I did it. I finally hauled my backside off the nice armchair, away from my cozy little den I call home, defied all common sense and biked 10 km down to my university library.

I love the library and I don’t mean the casual “uh, I love taco’s”-statement or “I loved the game yesterday”, I mean over-the-moon-smittened-butterflies-in-stomach kind of love. The first thing I do when I move to a new place is finding out where the library is. I like to browse through the bookshelves, touch the covers, read the back, keeping an open mind. I like the silence, the joint agreement of a group of strangers passing each other by the shelves, a nod here, a smile there. The smell of books, ah, there is nothing like it in the world.

My library doesn’t smell quite like a library should though. The architects, I guessed, found the cramped, shabby, dark atmosphere too uninspiring, so they opted for at glass facade, light colors, and in my personal opinion, very few bookshelves. Everything is open, not a nook in sight.

But somehow that’s ok, because my university library is not really a library in the old sense of the word for me. This library is for when I need a place to read (read: own material, away from home, because somehow I never get to the studying part there), to write on my exam projects, or if I need to be in the presence of other people. The only downside to it is that because it is so open and light (my theory, no stats behind this claim) people tend to use it as a place for study groups, and the practice of not using phones or talking out loud in the library has changed to taking a call on the stairs and laughing about a youtube clip or the latest reality show on TV. But it’s not loud all the time, and those moments are worth the silent teeth grinding ones 🙂

My town library on the other hand is an old school, except when, between 10 am to 2 pm, it is turned into a school library. But even those kids are more quiet than what can be expected here. It’s a small two-storey library with nooks and silence. It smells of, and is filled with… you guessed it; books.

I love the library. When I grow up I want the biggest room in my house/flat/cardboard box to be filled, jammed, crammed with books.