Remember, always mind the gap.

Before we leave for Edinburgh on the overnight bus tonight, I'll briefly describe this past week before it gets lost in the cobwebs of my brain. Monday poli sci class was fun. We talked about how the media affects politics in the big class, which is always a fun thing to talk about. The Brits have it much better than we do in terms of political news coverage. In the internship class we talked about the election and the upcoming debates, the first of which is tonight. It should be fun to see the party leaders stumble around for a while, as they are not used to presidential style debates. But they are all good sans teleprompter, given they all do pmq's every week, so they should be able to hold their own.

I spent most of Tuesday working on a poli sci paper due on Monday, since I will be in Scotland this weekend. Tuesday night I went to Sports Cafe for the first time, a completely American sports bar, complete with beer pong tables, which is right next to the London Center. It is more economical to buy a pitcher of booze than to buy a pint for some reason, so most people opt for pitchers of long island. Most of the ND people were there, and I had an enjoyable time, but it reminded me too much of a frat party for me to go on a regular basis. Perhaps if they have baseball on I will go back.

Wednesday I went back to class and had a good discussion in Philo, followed by the mind numbing drudgery of Macro. For dinner the Parliamentary interns had professor Heffernan over to the flats for some non-business like conversation. Since he teaches two of our classes, it was the least we could do. We had about a three hour dinner, trading stories and discussing everything from politics to 9/11 to skydiving. Professor Heffernan is quite an interesting man, and his stories are hilarious, but I think he is more fascinated by American students and American politics, as he seemed the most interested when he was listening to us complain about the stuff we missed from home. It was good getting to know him in a non-class setting, and we all enjoyed the evening very much.

Today I woke up to find my roommates freaking out that the volcanic ash from Iceland would cancel their flights abroad, and indeed it did. It seems like the world is ending with all of these earthquakes and tidal waves and now volcanoes erupting. It's that damn global warming that's causing this I tell ya. Good thing we are going via "omnibus" to Scotland tonight instead of plane. I went to the Transport Museum by myself in the afternoon before class, which was full of old buses and trains. I learned about the advent of the London bus and underground system (bus comes from the Latin omnibus, apparently). It reminded me of the Museum of Transport back home in St. Louis, which is still my favorite museum of all time. This museum was close though and would please any young boy who likes planes trains and automobiles. Apparently the entire London underground was saved from financial ruin from two American entrepreneurs in the 1900's, and the noted marketing campaign for London transport was started by the Americans. Maybe that's why Americans love the tubes and buses here, as we have influenced it from the start.

My favorite part of the museum was the exhibit on the emergence of the underground map, symbol, and typeface. The London Underground has PHENOMENAL marketing, making its brand symbol one of the most recognized in the world. Their innovative tube map, which Americans also seem to love, was the first to ignore the spacial placement of tube stops on a geographical map, instead placing the stations even spaces apart in a roughly to scale map. This system, the one we all know and love, has been replicated throughout the world. They name their stations very specifically as well. Even the type-face and bar-circle symbol are deliberate, and every station is designed to represent the form and functionality of the London Underground. I kept hearing that nice British lady's voice in my head telling me which train I was on and where the train was going. The tubes are going to be missed when I come home. I think I might get a GPS system in my car just so I can have a nice British voice to tell me where I am going, although we don't have nearly as cool station names. "This is a MetroLink Shrewsbury expansion line service to that one station near forest park where you transfer to go to Cardinals games" just doesn't have the same ring as "This is a Piccadilly line service to Cockfosters"