Your World Grows Bigger

Have you ever been to a library in a foreign country, where your language isn't the one everyone speaks? I like it a lot. There's usually at least an English section, and the selection there sometimes lets you into what the locals like, or how the international community is in the area. But, mostly, I like looking at foreign books: editions I've never seen of books I know well or I've heard of, intriguing covers that make me discover books actually available in my language (or at least in English), and then books that I won't find elsewhere and wouldn't understand either if I tried to buy them and read them. Every single time I go to Japan I get lost in their libraries, and every time I wonder to myself: "If only I could read this..." Learning a new language suddenly unlocks so many possibilities, and that's why most of the world learns English as a second one. But if you go by the list of the most spoken languages in the world, you could increase your range drastically by learning…