Belleville Revisited

I returned to Belleville in the 20e Arrondissement yesterday to visit Bibliothèque Couronnes, a medium-size Paris municipal library (More about that in the previous entry) at the Couronnes (crowns) stop on the 2 line. I had been in Belleville once before where I had a very good dinner in a Chinese restaurant in a part of quarter near the Belleville stop that is home to many Chinese and Vietnamese. The food was steamed and brought to the table in a stack of baskets.

Bibliothèque Couronnes is in a working-class neighborhood with a large population of Arabs and Jews from North Africa and immigrants from former French colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The flavor of the neighborhood is decidedly North African. In some ways it reminded me of the northern reaches of Steinway Street in Astoria, Queens, only much larger.

I walked through the street market along Boulevard Belleville, not as large as the Marché Bastille, but still one of the largest in Paris. The sardines were tempting. I seriously considered buying some, but then decided I didn’t want to buy flour to dredge them or oil to cook them in. I bought Brussels sprouts and potatoes instead. I will eat them with the ribs I bought at the Marché Bastille, which were not, by the way, fully cooked. But I mijote’ed them (to coin a Franglish word) for about two hours the other evening until the meat nearly fell off the bone. They taste just like the corned spare ribs I ate as a kid and prepared again about six months ago in New York. (Leave the ribs in a brine of one pound of kosher salt for every five quarts of water for a week. Remove from the brine and simmer (or mijotez) in fresh water for about two hours.) All I have to do is reheat and eat with the vegetables.

The most memorable meal in Paris to date was the grilled duck breast with fig sauce served with a gratin of potatoes on a street in the 10e along the Canal Saint-Martin. This was preceded by escargot, eaten with good red French wine and followed by Tarte Tatin. I’ll recreate that one when I go home (probably without the snails).

The library is across rue des Couronnes from Parc Belleville, a park with many trees and flowers on the side of one of the few hills in Paris.





There is a sweeping view of the city from the top. I especially liked the sign giving recognition to the gardeners who maintain the park.




Loosely translated, it said “Welcome to our gardens. A Team at Your Service: the Gardeners. We work to enhance your daily life. The gardeners maintain the green patrimony of the city of Paris in the parks, gardens, woods and public spaces… The gardeners plant the flower beds and the vegetable gardens, and apply themselves each day to making the gardens more attractive… Thanks to their work everyone benefits from the pleasant gardens and colorful flower beds. Thank you to those who help them with their mission and respect the parks and the botanical creations.”


I saw a motorbike accident in Belleville. I wonder why I hadn’t seen one before. Motorbikes are everywhere—even on sidewalks. I was surprised to see them speeding between the lanes of traffic on the expressway on my way into the city from the airport on my first day. A motorbike had apparently struck an old man crossing the street. The motorbike was damaged. Several people were helping the old man who was bleeding from head wounds. Just after I came upon the accident an ambulance arrived.

I’m going to a concert of music by Camille Saint-Saëns and Maurice Ravel by l'Orchestre National d'Île de France at l’Eglise St-Eustache on Friday night. This ought to be good. St-Eustache you may remember if you read an earlier blog entry is the Paris church with the organ that shakes the rafters.

Bibliothèque Couronnes

Bibliothèque Couronnes is a medium-size Paris municipal library. It has an adult area, a children’s area and a discothèque (music library). It occupies approximately 1,000 square meters on two floors of a social housing building in the Belleville quarter. It has a staff of 21. Romain Gaillard, library manager, explained that the staff would be smaller if the branch wasn’t engaged in so much activity outside of the library with local schools and community organizations.

Bibliothèque Couronnes has a collection of 56,000 items and circulates approximately 7,500 items each month including many fiction CDs. Previously these novels were recorded on several discs, but with MP3 technology they can be recorded on one.

The Bibliothèque Couronnes manager plans to weed 10 to 15% of the collection. The Paris municipal library has no central library, but it has a warehouse where approximately 140,000 books are stored, including many books weeded from the branch libraries’ collections. If customers request these books, they are delivered to the requesting location within two days.

The library has three public access computers that customers can use for 15 minutes. It also has eight computers customers can reserve for up to 90 minutes. Self-learning or autoformation as it is called at the Bibliotheque Publique d’Information appears to be not as popular in French libraries as it is in German libraries. The Paris municipal library branches do not offer self-learning computer courses.

