Heidelberg, Germany: camera store stocking Olympus camera batteries?

July 13, 2019 12:00 PM

All my preparations for a trip to Heidelberg went so great except for one thing: I am an idiot and left my Olympus E-M1 Mark 1 camera batteries in and around the battery charger at home. Does anyone know of a shop in Heidelberg that carries Olympus camera gear and might have Olympus BLN-1 batteries? I have a portable charger, just none of the batteries. I arrive Sunday (tomorrow) and am staying in the city center.
posted by StrawberryPie to Travel & Transportation around Heidelberg, Germany (3 answers total)

Best answer: The shops will be shut tomorrow (Sunday) - only tourist/souvenir shops and shops at train stations and airports are allowed to open thanks to German laws. Though if you are travelling via e.g. Frankfurt airport, there should be some electronic shops available which may be able to help (though may charge a lot).

I'm not familiar enough with Heidelberg to know the smaller camera shops, but I've checked some of the big German electronics chains. None of them (Saturn, Mediamarkt, Conrad) seem to have any in stock nearby but Mediamarkt can get it within 1-2 working days if it is ordered.
posted by scorbet at 1:25 PM on July 13, 2019

Best answer: I assume you've found Foto Kühnel in Heidelberg already. I was going to send you to Mannheim (a quick ride on the S-Bahn, and a larger town) but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of camera shops: Foto Düring, maybe, but I can't find much info online about them. You will find in Mannheim the chains that scorbet has mentioned, though, and might have more luck there.

Fotogena has branches in Worms and Darmstadt, but list the battery as unavailable.

Good luck!
posted by invokeuse at 9:54 PM on July 14, 2019

Response by poster: Thanks, all of you, for the kind suggestions and research on my behalf. As a courtesy to people who answered, and for people who may come across this question in the future, here's a summary of what I ended up doing. Foto Kühnel in Heidelberg was very near where my airport shuttle bus stopped, so I walked past; it was closed of course, but I could peer through some of the windows, and unfortunately did not see Olympus gear. Since my week-long workshop started early on Monday and was located away from the center, and I was involved in running it (as well as being the volunteer photographer), there would be no time during working hours when I could get away and get to that store. So I looked at Amazon.de, and it turned out that thanks to my Prime membership, Amazon could deliver the next day. So that's what I ended up doing: I ordered a battery to be delivered at the workshop venue. I truly would have preferred to give the business to a local shop, but finally resorted to this due to limited time and options.
posted by StrawberryPie at 12:34 AM on July 20, 2019