Wedding shares – and has fun with it!

The sha­ring shelf at Kibo in Trans­vaal­stra­ße is a gre­at con­ver­sa­ti­on star­ter: “Book sha­ring is an awe­so­me idea, it should have been star­ted much ear­lier”, thinks Anke Rom­mel, owner of the Wed­ding label ‘aro­shi’. She sees the han­dy side of it: “I read a lot of books and can’t keep them all at home. I’ve alre­a­dy given away a lot of boxes and you can often find me in libra­ri­es – exchan­ging and sha­ring is much more economical!”

Sha­ring is part of Berlin’s city life: Peo­p­le buy clo­thes in second-hand stores, bring food to the ‘Ber­li­ner Tafel’ or share cars in car pools. Sha­ring and exchan­ging is a trend which is also gro­wing in Wed­ding: The Tausch­mo­bil, a deli­very van full of goods loo­king for a new owner, will be at Leo­pold­platz every Thurs­day from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., start­ing on the 5^th of Sep­tem­ber. The Tran­si­ti­on-Town group ‘Wed­ding­wand­ler’ deals with the topics sha­ring and exchan­ging as well and wants to open a ‘Din­ge-Schrank’, or ‘cup­board for stuff’ at Café Tas­sen­Ku­chen whe­re every day items can be shared.
Books are a sen­si­ti­ve topic – a lot of peo­p­le can’t just throw them away. More and more cafés now offer book exch­an­ge shel­ves. “The shel­ves are gre­at to get in touch with peo­p­le, too. May­be I’ll bump into someone the­re to have a chat with if I feel like it”, Anke says. She gets inspi­red by the unsor­ted sel­ec­tion in the book shelf: “Recent­ly, I found ‘the Tudors’ at Kibo, and a Ger­man book cal­led ‘Wo sams­tags immer Sonn­tag ist’… who might have put them there?”

When books travel

At ‘book crossing’, a com­mu­ni­ty with seve­ral mil­li­on mem­bers world­wi­de, you can find a new dimen­si­on of good fee­ling when sha­ring: “It’s so easy to stick a label on your books and release them into the wild”, the book lovers say online. For them, it is fun to trace the books’ tra­vels, to see who finds the books and may­be puts them on ano­ther round of tra­vels later. The books get an ID num­ber to enable the per­son who finds the book to let peo­p­le know whe­re it is, or to send a mes­sa­ge to the per­son dona­ting the book. On the web­site, you can even find all books regis­tered in Wedding.

Book crossing also runs the ‘Bücher­boxx’, which can be found in front if the Cent­re Fran­çais in an old French pho­ne booth. This litt­le tra­vel­ling libra­ry, which is sta­cked with Ger­man and French books, is deco­ra­ted with the sky­li­nes of the most important sights from Ber­lin and Paris. If you can’t find the pho­ne booth, it might be on its way to schools, or to public places like the Kanzleramt.
Giving and taking fol­lows cer­tain rules to ensu­re that the shel­ves are always well sta­cked: “The 1:1 rule might be a bit chal­len­ging for some”, says Anke, alt­hough she likes the thought that any two books have the same inner value…

Plants and seeds find new owners

Books are not the only item that is good for sha­ring and exchan­ging. “In Wed­ding the­re are many gar­dens: small gar­dens, pri­va­te back­yards, shared gar­dens, com­mu­ni­ty and schhol gar­den beds. Our exch­an­ge mar­ket offers a forum whe­re peo­p­le can share plants and seeds”, says Thors­ten Haas, one of the orga­nisers of the first plant exch­an­ge mar­kets, hap­pe­ning on the 15^th of Sep­tem­ber from 4 p.m. at Goten­bur­ger Str., cor­ner Prinzenallee.

Trans­la­ti­on: Danie­la Hombach

More on Wedding’s Eng­lish Lan­guage Face­book-Page “Der schö­ne Wedding”

Tausch­mo­bil every Thurs­day at the Leo­pold­platz mar­ket­Book Crossing
Exch­an­ge shelf at Eis­ca­fé Kibo, Trans­vaal­str. 13
Bücher­boxx, Cent­re Fran­cais, Mül­lerstr. 74
Pflan­zen­tausch­markt, 15.9., 16.00 Uhr, Goten­bur­ger Str./Prinzenallee