Travel Tuesday - Week 1 - Vienna, Austria - Shakespeare & Company Booksellers

TRAVEL TUESDAY

Time for the first installment of Travel Tuesday! 

What a way to start, with beautiful Vienna. I visited the city in April 2024 as part of a jaunt around some European gems. Vienna is the capital city of Austria and sits on the river Danube. Vienna is famous for its ties to the arts, especially music, with Mozart and Brahms being just a snippet from a long list of famous resident composers and musicians. 

Our visit consisted of copious Weiner Schnitzel and visits to microbreweries, sampling the local beers, in addition to fuelling my literary obsession. I made it my mission to visit some unique and unusual bookstores while traveling, and boy does Shakespeare & Company tick all of my boxes. I also visited the Austrian National Library, which was incredible and will be the subject of a future installment of Travel Tuesday.

It's in a really accessible part of the old town of Vienna and gives old-style English pub vibes (with the hanging Shakespeare placard outside). After a brief celebratory jump up and down, clapping, I couldn't wait to go inside!

This bookstore specialises in English language books and what I loved about it was the absolute lack of order in the books. They're in stacks, on bookshelves, in boxes, wherever you look there are more books. This is great if, like me, you pick books based on cover art/title, read a bit of the blurb, and then buy if it takes your fancy. If you want a specific author or title, their staff are very knowledgeable and helpful. 

There are little rooms to wander through and get lost in the stacks and although quite small, the store is packed to the ceiling with volume after volume. I spent a good half hour simply running my fingers across spines (not as creepy as it sounds!) and made my way to the only section of the store that had signage - English translations of Austrian books. 

To give myself some boundaries while travelling, I limited myself to one book buy per city (a good decision, that I regularly cursed myself for!). I also wanted to find authors from that country rather than picking up books I could easily find closer to home. My choice of book from Shakespeare&Co. was A Game of Chess and Other Stories - Stefan Zweig which now has pride of place on my bookshelf. I loved this book and all of the stories, happily rating it 5*. I'll do a full review and post a link here when it's available. 

This is one of my favourite bookstores, no razzle-dazzle, just a good, old-fashioned hotch-potch of books. Having organised chaos allows readers to discover books they didn't know they needed and the vibe was relaxed and peaceful. No sales tactics, just readers quietly perusing and the familiar muted hum of bookish conversation. 

Shakespeare and Company has a website with maps and public transport information to help you find your way there. 

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