Coreander’s Curiosities is a cozy, little shop filled floor to ceiling with world treasures. It is both a hideaway - a place to get away to - and a gateway – a place of access to other dimensions of experience. The shop is brimming with eclectic curiosities from all corners of the globe. Suspended from the ceiling are a puffer fish, a stuffed iguana, musical instruments, a bicycle, kites, a birdcage, model airplanes, model boats and a paper lantern.

Hung on the walls are old cuckoo clocks, antelope horns, fishing rods, snowshoes, African masks, two stuffed owls and various swords and daggers. Scattered around the store are mannequins wearing suits of armor and Indian feather head dresses, a paper dragon, canoe paddles, a boat’s steering wheel, drums, puppets and porcelain and bronze figurines. The store is also a bookshop with thousands of dusty books, most of them dog-eared and much read. The books are stacked on groaning shelves and even piled on chairs and couches.

The 12-year-old hero of The Neverending Story, Bastian Balthazar Bux, wonders into Coreander's Curiosities, and his life changes. This is where he finds the leather-bound Neverending Story, or rather; it is where the Neverending Story finds him. It falls on top of him from a bookshelf crammed with volumes and novelties.

The store’s owner is Carl Coreander, who is a curiosity himself. He is an eccentric collector, scholar and sage. Coreander mentors Bastian on his journey through the world of the imagination.