London Calling

In the span of things, today has been relatively boring.  I woke up late; I ate the basic foodstuff I got from the food store; I walked and walked and walked; I got a transportation card for Rotterdam buses/metros; I checked out the university and law school libraries; I had to collect seven Dragonballs from across the land so that a giant dragon would grant me a wish.  You know, typical Dutch stuff.

Side note on Erasmus' (maybe Dutch?) libraries: wow.  They suck.  The law library has like 3 rows of books.  The main campus library is worse.  Here's the system to check out a book.

1) Before you can enter the library, you must first place your backpack in a locker.  

2) Once you have been granted permission to become part of Fight Club, I mean enter Erasmus library, you must then find an open computer and seat upon which to place your derriere.  

3) You must then buckle your safety belt, keeping your pies y piernas dentro del vehiculo.   

4) After allowing the slowest computer of all time to awaken from its mighty slumber, you then open up the library catalog search engine to type in your search.

5) The search engine will produce the opposite results of what you might expect.

6) If you prayed hard enough, you will find something that remotely looks like your book.

7) Once you find the book, you must click on the result, which brings up a link allowing you to reserve the book.  However, you can only do this step if you understand Dutch and know what on earth that particular library is called in their system.

8) After clicking the reservation link, you have to enter a "borrower number" and the first three letters of your last name. 

9) Assuming you were not able to figure out that the borrower number is your student number PLUS the number 13, you might as well go kill yourself.  

10) If you have made it this far without killing yourself, you may actually get a book.

11) ...if you're willing to wait at least 20 minutes.  Apparently you cannot actually look through, touch, or otherwise physically interact with books.  You must bow down to the almighty Librarian to retrieve the book from the Nether Regions under the library.  

12) A man with visible chest hair emerging from the top of his t-shirt, known in the Rotterdam underground as Der Woolfman, will either eat your book or deliver it to you, depending on how he feels at the moment.  

13) The book then self-destructs after 5 seconds. 

That was a long, roundabout way of distracting from the lack of things that happened today.  But today was necessary in order to prepare for the week ahead: London and Stonehenge, followed by an academic conference on EU law in the overseas territories.  Tomorrow, I am taking an approximately 10 hour bus ride on Eurolines from Rotterdam to London, going from 11:15am to 9pm.  My plan is to spend September 1 in London, go to Stonehenge on the 2nd, and spend a second day in London on the 3rd.  I will then take the bus back on the 4th, from 8am to 7:45pm.  I will be staying at the Astor Victoria hostel, near Buckingham Palace.  If you need to get a hold of me, Facebook message or email is the way to go.

Today's Dutch lesson: avontuur (adventure).