English Language Books at Pestalozzi Library

Ah books. Beautiful, wonderful books. Some women have shoe collections but not me, I have a book collection - in Texas. Of everything I left behind, my books were the hardest. My friends suggested a Kindle, but no, I like the smell and feel of paper and it is hard to curl up with a tablet. 

There are a couple of different library systems in Zurich and the Pestalozzi library is one of them. For 45 SFr per year, I can check out up to 25 books, DVDs, CDs or whatever at a time and they even have English language books. So I took the kids to the library hoping it would be a good find for my big girl who also obsesses over books (currently Magic Tree House) and first went in search of English language kids books. 

There were 50. I don't mean approximately 50, I mean 50. I counted them while S was looking at one of the books.  *sigh* She picked out one book and what I thought was a Globi DVD to help her learn Swiss German. Turns out it was a video game. Oh well. 

For the adult books, there was a larger selection of English books, about one and a half racks worth. All fiction and not very many new ones. I picked out Julie and Julia and The Birth House for myself, paid for my year membership and left. One perk of the Pestalozzi library - kids memberships are free until age 16. The kids membership limits borrowers to kids books only otherwise S would be checking out a lot of adult books. ;) 

Afterward, S was disappointed by the sparse selection so we stopped by the Brockenhaus behind Zurich HB that carries a limited supply of used books. The only book S found was a book on Babar going to America but it was in French. I bought it anyway and was able to translate it for her as I read it. I lucked out a little more and found a hardback copy of Stephen King's recent book Under the Dome. 

Tomorrow we are going back to the Pestalozzi library to return our books and get new ones. So excited!

The flea market at Burkliplatz (Zurich)

Just back from the Saturday flea market at Burkliplatz, in search of English language books. I read on the interwebz that fiction was generally available at the flea market for a few SFr each so I thought it was worth a try. So glad I left the kid at home because I never would have found anything with her being all over the place.

My haul? Four books that I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise for a grand total of SFr 3. I bought:

Agatha Christie: At Bertram's Hotel
The Nanny Diaries

The other books were too awful to buy. There were two books about people being persecuted by oppressive governments, one trashy romance novel and something that was so worthless, it has completely slipped my mind.

Maybe I came too late and all the English books were snapped up by early birds at 6 AM.

Still no camera. :(