Between the 15th of November and the 9th of December, you can browse 25,000 books in the Haus der Wirtschaft (Willi-Bleicher-Straße 19, 70174 Stuttgart). Moreover, there will be a lot of readings, tastings and other events.

I tried to attend “Jane Austen Tea Party” last Tuesday, where actress Ina Rudolph read extracts of “Emma” while the owners of “The English Tea Room” provided different kinds of tea. I thought it’s a great idea to combine a reading with a tasting of tea – but I was not the only who had these thoughts: The event was sold out.

So yesterday, I gave the Stuttgart weeks of books 2012 another chance and went to an event called Plätzchen Olympiade (Olympics of christmas cookies). The program promised that you can taste different cookies and vote for your favourite one in the end – and win a book. Moreover, the program stated that the entrance is free – my Swabian heart was jumping! 🙂

Well, I have to tell you, the program promised a bit too much: Yes, the Olympics of christmas cookies was for free but you had to pay 2 Euro entrance fee for the Stuttgart weeks of books 2012. And yes, there were three kinds of cookies but they didn’t provide enough for everybody. So after the first round was gone within minutes, you had to wait another 20 minutes until they brought the next tray – and fight your way through to it. When I made it to the tray, I got the recommendation to take one or two and share it with my friend, who accompanied me.

Well, that was not really what I had expected. In the end, the Olympics of christmas cookies was a promotion event where Regina Schneider and Birgit Hackl could introduce their cooking book “Homemade Weihnachten”. That’s a nice idea and the books might be very interesting, but it was not really worth going to the Stuttgart week of books just because of this event.

So we took the opportunity to browse some of the books of the exhibition. You can spend hours in there, going from book to book and reading a page here and another page there. The Buchwochen also include an exhibition of more than 1000 calendars for the year 2013. After reading and looking around for a while, we sat down in the Buchcafé and had a cake and something to drink.

As I said at the beginning, I really like the Stuttgarter Buchwochen. Even though I think the Plätzchen Olympiade was not organised very well, I will definitely try to go to some of the other events, because usually, they are very interesting.

More information about:

Stuttgarter Buchwochen (only in German)

Cooking book “Homemade Weihnachten” (on amazon)

The post Stuttgart weeks of books 2012 – THE event for all book worms out there! appeared first on Living in Stuttgart.