Went to the Bavaria State Library today. All I can say is it's huge. It's comparable to our Library of Congress. They have Gutenburg Bibles, and even more rare, a ninth century codex (I didn't see them; they're only shown at special exhibits - I did see books from the twelfth century). There are several reading rooms. I did't take pictures because I didn't want to bother the people in the reading rooms. One is for university students and it seats about a thousand. One was of antiquated texts and it had book shelves to the ceiling with ladders, scholars at tables pouring over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore. We went to the periodicals stacks -- there is a very long corridor, maybe an eighth of a mile, and nearly a million volumes of periodicals only. I'm posting a picture of the corridor. We also saw some books that were burned by the Nazis, evidently somebody snatched them from the fire, or these were on the periphery. Pictures of them here. Some were actually Bibles. Other various shots from the state library. I'm exhausted again. This weekend: Salzburg, Austria. God help me.
