[pipelineist]

Schrauben Preisinger is an amazing store.

It's properly old-fashioned in appearance. A small, dark customer area, bounded by a counter staffed by grumpy men of oddly indeterminate age. Backed by rows and rows of ancient-looking wooden shelving, containing literal tons of different bolts (or any kind of threaded fastener).

I once went there because I needed a particular bolt for a 1972 Land Rover engine. Certainly not metric, but I had no idea what kind of thread and precise size it was. The clerk glanced at it, turned briskly, walked to a particular shelf, and picked up the bolt I would need. No looking, no measuring, no scratching of heads, no hesitation. He just eyeballed the bolt size and thread right there. He was correct, too.

I'd love an excuse to go there again, but I sold the Land Rover :-D

Edit: just remembered:

- a shop that sells combs. Yes. Combs.

- a shop that makes bespoke suspenders

- a shop that specialises in sausages from a particular region in Germany (which is far enough from Munich to feel entirely random)

[weinzierl]

Your description of the store is very accurate. One thing I'd like to add that always fascinated me was their stock ledger. Long after everything was computerized here, they still had this enormous ledger resting on a kind of lectern behind the counter. Every sale was carefully entered in this book. It's a few years since I have been there for the last time so I don't know if it still exits or if they have got a computer eventually.