One unexpected thing I love about Europe

It didn't read like a rant to me. Or, at least it was a positive rant. DH and I noted the number of bookstores we saw in many of the cities we visited last month; but just attributed it to the proximity of a university. Coincidence? Don't know.

Some Europeans still read newspapers, too, right out there in public. For once I can feel that I am not completely obsolete.

Whether they were actually reading these books or not, it was great to
experience a culture in which caring about literacy actually seems to
be part of looking cool for one's young peers. What a breath of fresh
air.

If they aren't reading, I'd say it's more a concern for looks, mere pretense. I too spent many years encouraging young people to become readers and would get a small high whenever I saw a self-selected book in the hands of a student. Today, I think literacy is about much more than books, and the signs of real literacy aren't as clear as they used to be.

The unexpected thing I've come across is Europe's approach to traditional religious life and its manifestations. There's a lot of tolerance when it comes to religious symbolism in public places, whereas we appear bent on removing the symbols and labels from the public eye, lest someone be offended by them. Europeans don't seem to busy their courtrooms with efforts to remove crosses from hilltops, and European pupils still take "Easter" (not "spring" and "Christmas" (not "winter" vacations.) I've found this pretty surprising since Europeans are generally thought to be less religious and more liberal than Americans. It's refreshing to see that traditions have their place and have not become a venue for societal conflict.

Joel hasn't heard about the new "Pretend to Read" app that makes you look smarter in the piazza by disguising your phone as a book and your Angry Birds game as text. It's selling like hotcakes all over the planet! And those who can't afford it just pick up a book and look at one of the pages while sitting in the piazza. Cool is cool, y'know? ;-)

I can't say I've noticed more reading among Europe's youth than ours, but if it's true it's encouraging. Maybe someone will still have their wits about them when we Americans have all become screen-struck blobs watching endless videos on our couches. Like the "people" in the movie "Wall-E." (Does the movie reference prove the point?)

Thanks for this observation, Joel. I'll take more time to check the piazzas next spring.

People read books on the train all the time, as well as while they are waiting on them and also in the parks. Lots of book stores in Frankfurt and they always seem to be busy.

Depending on where I am going, will also have a book with me to read but often it is just too heavy to schlep around, so messing around on my i-phone keeps me busy instead.

However lovely these posts are about Europe, they always make me cringe slightly and say the same as Emma - Europe is made up of very many countries and we’re all different. It’s lovely to be praised for “our” reading - but I’m not sure you can draw conclusions about an entire continent from anything! I’d love to know where else you’ve been apart from Italy, and what “Europe” means to you. I’m not sure I see all that many young people reading in Britain, for example. Unless of course they’re reading on their phones. Don’t see many hardback books!

Well, I agree.
When I am in France ,at least; I see way more people of all ages reading books than on their phones.
Bookshops are everywhere, and I have a lovely photo of a girl on the Metro in Paris.
She is standing ,clutching a huge double bass in one arm, and is reading a book in the other.

I see people of all ages reading books on trains in Italy, Germany, and France (countries where I have spent a lot of time on trains). Even more on electronic devices. But I (college professor) love to see people turning pages! Makes me feel like a Farenheit 451 rebellion might be going on.

Dick, that is too funny! Somehow I would guess that you're a Gary Larson fan :-)

Emma, I think I've seen this behavior in most countries, though I only became particularly conscious of it this year. if you count cafe culture, then I've seen it for sure in every country that has lots of outdoor seating, though the cafe readers are not necessarily young persons. Public transport is another good place, as more than one poster has noted.

Emma and Jane, the countries from which I'm generalizing are Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden, and Switzerland.

And Emma, yes, I have heard about e-readers; not really my thing (I'm with Zoe on this), though they are handy for traveling. But more power to those who do use them.

Emma and Jane, the countries from which I'm generalizing are Austria,
Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Finland,
France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland,
Sweden, and Switzerland.

Haha. I’ll let you off on the generalising then... ;-)

I've seen reports that e-readers are on the decline in the UK and print sales are having a revival.