Books in the Paris municipal libraries are classified according to the Dewey Decimal System, but French music libraries organize their collections according to the Principes Classification de Musique, of which Musique du Monde (world music) is the largest part. Bibliothèque Couronnes has gone one step further by color coding world music from Arabic countries blue and world music from Africa orange, and arranging its music in these categories by country of origin because many of its customers are from North or sub-Saharan Africa. Library cards are free in France, but Paris public library customers must pay €40.00 a year to borrow CDs and €61.00 a year to borrow CDs and DVDs.

Only a fraction of Paris municipal libraries have DVD collections because they are considered unfair competition to private business. For the same reason public libraries in Paris get only one or two copies of best sellers and only after they books already have been in bookstores for two or three weeks.

The administration of the Paris public library prepares extensive lists of new books. On the day I visited the Bibliothèque Couronnes, staff members were reviewing the lists and deciding what books to buy. The branch’s collection includes 2,500 books in Arabic, which it buys from the Institute do Monde Arabe in Paris, the supplier currently approved by the administration. Many of these books are published in Lebanon. The library also subscribes to an Arabic newspaper for women published in London that is very popular with its customers. It had far fewer books in Arabic 10 years ago, but the administration directed it to buy more contemporary fiction. It also buys Arabic books on Vie Pratique (practical life) such as cooking, education and child rearing. The library has a large collection of books on sub-Saharan Africa as well, but these books are in French.

The children’s area was recently renovated with new paint, new furniture and new carpets. The library arranges some books by theme and others by a simplified version of Dewey. The non-fiction is arranged by age, with the books for younger children on the lower shelves and the books for older children on the higher shelves. The library also puts books and magazines together on the shelves in the subject areas.

Like the libraries in Germany, the Paris libraries open library accounts for schools and community organizations. The lending period for these organizations is six week. Children pay no fine if they return their materials late, but if they do this too many times their accounts are blocked.

Plans for the branch library include weeding many print reference resources, especially some encyclopedias because customers now get this information from the internet and replacing the books in this area with foreign language and other self-learning materials as well as job and career materials. Romain also wants to replace the furniture in the newspaper reading room and put a coffee machine in the foyer. Customers will be allowed to drink coffee in the library.

Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin (ZLB)

While plans for a new Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin move forward, the library’s collection of more than three million items is housed in three locations: the Berliner Stadtbibliothek, the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek and the Senatsbibliothek Berlin ZLM. In addition to these sites, the library operates an e-LearnBar, a self-learning center, at a fourth location.

We were given a tour of the e-LearnBar by two of the three employees who staff the recently opened facility in the vicinity of Berliner Schlossplatz. The e-LearnBar has 15 individual learning stations, 14 group learning stations, five standing learning stations and work areas for the visually impaired. It offers tutorials in the Microsoft office suite, Magix, Music Maker, Adobe Photoshop and other photo editing programs as well as self-learning programs in a wide range of subjects. It also offers scanning and Internet research. Anyone 18 year of age or over with a ZLB library card is welcome, but customers are advised that basic knowledge of PCs and basic mouse skills are assumed. Library cards cost €10.00 for adults and €5.00 for students. They are free for children and the unemployed. To be eligible, you must have a permanent address in Germany.

The facility was financed by Kultur in den neuen Ländern, an aid program for the states of the former Deutsche Demokratishe Republik (German Democratic Republic), in partnership with the ZLB, the Landesbetrieb für Informationstechnic (Berlin Office for Information Technology), Cisco Systems Gmbh, Netfox and IBM. The facility is state-of-the-art and quite impressive; however, it is not as accessible as it might be. The fact that it had to be located in the former East Berlin might have something to do with this, although the Stadtmitte (city center) is itself in the former East Berlin.

We also took an unescorted tour of the Amerika-Gedenkbibliothek, the first library where I was told the taking of photographs was verboten (no translation needed). The building was a gift of the United States to Berliners for enduring the 1948/49 Soviet Blockade. It was conceived by American and German architects like Fritz Bornemann and Willy Kreuer and opened in 1954 as a symbol of freedom of expression and thought. Designed as a library, the building appears to function well and to have withstood the test of time.

The representative of the ZLB who attended the workshop in Paris showed us an extensive and impressive list of the libraries with which the ZLB has reciprocal reference agreements. I was hoping to learn more about this service and maybe meet the librarian responsible for creating it, but that did not happen.

