Nowadays you can order anything on the internet in seconds, and e-books follow us everywhere. We still hope that a few of you is a book fanatic who’d like to visit a good bookstore even abroad.
Of course, every major bookstore-chain has a foreign language department with the most popular books of the season, but we think those places are much better that specialized only for foreign language books. Because 1) they have a much wider selection, not only 10 or 20 popular books, 2) they are not only selling English and German literature. The best among them are:
Bestsellers
Bestsellers is the oldest multilingual bookstore in Budapest, but despite its name do not only sells bestsellers: they have up to date and very wide range of literary and scientific publications and journals in English, German, Italian, Russian, French, and Spanish. In addition to the currently popular books (rather instead of them) the shop offers the rarest and best foreign-language publications. The stock is updated weekly with newspapers and other printed specialties coming from the United States and Great Britain.
Massolit Books & Café
Massolit Bookstore and Café is a colorful patch of the 7th district full of ruin pubs. The shop that looks tiny from the outside is the little brother of the Massolit in Krakow, a sumptuous fusion of a cafeteria and a bookshop. Here you will find such specific books that are hardly available in Eastern Europe: in addition to the bestsellers, they offer scientific works pushing the limits of a specific theme. Massolit is also good because you don’t have to wait to get home and start to read your new book: you can do this on the spot with a coffee or a delicious cake.
Bookstation
Bookstation seems rather a book club than a bookshop at first glance. The store sells mainly English, German, French and Spanish, used and new books, and it was meant to meet the needs of people who are searching a particular book in original language. (We can find Swedish, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, Polish, Romanian language publications as well.) In addition, they organize book club meetings every month, where they bring together the lovers of the Lord of the Ring trilogy one time, then the Brontë sister fans the next occasion.
Atlantisz Könyvsziget („Book Island”)
The bookstore that performs cultural mission is situated in the Jewish quarter of Budapest, and have an amazing assortment. You can find the world's best writers of social and human sciences, art, architecture and tourism; and there are many documentary works from Central and Eastern Europe and from other parts of the world in the two-story, old-fashioned bookstore. We think we can say that Budapest has one of the greatest bookshops in Europe.
Treehugger Dan’s
Versatile bookstore and a unique idea – that’s Treehugger Dan’s. There are ten thousand books lining on the shelves of this bookstore, but the number of books available is at least twice this big. But for us, it’s at least this important, that their coffee is produced exclusively from fair trade products. As the owner says: “We have a vision: Fair Trade and a Fair Deal. Our mission is to create both a high-quality source of English second-hand and remaindered books at a reasonable price, and be Hungary’s first showcase for Fair Trade organic coffee. The bookstore promotes environmental and social justice causes, in particular, organic and Fair Trade products. We are the local bookstore with a global conscience.”