I was in a big bookstore today in Cambridge UK and it was crowded.

Agree that it varies by country/culture. I recall reading that the percentage of adults in Spain who read books for pleasure is quite low, lower than the U.S.

James Michener in his book 'Iberia' (in the '60s) noted that Spaniards tended to keep books in their homes as middle class status symbols but didn't read them. He was also told by Spanish publishing houses that they sold similar numbers of copies of the same title in Catalan and Spanish, even though the Catalan-speaking population is much smaller.

Very true about the plethora of book stores in European cities, tons of them in Berlin. I always check out book stores on my trips, esp in France, Germany, Vienna, London, etc. just the book stores in the German train stations are something to marvel at. The book sections in museum shops in England are amazingly extensive, eg, at Bovington. Imperial War Museum. Have I regretted not buying a book when I should have? Yes, a few times but the most blatant example was in northern France , in 1999 in book store in Arras, basically how negligent of me.

If you want cities named in Europe, where I check out the most recent publications once I arrive to start another trip, I can name them too, esp in various train stations in Germany, north , east, south, the Rhineland, etc

Whether they were actually reading these books or not, it was great to experience a culture in which caring about literacy actually seems to be part of looking cool for one's young peers. What a breath of fresh air.

Yeah but that is undermined by the prevalence of smoking in public spaces those filter-less cigarettes by youth trying to look cool.

. . .So maybe "breath of fresh air" is a poor choice of words :-)

The youth smoking filter-less cigarettes are often rolling their own. It is a lot cheaper considering the price of cigarettes today.
There is no other reason to start smoking other than looking cool. Ask any smoker why they began.

as a european and someone who travels throughout the continent this does not surprise me.Most folk in Europe read books,either in paper form or electronically ,just use public transport and you will see folk reading books or e-readers all the time.
A couple of years ago I was travelling on a train between Prague and Ceske Budejovice and got talking to a couple of students and there were very surprised that I a middle aged Scotsman could name several Czech writers and discuss their writings with them . If you go to any place in Europe you will find loads of Second hand books shops, you may have to go off the tourist trails but they will be there and will be thriving .Also in hotels and guest house there is often a selection of books you can take and read the unwritten rule is that if you have a book you have finished with you leave it behind and can pick one from the ones on the shelf.Even my social club has a used book section.

You know what? I’m going to do a generalisation... but it fits this thread, I think.

I was driving the US coast to coast a few years ago, before I had a Kindle. I’d run out of Reading matter. That day’s route took me through a small Midwest town with a well-regarded university. So I stopped at the university book store.

The entire ground floor was taken up by university branded clothing, football uniforms etc. In search of a book I went down to the basement where apparently the books were. I found a lot of stationery and a small section given over to books - but it was only coursework books. I mean, only the books that allocated reading. As it was, one of the courses was some kind of contemporary sociology thing and I bought an excellent book called The Unwinding by George Packer. But I searched that town in vain for general fiction.

Maybe there was a big Barnes & Noble in a mall just outside the city and I wasn’t looking in the right places, but I was a bit surprised. My previous bookshop experience had been as student at Dartmouth, where the town had an excellent full-service bookstore (albeit one that also sold football uniforms - I still have the shirt).

Amazon has been fought in several countries in Europe that want to protect their small bookstores by not allowing the practice of discounting to drive the race to the bottom (see article links below that discuss France and Germany). Most of the small bookstores where I live have been wiped out completely, with the exception of big chains like Barnes and Noble.
https://techcrunch.com/2014/01/10/the-anti-amazon-law-is-about-to-become-a-reality-in-france-but-its-not-a-bad-thing/
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-germany-keeps-amazon-bay-and-literary-culture-alive/

" Makes me feel like a Farenheit 451 rebellion might be going on. " It certainly appears to be far better on the other side of the pond . Having just returned from Europe several days ago , I was deeply moved by the memorial to the book burnings in May 1933 at Bebelplatz in Berlin . The empty bookstacks below the pavement , and the brass plaques with the quote from Heinrich Heine " Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen." (in English: "That was only a prelude; where they burn books, they will in the end also burn people"