The ZLB hopes to construct a new central library on the site of the former Templehof Airport, which closed on October 30, 2008. A story in a Berlin newspaper on the morning we left, however, reported that a former Berliner Kindl brewery in the Neu Köln neighborhood is also being considered.

Das Leben in Berlin
All of the hotels we stayed in were middle-class European hotels – comfortable, efficient and squeaky clean. All except the hotel in Berlin were decorated like middle-class European homes. Even the bars looked like somebody’s living room. And at all of them, except the hotel in Berlin, middle-class, middle-age European people gathered in the public areas in the evening for tea, beer, brandy, etc., and conversation. The Park Inn, our Berlin Hotel is a modern skyscraper. The small but clean and comfortable rooms look a little like they could be on the Star Trek Enterprise.

On our way to dinner in Berlin we made a stop at shop that sold nothing but Ampleman souvenirs. Ample is traffic light in German, and Ampleman is the man on the traffic lights in the former East Berlin. If he’s red and standing facing you with his arms outstretched, you stop; if he’s green and running briskly as if showing you how to cross the street, you go. The souvenir I would buy, if I could find it, would be a tee shirt with the word Zuruckbleiben (Stand Back) on it. Zuruckbleiben is what you hear in Berlin's subways as trains rumble into the stations. You could say it’s Berllin’s equivalent of London’s “Mind the Gap.” Wearing such a shirt, I would feel invincible on the streets of New York, even if only German tourists could understand me.

I had a hearty meal of Schweinebraten (roast pork) with red cabbage and a Kartoffelnklops (potato dumpling) at a restaurant not far from Alexendarplatz. Everyone was in a good mood. It had been a nonstop week, and I think we were all pleased at the thought of going home next day. After dinner we took a different route back to the hotel. I have visited Berlin many times, but only once since the wall came down. The city has changed dramatically. It‘s still a great place, but it doesn’t even feel like the city I knew. Following dinner I told one of my companions that it is good to travel in the company of the French because they travel on their stomachs. I think he was pleased.

La Vie à Paris: Le Bon Week-end

Yesterday I went to a flea market in the 18e arrondissement. It went on forever. I expected to see second-hand and was surprised to see how much new merchandise was for sale. As I got further from the entrance, the new gave way to the old. And at the far reaches antique shops, some quite expensive, replaced the second–hand stalls.

Today I went to the Marché Bastille outdoor market. So much beautiful food, and all looking so much better than what’s available at the little supermarket around the corner! Stalls selling nothing but oysters! I spent €45,08. I bought my alimentation (groceries) for the week. I hope I didn’t buy too much – three peaches, three pears, five figs and eight bananas; two cheeses – a camembert and three small crottin de chevre. I’m buying cheeses I never ate before and keeping a list. I’ve had camembert, but not camembert made with unpasteurized milk because you can’t get it in the U.S. When I ordered it, the seller poked it with his finger. I don’t know if he was testing it for ripeness or showing me that it was ripe. Mine is definitely ready to eat. I could smell it on the subway on the way home.

I also stocked up on some menu items I can reheat during the week – fully cooked (if I understood his French correctly) pickled pork ribs, lasagna and stuffed squid. Stuffed with what, I have no idea. I didn’t buy vegetables because I don’t want to take the time to cook. I noticed that at the market they were selling fully cooked beet roots. Perhaps I should have bought one or two. Oh well, bon appétit!

I took the Lonely Planet Guide literary walking tour of the Latin Quarter today. Not being a Hemingway fan, I really didn’t care about all the bars where Papa got sloshed, but other than that it was pretty great. I saw places where James Joyce, George Orwell, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller and Kathryn Anne Porter lived. But what was greatest was seeing where Pablo Picasso painted Guernica, where Jean Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir hung out, where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas held their literary salons, and the hotel where Oscar Wilde died. Although not of literary significance, 56 rue Jacob also was on the tour. That’s where David Harley, George III’s representative, met with Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and John Hay on September 3, 1783 to sign the Treaty of Paris recognizing American independence. This evening I went to a concert and mass at St. Eustache, the church with the largest organ in Paris. When they pull out all the stops, that thing really wails. Stirs the emotions. Amen.

