Does this sound familiar? You need a single little screw to hang up a shelf, but among all the cafés, organic food stores and hairdressers in your neighborhood, there is not a single store that satisfies your need. Instead, you have to travel all the way to the outskirts to buy a whole package of screws at a huge impersonal hardware store…

I’m sure you would have found what you were looking for at Eisenwaren Edmund Bosen. Unfortunately, Edmund’s widow Agnes had to close down the shop in 1998 forever – due to her age. Since then, the store is a sleeping beauty. Whenever my route takes me through Marsiliusstraße, I pause to take a look into the shop window that seems to have remained untouched for over twenty years now. Screws, nuts, gears, iron chains, and hundreds of other curious metal objects, for which I don’t even have a word, turn the shop window into a quirky chamber of curiosities.

The descendants of Agnes and Edmund Bosen still live in the small townhouse today. I’ve heard that they occasionally open the shop to friendly people. Perhaps next time I’ll have the heart to ring the doorbell.