Unclegus' post made me think there might be a relationship between mass transit and reading. Europeans (generalization alert here) use buses, subways, and trains much more than Americans. They need to occupy their minds while being whisked to their destinations. (Unlike us tourists, they've ridden the routes many times so the scenery and people-watching don't do the job.) Therefore they read. We, on the other hand, mostly drive. While we may be heading toward self-driving cars (unwelcome to me), at this point most of us don't try to read while driving -- and those who do may not live long enough to reproduce, so there's a Darwinian thing going on too.

Mass transit = literacy. Reliance on driving = video-ism. Possible?

Dick you could be on to something,I don't have far to travel to work , can walk there in 25 minutes and if I take the bus when the weather is bad it is only 6 minutes so not worth getting a book out, but when I travel to other side of the city by bus maybe a 30-45 minute journey by bus then I usually have a book with me, also when ever I travel there is always a book or two in my bag and a few on my Kindle app on my I-pad.
I am actually reading a Dean Koontz book at the moment , an early one from 1987 (Watchers) picked it up in a charity shop for a £1 and it will be returned there when I finish with it ( should finish it tonight) so they can sell it again.

I do not ever leave my apartment without a book unless I am merely walking to the drug store or supermarket, and even then I occasionally take along whatever I'm currently reading.

I, too, have noticed a lot of used-book stores in many European countries, possibly because I spend a lot of time walking the back streets.

I tend to look lustfully at their merchandise, but books are heavy, so I try not to buy anything. I succumbed to a couple of paperbacks at a charity book stall in England (did manage to finish one of them during the trip, despite spending much of my evening time on this forum), then darned if I didn't find, just a day or two later, a used copy of a 900-page book I had looked for in vain at my neighborhood library sale. It was only £2, so I had to buy it. And carry it around for 4 or 5 more weeks. Now that I've gotten the book home, I don't regret the purchase, but there were times during my trip when I did--like every time I had to carry my suitcase upstairs.

I met a lady from the US in Edinburgh a couple of times, she is known as Booklady on Trip advisor, when she comes over to the UK she has an empty bag she fills with books and takes them back with her each trip, spends much of her trip visiting second hand book stores and charity shops seeking out fun and interesting stuff.

One of the lovely things we noted in Paris in September were the number of people, young and old, reading in the parks on a lovely Sunday afternoon. Most of the benches had someone sitting reading their books and enjoying the weather. Loved it.

Here's some food for thought: some of those people you're seeing in France and Italy and Hungary and the UK reading a book are . . . transplanted or visiting Americans. I've spent substantial time reading in all of those countries -- most often in a café if not on the metro or bus, but sometimes in a park.

(probably statistically insignificant, but then again with so many study abroad programs, maybe not, in highly visited areas)

As a college professor, I have seen a striking decline in literacy in
the USA in the last 30 or so years. But (for example), during our trip
to Italy last May/June, a great many piazzas contained some young
person on a well-placed bench perusing a book, often a thick
hard-cover. Whether they were actually reading these books or not, it
was great to experience a culture in which caring about literacy
actually seems to be part of looking cool for one's young peers. What
a breath of fresh air.

That's an interesting observation, Joel. From your travels, do you think you've seen more European high school/college age people reading real books as opposed to having their faces glued to a smartphone or tablet? I hope retirement for you means more travel.

I started living overseas since I was 12 and one thing I love about my trips overseas is seeing how parents are not helicoptering their children. They let their kids grow without micromanagement which will make them better prepared to be independent and contributing members of society.

@ Steven....well put! I was at the Bebelplatz, most recently, a few years ago. Because of what happened there in May 1933 is the reason I went again. The Heine quotation is famous, among all the other famous lines in his poetry he wrote. In Düsseldorf (his home town) there is the Heine Museum/Haus. I saw his house in Luneburg, where he a few years.