Paris is expensive. A glass of beer on rue Jacob cost me €9.50 (about $14.70 at today’s exchange rate), and it wasn’t even a big glass. And this evening I went to the laverie (laundramat) for the second time. A small load of laundry cost €6.50 (a little more than $10.00) to wash and dry. Restaurants, bars, cafés, brasseries and salons du thé charge different prices depending on where you sit (or stand) and what time of day you go. I probably sat in the most expensive place at the most expensive time. Ate the squid tonight. Heated it in the microwave because I can’t get the oven to work. Not a problem. Delicious.

When is a Stadtbucherei a Bücherhallen?

When you’re in Hamburg, of course. Hamburg claims to be the only library in Germany to use this word. OK, but a library is a library is a library.

Hamburg is a city of 1.7 million people, 15 to 20% of whom are immigrants. It is a major port, not only for Germany but all of Europe. It also is the German home of Airbus, the Franco-German aircraft company with French operations in Toulouse.

The central library is housed on two floors of rented space in a building that was a parcel distribution center for the German post office. The library didn’t want to move into the building, but the landlord made a very attractive offer because he hoped the library would provide an anchor for the neighborhood. The landlord’s hopes have been realized and the library is expanding to a third floor.

The library has a budget of €30.8 million, and a staff of 491 (400 full-time and 91 part-time). It has a turnover rate of 7.8 and circulated 12.82 million items last year. It collects in 27 languages and offers 120 language courses. It has issued 141,782 paid cards, but admits that with RFID it cannot control who uses the cards. It hires six to eight librarian trainees each year for whom it offers a three-year training program. In the second year of the program the trainees staff HOEB4U, the libraries telephone, email and virtual reference service.

The library owns 14,000 DVDs and 20,000 CDs. It subscribes to 7,000 periodicals. It offers free wifi, for which users don’t need library cards. Like other German libraries, it charges to reserve books and to check out best sellers. Reserves cost €1.50 and best sellers cost €2.50. The number of best sellers the library gets depends on the books position on the Der Spiegel best seller list. The vendor processes the books for the library.

Having worked in dozens of organizations during my checkered career(s), I have seen first-hand how the leader can affect the culture of an organization, and I think the director of the Bücherhallen Hamburg must be doing something right. Many staff members talked about how the director encourages them to try new things and embrace change; others demonstrated it. I’m sorry we didn’t get to meet her.

The name Bücherhallen is not the only unique thing about the Hamburg library. It has a separate “leisure library,” and its teen center is housed in a separate building. It runs the libraries in the city’s prisons. It is responsible for the city’s school libraries. It has a chat-bot named Ina who brings people to content on its website. It provides audio for the blind and sign language for the hearing impaired on its website. It has an automated book return and sorting system that handles 10,000 check-ins a day at a rate of 1,000 books an hour. In the early morning and late evening hours the system is used to handle reserves and new books. It has a soundproof room in the children’s library that teachers love because, as our tour guide said, it gets the children “away from the hurry, the stress and the noise.” It also has an RFID machine in the children’s room for children to check out their materials themselves.

The Hamburg library works with the Federal office of Immigration and Refugees. It is trying to build a network for immigrant support “to make cultural and educational institutions accessible” and “to help them learn the German language.” It holds German language sessions in the library for immigrants who know some German but need to practice speaking. The sessions are staffed by 60 volunteer discussion facilitators and the library is looking for more volunteers "with similar immigration experience." Recognizing that human contact is another service libraries provide, the Hamburg library has built a volunteer staff of medianboten (item deliverers)who deliver library materials to older, handicapped and immobile customers with whom they spend time reading and talking.

The Hamburg library has an IT staff of three, but 17 people have access to the content management system and can put content on the library’s web page. The library has retained a children’s writer to write and review content for the children’s page. The website’s pages are color coordinated. The main pages are blue. The HOEB4U pages are red, and the children’s page are yellow.

From the HOEB4U page customers can request that their question be answered by a librarian from any one of six Hamburg libraries, by choosing the library from a dropdown menu. This is a service the Hamburg library developed at no cost by working with five other libraries and using an open source ticket system.

The Lern- und Sprachzentrum (Learning and Language Center) at the Hamburg library is a work in progress. The library has adopted the Information Commons idea from English and American universities and hopes with the Center to apply the concept, including e-learning and chat rooms, to the public library setting. The Center provides self-learning, both on site and online, including language study.

