Over our long weekend in Vienna it's fair to say that my sister and I regularly got a little lost but it was the best kind of lost; rather than finding yourself in Knockturn Alley, you instead stumble across quaint antique shops, spectacular churches or small bookshops. The whole of Vienna seemed full with bookshops and not the Waterstone's kind, the sort that doesn't have more than one copy of any book and they're all piled high on shelves that look like they are about to fall over. There was one bookshop, however, that I deliberately set out to find - Shakespeare & Company Booksellers. After some research, I don't think this is the same company as the one in Paris but it was just as much of a pleasure.
Hidden up a flight of cracked stone stairs, down a cobbled street in Vienna's Inner Stadt, this lovely independent English bookstore could be hard to miss but I'm so glad we didn't. You walk in and you are instantly hit with that wonderful smell of paper. At first it looked entirely empty of people but as I walked in I noticed hidden behind piles of books was the shopkeeper - almost as easily missed as the shop itself. It had everything as well - not just battered 2nd editions of Graham Greene or your grandmother's copy of Little Women. There was even, and you can see to the bottom left of this image, a full collection of the beautiful Waterstones fabric classic editions.
If you go to Vienna, you really must check out the bookstores and this one in particular. Desperate craving for Oliver Twist or Ian McEwan's Atonement, you need look no further than Shakespeare & Company at Sterngasse 2 in the oldest part of Vienna.
Shakespeare & Company Booksellers
Sterngasse 2, 1010 Vienna, Austria
Tel: +43 1 535 5053
http://www.shakespeare.co.at/
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