Whirlwind Week, Part II: Book Lover's Paradise

Other events that kept us busy this week were the start of Dan's classes, two programs at the American Corner, and our first Serbian lesson. But by far the most exciting was our excursion to the Belgrade Book Fair.

This is an annual week-long event that takes place at the Belgrade Fair Grounds. There are 14 buildings of book fair - below you can see the main hall, which features Serbian publishers and bookstores, as well as the guest of honor. This year's guest was Great Britain (next year it will be the USA). A separate hall hosted international books, including booths from the US, Russia, Switzerland, Canada, Japan, Italy, and Iran. It was an excellent and strange mix. The fair is essentially a trade show, and there were only a few stands that weren't selling anything.


Main Hall, Belgrade Book Fair - can you see the haze wafting up from the crowd?

We went up early Thursday because we wanted to avoid the weekend crowds - fat chance, as it turns out, because it was jammed with school groups and others who had made special trips from around Serbia (like us). We were fighting our way through the crowds to look at books. It was hard work, and I had to use my elbows more than once. But it was really heartwarming. People have been telling us about this event since our first day here, and I've heard that some locals save all year so they can stock up at the book fair. This may seem strange - like why don't you just go to the bookstore? But the selection at the fair is far superior to that of any Serbian bookstore I've seen. It gave the book nerd in me a warm glow to see the throngs out to see, appreciate, and buy books.

Plato, the big bookstore of Belgrade, had an impressive stand/shop with a huge selection of books in English. Hurray for us, because we've had trouble finding things to read. It was a good thing I had the foresight to bring an empty backpack. Talking to the booksellers at the Plato stand made me nostalgic for my B&N days - they were all excited about the books and having fun at their big event. The book the staff were united behind (and I know my bookstore cohorts will get a kick out of this) was the new Serbian translation of House of Leaves. They even had t-shirts printed up with excerpts from the text. That book doesn't make sense in English - I can't imagine reading a translation.

Finally - logistics! I did one trade show in my bookstore days, not nearly so big, and figuring out how to get the books there and back was quite a headache. Books may pack nicely into boxes, but they are heavy. How on earth did they get the millions of books to the fair grounds in some sort of order, with some idea of what belongs to whom? I hope everyone had a busy sales week...