Fair enough, Steve. Fair enough.
I met Steve in the Clink hostel in London. We chatted for a good long while and exchanged phone numbers. I was finding myself with a lot of free time and not knowing how to fill it. I was alone, and quite small in a big new country, and I found myself really timid to even make a move, so I was understandably excited to make a new friend, especially one who was willing to show me around in Scotland.
I got myself a flight from London to Edinburgh on a Friday night. I arrived at the hostel and settled in.
The next morning I got a train to Glasgow, where Steve lives. He met me at the train station, and then we set off for a walking tour of his home town. Beginning, I believe in George Square.**
He gave me a sort of "west end" tour, mostly, he says, because the "east end" is too dangerous and warned me to never ever go there because I'll immediately get stabbed. I'm paraphrasing here, but you get the gist.
On our walking tour, Steve showed me a whole lot of things, including but not limited to: the University of Glasgow, some unnamed art galleries, the Riverside museum, and some quirky Glasgow-type things, like some TARDIS sightings:
Also there is a statue of the Duke of Wellington that, for whatever reason, always has a cone on its head. Steve told me about this, and I almost didn't believe him. But as we were walking past, the statue was surrounded by authority figures in an effort to remove the cone from his head.
This is such a common occurrence that it inspired this little vinyl sticker:
Now, I've said this before quite frequently, but stick with me: You get a little something extra when you visit a friend in his/her hometown. You see things with a familiarity that you don't get when you're on your own. Suddenly a nondescript ice cream shop on the corner has meaning because you know that's where your friend spent her days after school, or perhaps you see a park where she had her first kiss. These landmarks were different with Steve. Walking with Steve, it was more like, "There's a really good pub, this is some park, that's a good bar, there's another good bar, check out that thing over there, my friends and I go to that bar all the time, that over there is my favorite pub, this is another of my favorite drinking spots..." And it went on like that for a while.
We continued walking, never stopping, past the Finnieston Crane, which is completely useless, but I suppose is meant to represent the engineering "heritage" of Glasgow. We walked past the Clyde Auditorium (which I had to google just now), and then past BBC Scotland headquarters. As we did, a man jogged by. When he was out of earshot, Steve revealed to me that the man was a Scottish actor. I'll present that as a major cultural difference between the United States' celebrity obsessed mindset and Scotland's apparent apathy to people they see on TV. Any American, myself included (....probably), would jump at the chance to meet or get a photo of a celebrity-ones we're not even familiar with or even hate.
So after all the walking, you might be able to guess that when we were on our third museum, Steve decided it was time to call it a day, and we went for a drink. We hadn't eaten anything all day, and I had it in my head that I had to try something authentically Scottish: haggis. I've not heard mixed reviews on haggis. The popular opinion is that it's vomit-inducing, but I didn't mind it. Probably because it was drowning in cheese on a pizza...But still, Steve waited until I was done eating to tell me what haggis is. Go on. Google it. I'll wait here.
We bar hopped for a short time, Steve having me to try some of his favorite drinks. After the sun had set, we took a train back to Edinburgh. It was only about 11:00 when we got back to the hostel, but Steve is quite old, you see (24 at the time-yikes!), so we called it a night.
The next day we were up early to walk around the city. We walked the Royal Mile, a string of streets in what's called "Old Town" of Edinburgh. All very picturesque. Along the way, Steve thought it was necessary for me to try Irn-Bru (pronounced iron brew). It's a Scottish soda fondly referred to as Scotland's "other national drink." It tasted like really sugary bubble gum to me.
Then, almost on a whim, we bought tickets to something called Mary King's Close. We had to wait for the next tour, so we decided to walk around outside, when, serendipitously, we came upon a street performer. He was a tall and just generally large shirtless Scottish man with a black bowler hat, who did things like swallow swords and fire and lay on a bed of nails. The sword thing was particularly nauseating.
Since I don't seem to have a travel tip from this experience, I'll give you this one:
Always tip those guys when you stop to watch them. Don't be a dick.
Mary King's Close was really cool and a little bit terrifying. It's a sort of underground (and I don't mean that in a hipster sense, I mean literally underground) tourist attraction that displays a "historically accurate example of life in Edinburgh between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries," at least according to its Wikipedia page. It's not the ideal place for someone who is afraid of the dark or enclosed spaces, but it was interesting from the historical point of view anyway. The tour guide, whether or not he was lying, told us that there had been a woman to go on the tour many years back who actually knew someone (perhaps a grandfather or something) who had lived in the close as a really young child. Who knows if it's true, but how cool would that be?
The Fringe Festival happened to be on during my little visit. Steve tells me there are festivals quite frequently in Edinburgh. I was extremely confused, but excited by all the commotion. I couldn't really see any coherent theme for the festival, but there were lots of people wearing kilts and bright red wigs. (Update: I just looked up the Edinburgh Fringe Festival on Wikipedia, and it says that it is "with no selection committee, and therefore any type of performance may participate." So I guess that explains that.)
After we were through sight-seeing, we began drinking (of course). Steve insisted I try Scotch whisky. He bought me some and returned to our table with a small glass of water in tow. Apparently if you can't handle it, as Steve anticipated I could not, you're meant to add water to dilute it for the desired strength. And oh, was it strong. I powered through and finished it, though. Like a champ.
A little before sunset, Steve had to make his way back to Glasgow, as he had work the next day. It felt sort of unfortunate to hug him goodbye and to watch him leave for the train station, and strangely lonely to go back to the hostel on my own. I qualify "strangely" because you'd think I'd be used to it after spending so many nights on my own in hostels in the weeks prior. But though my euro-trip was coming to a close, I knew I still had a lot left to look forward to.
My only regrets about my trip are that we never made it to that café where JK Rowling got the inspiration for Harry Potter (though I did get to see the castle that started it all-*squeal!*). Also I didn't really take many photos...I can attribute this to being taken around town by Steve, who was a cool and collected local, and I suppose I felt silly snapping photos of someone's hometown...
I had my flight back to England the next morning, where I returned to Brighton for a few days to see Noah, and then it was time for London for the very last nostalgic leg of my trip.
"El mundo es un libro y quienes no viajan solo leen una página."
No comments:
Post a Comment