Book Stores #2 – Donner Rotterdam

Despite ebooks and online shopping there are still plenty of book stores throughout the Netherlands. One of them is Donner in Rotterdam. This book store caught my attention by their young adult facebook account that is rather active. They interact a lot with those that comment on their pictures and status updates. They also did an insane amount of giveaways around Christmas. And during that time they asked some of us if we were willing to come help (volunteer) out during the super busy weekends. So their interaction has been quite fun to see.

And for this reason I have been wanting to visit the actual book store which I was able to do earlier this year. Because if you are awesome on social media, your book store has to be equally as awesome.

Of course when I started writing this I had to read up a little on the history of the book store as well. It’s interesting how you can have no idea about how some book stores came to be. Donner for instance was started in 1902. Donner is well known for being the biggest book store of Rotterdam.  But for a while they were also the biggest book store of the Benelux. Interestingly they were apart of a few different book store chains. Around the time the economy took a nose dive these chains did as well. Donner survived that by a crowdfunding and was able to continue on its own in 2014 when they moved into an old bank building.

When my husband and I walked towards this building my husband’s mouth fell open and he wondered what the hell kind of book store this was and if I wasn’t sure there wasn’t another store in there. He also said he would drop me off and would come back around closing time, because clearly I would need a couple hours to wander around in there. Of course in the end he came in with me. And no, I didn’t stay until closing time. I wish.

Inside it was really big. One of the first things I spotted was of course the young adult section to the right of the register  which was divided in English and Dutch. They had a lot of new English releases displayed on tables which I was pleased to see. In this direction was also the children’s section. Across from these sections were fantasy (also divided in English and Dutch), comics, crime and other fiction.There was also another entry to the store there.

In between these sections they had a lot of gift ideas. Heaven. I was there for a while. There was so much to look at. Great gifts for book worms, but also for others. They also had a lot of different types of book marks. It’s one of the things I often miss in other book stores.

On the left side of the register there was a big section that was for non-fiction books. I briefly glanced in there but as non-fiction isn’t really my thing I left there rather quickly. But it had a lot of different topics.

And yes I did have to buy something there.I think I sort of fell in love with this book store. I told my husband that he should be happy we don’t live anywhere near this book store or I would be there every week. And I’d have a bigger stack of unread books.

I appologize for the small amount of photos that I took there. I still feel really awkward taking pictures in the book store.

What is the biggest book store you have ever been to?