I am part of the generation that considered the book and reading the greatest possible pleasure and the main source of information.
I'm old enough not to have had a TV as a child. Of course, the fact that fifty years ago Romania was a communist country with very few connections to the Western world (and new technologies) made television in the 1960s a rarity in our country.
The only sources of information and escape from the gloomy daily life were books and the radio. Especially books.
Because the books offered me the opportunity to live differently, of course as imaginary. They were the drugs of my generation.
Now, sixty years later, I don't read any more books. Two important causes, two strong enemies defeated reading ... television and the internet! I was invaded by image and sound, the silence of reading was forgotten...
... and yet. Nostalgia! Maybe the longing for youth made me look for a book. A book that impressed me as a teenager. I remembered the title of "Forever and a day." I don't remember anything from the story and that's why I feel the need to reread it. To see if rereading the book will lead me to the lost youth.
The big problem was that I didn't have this book anymore. It was a long search on the internet until I found out that I could find the book in an antique shop in the city center, in the center of Bucharest.
I present to you this search, more precisely, a small portion of the city center, a place full of contrasts, the place where the antique shop is located.
Initially I intended to make this post for #marketfriday, the challenge hosted by 
Bucharest, near the University square. In search of the street called Doamnei. The place where most bookstores and antique shops are.
I found Doamnei Street, a narrow street that goes out in University Square. A street where old buildings of Bucharest from the beginning of the last century have survived. They survived quite hard.
The beautiful buildings of another time were destroyed by the tenants and by time. Lack of care and repairs.
The big surprise here came when I saw that the bookstore I was looking for was working right in this building ready to collapse. The ground floor of the building has been repaired and houses a modern library. A joy and a sign that things will change in the future.
An English bookstore, meaning books and objects brought from England and the US.
I was one step away from entering the library. From the outside it looks very good and that makes me eager to see how it is arranged. Of course, it's not the place I could find the book I'm looking for, but I have to go in. I haven't been to a bookstore in over three months and this is a new one, I saw it for the first time.
The #marketfriday challenge means sharing adventures, experiences and how we shop or how and where we are looking for something to buy. Now that I have arrived at the moment I enter the bookstore, a shopping experience would follow. That's why the sequel will be on Friday. Next Friday!