DUBib in Wiesbaden, Germany, is the aggregator that provides electronic newspapers, magazines and journals to the Hamburg library. DUBib buys the media from the publishers and the Hamburg library, and 105 other German libraries, including Frankfurt and Munich, buy licenses from the publisher to use the media.

Self-learning or autoformation as the French call it appears to be a much more popular idea in German and French than in American public libraries. One of the most innovative ideas I learned in Hamburg had to do with the library’s online courses, which it obtains from Bipmedia, a German/Austrian firm that provides online training to such companies as SAP and BMW. The library asked Bipmedia, which had never worked with libraries, if it could be on its platform, but Bipmedia offered to create a platform for the library to host instead. The library now offers 102 courses in IT, languages, economics and other subjects and it has contracted with Bipmedia to sell this service to other libraries. The IT staff promoted the service at the recent Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt book fair, the world's largest trade fair for books, where Leipzig and Frankfurt signed on.

The Hamburg library’s eMedia offer includes eBooks, eAudios, eVideos and eMusic, and ePaper (newspapers, journals and magazines), which it obtains from DiViBib GmbH, Wiesbaden, Germany. DiViBib buys the media from the publishers. The Hamburg library and 105 other German libraries, including Bremen, Frankfurt, Cologne, Munich and the Association of Public Libraries in Berlin buy licenses to use the media from the publisher. See http://www.onleihe.net

The ePaper incudes Der Speigel, the German news magazine; four national daily newspapers and Manager Magazin and Wirtschafts Woche, two business magazines. Under terms of their contracts, the libraries can eloan Der Spiegel to only one customer at a time. When I used the temporary Hamburg library card I was given (good for 30 days) to download the 156-page four-color most recent edition of Manager Magazin in pdf format, I was told my loan period was one day, three hours and 13 minutes. For Wirtschafts Woche my loan period was one day three hours and nine minutes.When I requested Der Spiegel, I was put on a waiting list. I received an email a few days later telling me the magazine was available for me to download.

Customrs can also download eBooks to their Sony Reader for a limited time. For some reason, Amazon has not yet introduced the Kindle in Europe, but even if it had, the library could not offer downloads to the Kindle, because Kindle owners are required to obtain their eBooks from Amazon.


Beware of False Cognates
They can get you every time. Here are a few that can cause problems for librarians:

Medien is a German word that refers to any materials, whether in print or electronic format, that a library provides for its customers.

Numerization is a word the French often use when they speak English to mean digitization because numerization is the French word for digitization.

Alphatization is a word French and German librarians often use for literacy training when they speak English because alphabétizer in French and alphabeten in German mean to teach someone to read.

Organization and Efficiency in Bremen

Our first stop in Bremen was at a branch library in a neighborhood with a large population of “migrational background” from Turkey, North Africa and the Near East (a very Eurocentric term). The building was shaped like a ship and filled with light. It must look like a Danish library, because Barbara Lison, director of the Stadtbibliothek Bremen, told us it was designed by an architect who likes Danish libraries.

We were introduced to Frau Martin, the branch manager, and Frau Freihalt, the children’s librarian, who had recently returned from trips sponsored by the Goethe Institute to Ramallah and the Ivory Coast, where she gave presentations on children’s librarianship.

During their presentations, the librarians explained that kids 6-12 years of age are their hauptziele Groupe (target group). Frau Martin maintains that people don’t talk in families anymore. She said this is true of German families, but especially true of immigrant families. She and Frau Freihalt try to compensate for this Sprachlosigkeit by getting children to learn, have fun and speak.

Part of the library was designed as a café, but for cultural reasons the café was not successful. The space is now occupied by a community health center with which the library partners. When the library was opened 10 years ago, there were problems with teen groups, but the library now partners with a Turkish sports club, the local Folkshochschule and other groups and neighbors have adopted the library. It has become a meeting place for all kinds of community activities.


The second library we visited was on the second floor of a shopping center in a neighborhood where many people of German (rather than migrational?) background from the former Soviet Union live. According to the director, the circulation at this library nearly doubled when it moved from the basement of a neighboring building to the shopping center a few years ago.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany admitted nearly five million descendants of Germans who in the 19th century established colonies in what became the Soviet Union. Few of these people speak modern German and the unemployment rate among them is high. This group, the elderly and children are the local library’s target groups.


