minutes to reach it, you can also take a bus from the bus station, which is right in front of the train station, which will cost you a bit extra but you will be in the centre in 5 minutes.

Despite now being a low tourist season, there were a lot of people in the centre, so I decided to turn right after the Arena and take one of the less crowded streets going through the city centre. 

I took some more turns when I saw an open door behind which there were books, I have never been to the place so decided to check it out. It turned out to be not only a bookshop but also a cafe! What could be better? I browsed a bit through the shelves, found a book to my liking (it was Agatha Christie's "The Moving Finger", you can't go wrong with Christie, she was the mystery queen), ordered some tea and a panino, sat a table and easily spent two hours like that :) The place is called "Il Minotauro", by the way. 

Second breakfast at "Il Minotauro" cafe-bookshop

After two hours of sitting, I needed some movement, so I walked around the centre, passed through the places people usually go to see in Verona: Piazza dei Signori, Piazza Erbe... As I was walking past "in Mondadori" bookshop I was pleasantly surprised that it was open. The bookstore also has a section of books in foreign languages, so I dropped in there too. I was there a bit more than a month ago, so I didn't expect to find anything, I still went in. I don't know what is the most popular bookstore among Italians but it felt like Mondadori could be the one. The place was crowded! At the entrance I had to let at least ten people out before I could get in, there was a queue at the cash desk, there were even some people at the section I came there to see. Although not being a fan of crpwded spaces, it was nice to see so many people at a bookshop.

Located in Verona, "in Mondadori" not surprisngly has a lot of different versions of "Romeo and Juliet"

One more bookstore I visited that Sunday was the one that I probably visit most in any Italian city I visit - "La Feltrinelli". I like this chain in general, they have a good selection of fiction books in English (also in German, Spanish and French), and there is quite a wide selection of non-fiction English books. What I discovered this time, there was a separate stand with books titled "Books from the East", with books from Eastern Europe mostly, and "Books from further East", with books from Asia. I was delighted to see Belarus in the first section, not only because there was a book by a Belarusian author, but also that the country was separated from Russia, because unfortunately they are often placed together. So extra kudos to Feltrinelli! 

There is always something new at "La Feltrinelli" display

You can see a Belarusian book at the bottom shelf - 4th from the left

After I left Feltrinelli, it was already getting late, so it was time to go home. I went back to the station and there was another sutprise: there was an extra train leaving for Trento. The unusual thing about it was that it was not scheduled, it was not possible to buy tickets for the train on the website because there was no such a train, the train was about to take the RV* route and the train itself was an unusual type usually not going up north. I still took it and was home a bit earlier than planned. 

The "Rock" train usually circulates between Milan and Venice

*RV = Regionale Veloce - an express regional train, which skips some stops, therefore is usually faster than an ordinary regional train

P. S. I visited Verona also in January this year and already then noticed there were a lot of out of service mail boxes. I guess, due to the shortage of staff (?) Poste Italiane decided to lower the number of mail boxes, they didn't move them anywhere though, just put a sticky tape to cover the hole. But they also put a note where the nearest working mail box can be found, which is useful. I saw six mailboxes while I was walking around the city, all of them were out of service.