Continental, just anecdotally (which my whole post is, I guess), it does seem to me that e-gadgets are not as dominant in Europe as they are in the USA; igen, by Jean Twenge, is a good recent book on the prevalence of such things in the USA (but with no comparison to Europe).

Yes, we're hopeful that we can travel more in retirement, maybe using Home Exchange or some other program like that in order to reduce lodging costs.

And Kim, what you say seems true for sure--I'm one of those readers at times! When in Rome. . .

Fred , The Wannsee Museum and Memorial was also an experience of unparalleled proportion , we spent a full day there . Seeing the remaining surviving original document outlining the " Final Solution " was chilling .

Steven I went to the House of the Wansee confrence nearly 3 years ago,walking into the room where the Final Solution was decided upon sent a shiver down my spine, never had that happen to me before.

Emma, thanks for the link. That is an interesting trend.

@ Steven....Thanks for your observation on Wannsee. I have not been there yet. I'm glad you included the quotation (in its original) by Heine. I've only read it in its English translation. The original (be it in French or German) is what I want. Yes, I know, go back to the original sources. On the chilling aspect:

In 2001 at the Les Invalides in the French Army Museum, there was a special exhibit on the "Deportation, the Jews, etc " in the WW2 section. At the time my reading level in French was about zero (yes, I know, a big help) but the execution announcements for the resistance fighters were displayed in their original documents in both French and German (in the script). I looked for who signed the orders, ie, if I could recognize the names, read those documents, they were chilling, esp when you read, "wird....e r s c h o s s en." (double-spaced in German typing style for emphasis.)

Fred and UncleGus , We were back in Prague after our Berlin sojourn , and revisited Cyril and Methodius . Words elude me over the story of Anthropoid . This film , " Operation Daybreak " from 1975 , tells it well . It is not as historically accurate as the more recent ( 2016 ) version , but screenplays , in general , require somewhat more poetic ( if you will allow ) license . - https://youtu.be/c0UQc7HL5m4https://youtu.be/c0UQc7HL5m4 . There are better incarnations than this , it was my best right now .There is also this film " Conspiracy " , about Wansee - https://youtu.be/AHgL8fZbaq0

One of the reason I wanted to go to Wansee was to square the circle on Reinhard Heydrich ( he was the conference Chairman). I have done a lot of reading about him and his assassination and have visited the various sites in Prague connected to him and even visited the assassination site thought it is very different now from what it was then. I have also been to Lidice the village destroyed in the aftermath of the assassination , quite a though provoking place and the memorial to the 82 children of Lidice is the saddest but most beautiful memorial I have ever seen.

The historical question in the research into Heydrich's mind is how he would have reacted after Stalingrad. When Heydrich was assassinated, the Germans were still winning the war, they still had the strategic offensive, . The decisive historical turning point, according to Nazi ideology, Stalingrad, had yet to take place, the US (literally) was not yet engaged in combat against the Germans, and the Allies still had not made the salient policy declaration against Hitler, ie the call for unconditional surrender.

An unexpected thing I enjoy are the tiny bathroom sinks. It's (usually) a pleasure to see places where things don't seem too standardized due to building codes.

I don't know where you live, Joel, but think about whether there are public spaces where people can hang out. Many American communities don't have them anymore--no public transportation, no public squares, few cafes where people spend social time. That's a part of European culture that we don't have here.

I live in NYC and, while for a while there it looked like phones and ereaders had completely won the culture war, in the past year or so I see more and more people are back to reading things printed on paper. Literary culture is alive and well in NYC.

For those interested in the Book Burnings, this happened in 37 University cities, most of them on the same night, 10 May 1933, though a few took place later in June. Frankfurt has a large brass plaque with this quote on it in the middle of their old town square where 20,000 books were burned. Many of the most famous authors are listed on it. The quote is from a play that Heine wrote in 1820, called Almansor. A play about the Spanish inquisition, the burning of the Quran and the mistreatment of Moslems and Jews. Heine was Jewish, but got himself baptized so that he could work. The French had given citizenship to Jews in Germany, but after the Napoleon was defeated in 1813, the Germans took their citizenship away from them. This is a time when sadly, many Jews got themselves baptized so that they could continue in their profession or even to be nobelized as the Kaiser refused to do this if they were Jewish.