For five years the central library has been housed in a former police station that was built, according to our host, in 1908 with reparations for the Franco-Prussian War. The renovation was a challenge for architects who essentially built a five-story tower in what had been the courtyard of a three-story building with high ceilings. They connected the tower to the original building with bridges at the level where the floors of both are at the same height. It is at this level that most of the collection is housed.

The Lesegarten (Reading Garden) is under a glass roof in the courtyard behind the three-story addition. It is the only area of the library where customers are allowed to eat and drink.



French and German public libraries seem more like academic libraries and to offer more academic programs than public libraries in the United States. The Interconfessional talks about literature at the Bremen library is one example. The series was started in 2006 because the library believes that dialogue about religion is “an important pre-condition for peace between religions and peace in the world.” It uses fiction as a vehicle to enable dialogue by discussing the cultural, social and religious backgrounds of a novel’s characters. The program was organized in cooperation with the Evangelishes Bildungswerk Bremen (Bureau of Professional Training of the Protestant Church in Bremen) and the Muslimische Akademie Berlin (Muslim Academy Berlin). The Catholic Church was a sponsor, our guide explained. It withdrew due to lack of funds, but is, she was sure, with them in spirit.

The library holds six talks each year – three in the spring and three in the fall. The panel always includes a Jew, a Christian, a Buddhist and a Muslim. Representatives of other religions are invited to join as appropriate. One novel is presented at each session, where a professional actor or actress reads passages. The cost of each program is €4.00. Up to 50 people attend.

The Bremen library obtains its library materials, equipment and technology through ekz bibliotheksservice GmbH. Bremen paid €10,000 for the ekz platform, which it adapted to its website, and it pays ekz an annual licensing fee of €8,000. ekz is 65% privately owned and 35% publicly owned by Bremen and other libraries. The library-owners have greater influence than their share of ownership would imply, because some actions cannot be taken without their unanimous approval. ekz’s contracts with content providers often include restrictions on use.

All six libraries I have visited in Germany have fabulous music collections. They have thousands of CDs, which you can search by period, composer, artist, group or instrument, and there are probably a few other categories I’m forgetting about. They also have shelves and shelves of sheet music, and shelves and shelves of books about music. Many of these libraries also have extensive art collections from which customers can borrow items. The loan period is usually three months.

As I mentioned before, libraries in Germany are not free. The annual cost ranges from €15 to €25 with added fees for other services, but children join the library for free, and there are discounts for seniors, the handicapped and the unemployed, and group rates for families. In Bremen, for example, card holders get two and students get four hours of free internet access each week, but if they want to get six hours of each week, they have to pay an additional €10. If they are 18 years old or older and want to borrow any of the 3,280 pieces of art the library owns, that’s another €10. And with the new self-service RFID, cqrd holders can subscribe to these services themselves when they buy or renew their library card.

Das Leben in Bremen
Nearly 65 years after Second World War ended, you are frequently reminded of it in Germany. In Bremen we were told that 85% of the city was destroyed. Whether rebuilt or spared destruction, many of the old buildings in the center of the city, like the Rathaus (city hall), are magnificent. With lots of red brick, winding streets and ornate architectural styles I’ve seen nowhere else, Bremen and Hamburg are two cities I would like to explore further.

Barbara Lison is a master of (dare I say German?) organization and efficiency. We stayed at a hotel near the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) and not far from the central library. Barbara arrived at the hotel by bicycle to escort us on a brief tour of the city center and to dinner at a restaurant where we ate typical North German food. On the following day, she arranged transportation to branch libraries and the central library in four vehicles. At each location it seemed the entire staff was involved in our visit.

As at the libraries we visited in other cities, a staff member provided simultaneous translation to English if the presentation was in German. For lunch at the central library we had our choice of potato soup or a soup made with meat and tomatoes. Both were very good. They were served with white bread like a French baguette. Dessert was a variety of cookies, or biscuits as the Germans like to say. Barbara arranged transportation to the airport toward the end of our visit for one of our group who had to return early to France. Everything happened how it was supposed to happen and when it was supposed to happen and we arrived back at the station in plenty of time to catch our train to Hamburg.

At dinner we were encouraged to try one of the herring dishes, which I did. My cold herring was served with two warm potato pancakes, cranberry sauce and whipped cream. The pancakes, cranberries and whipped cream seemed to go together well enough. It was the herring that just didn’t seem to belong.

