AH, Erasmus! Cruelly snatched from us by the Tories under Brexit, but now restored by Labour. So a new generation can discover the delights of scoring Euro ass.
I speak from personal experience. In the autumn of 1998, in my second year of university, I travelled to Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium for two terms of learning and cultural exchange. And boy did I exchange some culture, if you know what I mean.
Belgian girls? May not have the rep of their French or German neighbours, but believe me they try harder. Whether Flemish or Walloon, they welcomed me as warmly as an invading army and were as delectable as their chocolate.
Also the cathedrals were majestic, the seats of academia awe-inspiring and studying in a different language unlocked new ways of thinking and new intellectual horizons.
And speaking of tongues not my own, the Netherlands were right next door and man, the country might be flat but the women aren’t. Once Katje and I hooked up I was seriously reclaiming some wetlands and erecting on them. I miss those sweet titties still.
Returning to England, I felt blessed to have broadened my horizons so significantly. The fields I knew seemed so small in comparison, my fellow students so unworldly. I had been through educational experiences they had not and it diminished them.
Consequently, for my third year I signed up for Erasmus again and visited Padua this time, because I had my eyes on hitting up some Mediterranean pussy. And did I. Everything you’ve heard about Catholic chicks? Proved like Fermat’s Theorem.
I cut a swathe through those Italians like the Visigoths through Rome, laying dark-eyed Marias before me as flowers before Caesar. And my studies were transformed by the wealth of antique manuscripts in their vaults. I took a girl down there once.
So, as I think my personal testimony shows, Erasmus was a boon to British students and its withdrawal under Boris Cockblocker Johnson’s Brexit was an act of cultural vandalism. Starmer is a visionary for bringing it back. I might do an MA.
