Home again

Farewell, bonny Scotland! You treated me well. I'm home again in one piece, without whiskey or hair products (thank you, airport security), and excited to see my friends again!

Before I left I tried to do all the things I had wanted within two days. This included a trip to St. Andrew's, home of golf and the school where Prince William attended. Though we'd been having perfect weather for much of the trip, the last couple of days turned chilly and rainy, and the trip wasn't as good as it could have been. My friend Rachel and I had planned on taking a train, but when we arrived at the station discovered it had been canceled due to flooding. Luckily we found a bus that went there.

We'd heard it was a precious town, and you could tell it was, though the charm was slightly marred by the poor weather. We spent our first hour in a cafe sharing a pitcher of "Ocean Breeze" and choking on over-cheezy macaroni and cheese. After that we spent a little bit exploring the town. It looked like they were setting up for a street carnival, and I wished we could go. We found a museum in a little castle, which was...boring. Sorry, it just was. I think the most exciting thing I did was use the restroom. After that we explored a bit more, found the ruins of a castle by the sea, then almost got blown away by the fierce wind as we tried to get close to it. My umbrella got caught in a gust and ended up dragging me into the middle of the street, but luckily no cars were coming. Rachel ended up regretting wearing a skirt that day.

My final day in Scotland I went on a class trip back to Edinburgh to visit the Scottish Parliament, which is in the strangest, most modern-art building I've ever seen. It's nuts. The politicians also have little "thinking pods" in their offices, which are like little enclosed patios where they can go be alone.

Lucky for us, the Edinburgh festival was going on at this time, and after we got out of Parliament we spent the rest of the day exploring the famous Fringe festival, where artists, musicians, and actors all go wild and put on free shows. It was like a cooler, modern Renaissance festival. I saw a lot of midgets that day. Dancing, wearing sparkly red suits, being paraded upside-down through the streets by people in masks....very strange. They were totally into it though. There were also a lot of living statues and people with wild piercings.

Doune Castle, Amsterdam, and the Highland Games

Sorry I've been neglecting the blog. I've done a lot of crazy stuff in a very short time period and have been a little intimidated to begin writing everything. There's just so much! I also just finished my last submission for my witchcraft class. Now all I have left is a field trip to the Scottish Parliament for my International Relations course, then I'm done done done. By the way, just got back my first paper from that class. I got a 1C, which roughly translates to an A in the States. I was pretty stoked, especially when I found out this genius guy in my flat who wrote publishable material for one of his papers got the same score. Apparently Scottish teachers are really hard graders, too. I'm pretty proud of myself.

Now going back in time, I'll begin with telling y'all of my trip to Doune Castle. If you know your Monty Python, you'll recognize this as the place the obnoxious french scene in Quest for the Holy Grail was filmed. I sat in the place where "I fart in your general direction!" was said. You can't get much classier than that, folks.

But seriously, the castle was beautiful. It is probably one of the best preserved medieval castles in the United Kingdom, and even some of the old furniture and chandaliers are there. I went with my Canadian friend Kelly and though we were there for hours we didn't even get to explore the whole place. What looks like one room has tucked away passages leading to three more, and the spiral staircase is creepy as hell. I've climbed so many old spiral staircases on this trip. The one in Wallace Monument is a real monster. You get done climbing it and still want to walk in a circle.

After Doune came the Amsterdam trip. I've told some of you about it already, but for those who haven't heard I will write all the details here:

I'll begin with the end. The return trip from Amsterdam was probably the most stressful trip I've ever made. I was there with my friend Rachel, and we had to catch a plane to Scotland at 8:40 that morning. For some reason we thought it was logical to wake up at 6:30 am. Needless to say we were rushed. At the train station we both got really confused by the front desk people and almost took a train to Paris instead of the airport. By the time we finally got there our plane was already boarding. Luckily the airport staff let us cut the lines or we'd never have made it.

My experiences while in Amsterdam were a lot better than those getting out of it. I felt like I was in a parallel universe much of the time. I mean, you can walk into a coffeeshop and order off a menu of weed. Then you can sit there surrounded by perfectly respectable people and smoke it, while cops ride by on their bikes completely unconcerned. It was also bizarre to visit a country where my family comes from. I'd see little bits of myself in passing strangers. I saw my facial features, hair, and body type so many times it was mindblowing.

The modes of transportation are also interesting. The roads themselves are there mostly for bicyclists. Occasionally a car or motercycle comes through, but during rush hour they're packed with people on bikes. I've never seen a bike traffic jam until now.

The people were all really kind to me while I was there. I'd heard folk in the Netherlands weren't too keen on Americans, and were kind of stand-offish. Maybe they're like that it other parts of the country, but I didn't experience anything bad at all. In fact, my credit card wasn't working because I didn't tell my bank I was going to the Netherlands, but if I had a hard time finding money to pay for something people would just give me stuff for free. A manager at a little grocery gave me some pastries and when I went to pay him back after I'd gotten my card to work he said I didn't need to. He was just happy I'd made the effort to reinburse him.

I ended up spending most of that trip just walking around the city and shopping. Yes, I did end up walking past the red light district a couple times. That city was completely surreal. Real, working prostitutes! I couldn't believe it. You're just walking down an ordinary street like any other, when you start passing buildings with red lights in the windows. In each open window there's a girl standing there looking out. They don't dance or anything. They just stand or sit, giving passing guys smoldering looks. I think one of the strangest experiences of my life was when I made eye contact with them. You can tell they have a lot of pride, and their eyes glitter at you as if they're daring you to judge them. They can also be really sweet, though. One girl gave me a friendly little smile as I passed. They're just cute, ordinary girls in a really bizarre line of work. I wanted to get pictures of them but was warned beforehand it would offend them. Therefore I only took a couple from a distance and without my flash on. This means they are pretty shitty, but I'll put them up anyway.

The Sunday after I returned to Scotland I ended up walking to the Highland Games in Bridge of Allan. They were held in the back field of a dairy farm. (So I accidentally just typed fairy instead of dairy and cracked myself up...) That was another neat experience. It was muddy and I wasn't dressed for that, but I had a great time playing with people's dogs and getting hugged by old men in kilts. I've never seen so many kilts before in one place. Here in Scotland it's not unusal to be walking to the grocery store and see a kilt or two on your way. Here there were hundreds of all different clans. Tons of bagpipes, too. It was a really great experience; I'm glad I was able to take part and get some decent photos out of it, too.





This one's for you, Andrew!

top left, flying kilts!