Book Stores #6 – De Drvkkerij Middelburg

Social media is an amazing thing. Once you get sucked into a community you can find things you never looked at before. One of those things is the book store Drvkkerij in Middelburg. I first found them through my bookstagram. And yet I grew up in the same province and even had a 6 month internship at Middelburg. But sometimes when you aren’t active in a community things can pass you by, you know. At the time I didn’t make time for reading and so my focus wasn’t on that.

This Summer I finally made time to visit this book store with my husband and I am glad I did. A return visit next year will for sure be in the cards.

This is the front of the store which is quite different and is hard to miss. As you can see De Drvkkerij exists 20 years this year. Way back in 1998 De Drvkkerij was started. Granted it certainly doesn’t have as long a history as some book stores but it does its best to stand out. Not in the least by the glass wall before the stone wall. One of the reasons for that was to keep the original building as intact as possible. It is quite protected from most weather conditions unlike other older buildings.

When you enter the book store you first walk through a hallway that has this little layout. Everything in the book store is ground level but don’t mistake the store for a small one. The lay out is color coded. Red indicates newspapers and magazines. Purple is the restaurant. Dark Blue is the gift and stationary section. Green is sports, travel, hobby, sciende, cooking and children’s books. Light blue is the music section. And the pink area is literature, history, poetry and art. The K is where the register is. As you can see there are two of them.

Personally I moved quite quick through the first two sections to the main of the store and I can tell you that it is quite big. In the above photo you can see a portion of the children’s section. And no, that isn’t all.

I also am slightly in love with their young adult section. Look at the little ladder and pusheen plushie. Husband would not humor me with it. Boo. But look at how many book cases they have.

I of course then searched out the fantasy section which was a bit tinier than the young adult section. Even so it is still reasonable big compared to other book stores considering these are all Dutch editions. And I see plenty of fantasy I highly approve of. Robin Hobb, The 5th Season.

Next to find was of course the English section which kind of blew my mind. The photo above is all english and there were 2 more book cases behind the pillar, plus two more a little further down the wall. Than across from that there were the book cases with English classic editions you can see below on the photo. And then there were 4 more book cases with English literature.

So yes the English section was rather big. I highly approve.

They also had these cute little stools to sit on with book spines on them. Clearly with some library books on there too.

There were also these old presses I think they were.

All in all if you are ever in the vicinity of Middelburg, De Drvkkerij is certainly worth a visit. Not just to the Dutch or Belgian people but also to internatinal visitors considering how big their English section is.