If It’s Tuesday It Must be Bochum: Stadtbucherei Bochum

Libraries in Germany are not free. Membership costs from €15 to €25 a year with discounts or free membership for seniors, handicapped and the unemployed; and group rates for families. This was not always the case. According to librarians in Bochum, libraries began charging for membership in the early 1990s.

I heard the term “person with a migrational background” for the first time in Germany. It refers to people not born in Germany and also to people whose forefathers were not born in Germany. I think it says a lot about Germany’s attitude toward immigration, which Germans, according to one librarian with whom I spoke, are just getting around to acknowledging.

The Stadbucherei Bochum, like the library in Cologne, is trying very hard, and with some success, to attract immigrants and their children. Among other things, some libraries in Germany offer three-month free trial memberships to immigrants and story-times for kids in their native language.

Bochum has what it calls a central library with two branches, a family library and a job-career library with its own homepage. The job-career library has a branch at the local university and a branch in the Stadtmitte (downtown area). The library provides reference service by mail and by SMS.

The collections at the family library, the branches of the central library and the job-career library are organized by theme (thematische Medienprasentation)rather than the ASB (Allgemeine Systematik für Bibliotek), the German equivalent of the Dewey Decimal System. Much of the collection at the central library is organized by theme. In the job-career library, the management books are also classified by author as well to make searching for them easier. The Bochum library calls its classification system BOKLA or Bochumer Klassifikation. The library rotates much of its collection among its three branches annually.

The Job Career Library offers information about Choosing an Occupation, Job Training, Applying for a Job, Starting a Business, Continuing Education Employment Law and the Economy. It is open 53 hours a week. It has six PCs with internet access for general use and two PCs with internet access for completing job applications. The staff has partnered with employment agencies, schools that offer occupational training and organizations in the city that help entrepreneurs establish businesses. It participates in career fairs, job fairs and youth conferences.

The Bochum library gives accounts to schools and other institutions and it has linked its customer profiles with its acquisition system. This allows the library to prepare boxes of materials according to theme for teachers. The family library also prepares boxes of materials by themes for families that request this service. The library provides free delivery of these boxes to schools and institutions but families have to pick up and return the boxes themselves.

The job-career library was part of a major reorganization of the library undertaken between 1998 and 2003 with funds from the Bertelsmann Stiftung (Bertelsmann Foundation). The goals of the project were to increase membership by 50%, increase the number of children who belong to the library by 30 to 40% and to increase lending by 30%.

We visited the branch library in Wattenscheid, which didn’t become part of Bochum until 1975. In addition to the library, the building houses the Wattenscheid Archive and an adult education center. The library is in an immigrant area. It collects in German, Turkish, English, Russian.

The library offers story times in several languages. The stories are read by volunteers. The library gives children reading cards, which it stamps each time a child finishes a book. The library has an arrangement with two local bookstores whereby the children can exchange the card once it has been stamped eight times for a children’s book with a value up to €8,00.

Liselotte is the first name of a well-known author from the area. The library has a serpent named Leselotte (lesen means “to read” in German) that it brings to preschools and kindergartens. Leselotte is a serpent head and a collection of pockets strung together. There is a book in each pocket. One book is Leselotte’s diary. Someone makes an entry in the diary at each place Leselotte visits.

The library has partnered with the adult education center to run programs. It recently hosted a wine tasting.

Das Leben in Bochum
For lunch we had Ruhr currywurst, which we were told is different from Berliner currywurst. It is made with weisswurst and served in a sauce made with cayenne, whereas Beliner currywurst is made with Bruhwurst and served in a sauce made with chili powder.

Like other subways in Germany, the subway in Bochum is a light rail system. A notice in the Bochum subway cars tells riders to let the driver know if they will need a taxi when they get to their stop, and the driver will have someone arrange a taxi for them. Just another one of those things that somehow make life seem more civil in Europe than in the United States.

Bochum is in the heart of the Ruhr, Germany’s famous industrial area. It was stark zerstört (largely destroyed) during the Second World War. Bochum’s economy was based on the steel industry, which today is a shadow of what it once was. Opel is another mainstay, but Opel is owned by General Motors, which is in trouble. Nokia, the Finish company, manufactured in Bochum, but recently moved its operations to Romania. We were told that unemployment in some areas is as high as 50%.