The first meeting took place on the internet. Online I searched for the original version of my new friend, which was pretty difficult to find next to all the pseudonyms or translations. When I finally found him, I was extremely happy and wanted to go and meet him straightaway. Arriving at the library I found out that I first need an appointment to spend some time with him. I went back home and booked a meeting with my old book. At the second try it worked out.
When my book arrived in the reading room, it was treated with so much care and love of the librarians. It was gently placed on a cushion in front of me, where I was ready to film my get together with the book. I was a little nervous to get in contact with such a valuable and fragile book. It was a special moment for me. Nevertheless, the filming seemed rather unnatural because I felt quite observed by the camera. I hardly dared to perceive and discover the book intensely. Next to that it was pretty cool that the book was partly understandable, and I could read the French text more or less, despite the Old French.
The forced friendship became an interesting argument during the meeting. I began to deal more intensively with the appearance, the material, the size and the smell of the ancient book. It hasn’t felt forced anymore and tried instead to understand the book in its context and meaning for that time. Above all, I discovered the fascination of old books. For me personally, the encounter was the climax of the friendship. It was a nice process to getting to know each other. The illustrations fascinated me the most. As my book had almost more pictures than text, it was very remarkable and impressive because every single drawing was made with copper engravings. The thought that we have the opportunity to go and see, touch and get to know all these old books is a very great thing. In addition to that it was nice that I met other students by chance at the library who have been filming themselves with their book.
When we had to search online the doubles, translations and reprints of our book, it was very difficult to distinguish between fakes and real prints. Nevertheless, I quickly learned to distinguish between good and untrustworthy sources.
The last task was needed for a social and creative relationship to the friendship. Wet talked in the group about our encounters, with funny and annoying moments. It gave us the opportunity to connect and to exchange the relationsships. Our group decided to meet on WhatsApp. We organised a normal talk between some friends (our old books) who start with small talk and end up getting closer.