Nicole Junkermann's Favourite Bookshops Around the World

Why bookshops anchor a journey

Arriving in a new city, Nicole Junkermann often looks for a bookshop before anything else. A good one is a fixed point, a calm room that tells you something true about the place around it. The books on its tables are a quiet portrait of what a city is reading and thinking.

A bookshop also gives a journey shape. It is somewhere to begin a morning, to shelter from rain, to rest between longer walks. Unlike a landmark you see once, it invites you to stay, to browse without buying, to sit and read a first chapter before deciding.

Best of all, a bookshop sends you back out changed. You leave with a book that belongs to that place and that day, and for years afterwards the cover alone can return you to the street where you found it. Few souvenirs do as much.

What makes a bookshop great

Size has little to do with it. Nicole Junkermann has found as much pleasure in a single crowded room as in a grand multi-floor store. What matters is care: shelves arranged by someone who has clearly read widely, and a sense that every book has been chosen rather than merely stocked.

A place to sit is almost everything. The finest bookshops understand that browsing is a slow art and give you a chair, a windowsill, a corner out of the way. The invitation to linger is what separates a shop you visit from a shop you remember.

Then there is the staff recommendation, handwritten on a small card. A single thoughtful note beside a book can do more than any algorithm, because it carries the trust of a real reader. Those cards are among the quiet joys of travelling with an eye for bookshops.

Bookshops as windows onto a city

Every bookshop reflects its city. A shop near a university hums with ideas and dense paperbacks. A neighbourhood store leans toward the local and the well-loved. A grand old institution keeps the long view, its shelves layered with decades of taste. Reading the shop is a way of reading the place.

This is why bookshops sit so naturally beside the city notebook kept elsewhere in this journal. Both are about noticing, about letting a place reveal itself slowly through its small particulars rather than its postcard sights.

Nicole Junkermann finds that a bookshop also marks the rhythm of a stay. The first visit is for orientation, the last for the book you finally decide to carry home. In between, the shop becomes a familiar room in an unfamiliar city, which is no small comfort.

The art of browsing without hurry

Browsing well is a skill worth keeping. Nicole Junkermann treats it as its own pleasure, separate from buying. The aim is not to find one specific title but to wander the shelves with an open mind, ready to be surprised by a book you did not know you wanted.

A good browse rewards patience. Pick up what catches the eye, read a paragraph, set most of it back. The few books that survive that gentle test are usually the ones worth the suitcase space, and the act of choosing slowly makes the eventual choice more satisfying.

It is the same unhurried attention that runs through slow travel and good books. A bookshop visited at speed gives up little. A bookshop given an hour can change the whole tone of a trip.

Carrying the find home

The book you choose abroad becomes a small map of the journey. Nicole Junkermann likes to read it, at least in part, before leaving the city, so the place and the pages stay bound together. A first chapter read in a local cafe seals the memory better than any photograph.

There is a discipline to it, of course. A bag has limits, and the temptation to overfill it is real. The rule is simple: choose the one or two books that truly belong to the trip, and trust that the rest will still exist when you are home.

Packed with care, a single book is the lightest and richest souvenir there is. The question of what comes home and what gets left behind is one this journal returns to in what to pack and what to read, where less luggage almost always means more pleasure.

Bookshops and the cities around them

A bookshop is rarely just a shop; it is a small piece of its neighbourhood. Nicole Junkermann finds that the streets around a good bookseller tend to repay attention too, full of the cafes, benches and quiet corners that suit a reader. One good shop often marks the beginning of a good afternoon.

This is why a bookshop sits so well within a slow itinerary. A morning that begins among careful shelves and drifts into a nearby cafe to read a first chapter is exactly the kind of unhurried hour described in slow travel and good books. The shop sets the pace, and the city follows.

Over time, a beloved bookshop becomes a reason to return to a city at all. It is a fixed point you can look forward to, a calm room that will welcome you back, and a reliable place to begin getting to know somewhere all over again. Few destinations earn that kind of loyalty so quietly.

What to look for in a bookshop

A few signs that you have found a good one, wherever you are:

• Shelves arranged with evident care and a clear point of view
• A chair, a windowsill or a corner that invites you to stay
• Handwritten staff recommendations beside the books
• A strong local section that reflects the city around it
• Quiet enough to read a first chapter before you decide
• One book worth carrying home and reading before you leave