To be honest, at first, I wasn’t too happy about this friendship. I saw no reason to find out the exact shelf number of some old book. But over time and with every further task, the purpose of this whole spectacle became clearer to me. I actually became friends with my book, and in the last task we both met some other books and friends. We enjoyed it very much, now we do not feel lonely anymore.
I first met “Il tempio vaticano e sua origine” physically in Einsiedeln. It was an intriguing experience: Before I had never met such an old book, its leathery cover and the heavy pages appealed to me. My book spoke Italian, I did not, apart from the simple phrase “Ciao, come stai?”. Fortunately we had a latin interpreter, who helped us with the initial difficulties. Soon the illustrations became more numerous, and we understood each other without words.
I enjoyed the trip to Einsiedeln, even though the train ticket was quite expensive. Along with my personal friend I had also met some other books there. Scrolling through them I noticed their age and history on every page, which made quite an impression on me. I had never imagined that such antique books could actually be used, since I had considered them more as works of art before. The direct contact was a new experience. I felt a sadness, when we had to leave the Biblothek Oechslin, after spending only 20min with my book.
Later, when I had to summarize my book in a few words, it went surprisingly well. Even though I had only read a fraction of my book, I had a fairly good overview of its content. This task was easy to fulfill. The only task I did not enjoy as much was the one when we were supposed to examine the publishing history of our books. I was overwhelmed because I did not know where to get the information from. Otherwise I thought the tasks were feasible, we usually had enough time to meet the deadlines.