If you want to be introduced to a unique place in Ghent, Le Bal Infernal might be on your list of places to check out. It is a beautiful café near the Vrijdagsmarkt where you can have a drink with a sustainable twist.
Le Bal Infernal is a used book café situated in the beautiful city of Ghent. When you walk through its doors you will immediately see a large wall of used books. Very inviting and certainly charming, this artwork of books. This beautiful café is a good place to go to if you want to be introduced to the joy of reading a book. While you are figuring out what exactly you want to read, while you are skimming through the books and reading some of its pages, you can have a drink: a cup of coffee or a nice refreshing cocktail. Le Bal Infernal is a place where you can take the time to enjoy books. It is a place to read and explore books in a cozy and pleasant environment. With no distractions, it is an ideal spot for passing one’s own sweet leisure time. But it is also the perfect gathering place for the book club you might want to start up. Here you can share opinions on your favorite book while enjoying a drink.
Besides all these pleasurable reasons to go to Le Bal Infernal, there is another story that makes this café unique and that should make sure this place is now at the top of your list of “places to visit”. With the used books that you can trade for one of your own, this café also helps to create a more sustainable book market. Most of the books we buy are brand new and at the same time most of the books you find in a bookstore never get sold. Instead, books that stay too long on the shelves of a bookstore get disposed of, only to reprint the book some time later. The reason for this is that in this economy it is more expensive to store a book than it is to reprint it. This is obviously not very sustainable since more trees are being cut down to make paper. More books are being transported, which translates in a more polluted environment. More brand new books are introduced on the market simply to be destroyed again. It seems to be a never-ending cycle.
It is strange that when a book is not being sold in a bookstore it is simply destroyed and reprinted later for those who do want to buy (read) the book. A part of the problem is that most people prefer buying new books or do not really explore the used-book-market out there. What would happen if the books that are not being sold were not destroyed but offered to a new market we could possibly describe as a “used-book-market” or “second-hand-market”? The answers I do not yet know, but I strongly belief it is a good thing to start exploring what a used-book-market can mean for a more sustainable life-cycle of a book. The book simply is a product that could actually last a lifetime and can be read by hundreds of people without it being “used up”. Sustainable products should be used in a sustainable way. They should not be destroyed.
Le Bal Infernal has not been around for a very long time. I hope to still walk by this exciting place during the years to come. I hope to see the used-book-market gaining in popularity and notoriety for a more sustainable market is desperately needed.
There are so many stories to this used book café. You can organize a party there or a reception, you can read and you can talk over a nice cup of coffee. Where brand new books are being destroyed, used books can bring people together.
Contact:
Kammerstraat 6
9000 Gent
Belgium
info@lebalinfernal.gent