It is a rare moment when the whole of you just goes Ahhhh ... the cares disappear and the soul leaps for joy. Only one other place I've encountered -- ironically, also a bookshop, Munro's in my home town -- has brought on this instantaneous Ahhhh ...
I am not sure I can explain why, only account for the fact. I think that the classical music playing did much of it -- and Emperor Concerto is not usually something I would put as background music, but here it fits the nobility of the space. Secondly, the repurposed church is quite lovely. It glows a calming pale bottle green. If there was stained glass before is now more monochromatic in the soft green spectrum. The church walls are no longer clad with incense and candle smoke, yet remnants of the ceiling frescoes are still there, seeminly undisturbed. The floor is still wobbly with irregularities brought on by tombs of those long passed. It's a church and it's a book shop. Truth in several different guises.
I actually picked up some Dutch magazines -- two on crafts that I can at least use for the photos and one on my boys' favorite sport -- again for the pictures. Then I trotted these back to the coffee shop in the back: Coffee Lovers. It wasn't lost on me that this was at the altar where sacraments had been observed for so many centuries. A different style of worship, I suppose. Through all of this, I could feel my head clear and my worries drop away. Isn't that appropriate for a sacred space.
Had I not been on a bit of a schedule, I'd still be there now, typing this from the lovely coffee shop at the altar of a repurposed church.