Astorienne, I live in south Florida, west of Fort Lauderdale, for most of the year. It's a bit of an outpost culturally, although there are some pretty good art museums with strengths mainly in modern art. There is some cafe culture in the groovier areas, but reading is not nearly as favored an activity here as it is in Europe or NYC. You're right, there are few public squares, and public transit down here is pitiful. I lived in NYC for a couple of years way back when and, coming from So. Cal (also culturally dubious at that time), it was a revelation. Worked as an editor, the first decent job I ever had. I'll always love New York. It's great to hear that New Yorkers are still reading :-)

Ms. Jo, I think a lot of us in the USA are hoping that book burnings remain in the past.

Ms. Jo , I think this article from The New Yorker will be of interest to you - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/08/27/the-escape-artist-3 , as well , this recent biography of the brilliant author , Stefan Zweig - https://www.npr.org/books/titles/298337629/the-impossible-exile-stefan-zweig-at-the-end-of-the-world

Ah, the romanticized Europe! I can tell you everyone on my morning train in Vienna is holding an iPhone and looking at Instagram.

Re: "the Kaiser refused to this if they were Jewish. " Not so. I can think of one example where Kaiser Wilhelm II ennobled a German Jew who was a senior Army commander, whose posting to the Ottoman Empire generated a diplomatic crisis (the Liman von Sanders Affair) with the Russians at the end of 1913, Otto Liman Sanders He was ennobled with the "von" shortly prior to his posting to become Otto Liman von Sanders. True, this was a rare occurrence among Prussian officers.

I still read - not as much as I used to (reading in the evening inevitably leads to me falling asleep within 20 min) but I still love reading...

BUT - I read almost everything on my iPad now. I have a library app where I can get books for free (many of which I would never ever pay $15 and up for - don't have the money for that).

I listen to audiobooks (current one is about the Halifax Explosion, just finished listening to the latest Dan Brown novel). I read all my magazines on there (Time, Newsweek, MacLeans, Nat Geo, and more).

I have a ton of podcasts I listen to - political, history, entertainment (incl Rick Steves travel podcast!)...and when we are on holiday, I even can read my provincial newspaper via my ipad! (Yes, I still get the 'dead tree' version every day in my mailbox when home). For me, my ipad has actually lead to me to a greater interest in politics (ugh - why), history, and what is happening in the world.

So don't assume that people aren't actually reading or listening to something educational when they have their device in hand. (Ah - who am I kidding, they're playing Candy Crush).

Fred - thanks for the example, though I don't think it was usually the norm.

I play Candy Crush on the train.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have to sit on a commuter train for an hour or ninety minutes every day-- I would get so much more reading done. But I imagine that can get old after a few years, and people would much rather have a 20 minute drive etc.

But Will, trains are faster than cars. I ride a train to work every day and it takes me 20 minutes. If I drove, it would take 30. No way a 90 minute train ride would take 20 minutes in a car.

Emily, I just meant that a big-city longish train commute might get old for many people, and they would yearn for a small-city 20 min car commute such as what I do.

If I rode a train for 20 minutes one way, I'd likely just screw around on my phone, and not bother taking a book. With 45 min or an hour I would get a ton of reading done. But that long of a ride might really get old.

I've had some really interesting political discussions in Europe. Not lovefests of like minds but mutually polite with as much listening, to different points of view, as talking. I really enjoyed that.

I enjoyed this thread immensely , and my views about books and reading are on the same tack as Joel . This piece in this morning's NY Times will be of great interest to those who have followed this thread - much here for reflective consideration - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/books/an-american-jewish-author-now-calls-germany-home.html?hpw&rref=books&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

Steven, thanks. That is a great story.