Deep Fried Mars Bar

So sorry it's been a while, I got sort of caught up in Scotland and forgot to tell you all about it, which I will warn you may occasionally happen from time to time. Let me see, since I last left you, my group finally arrived and we were promptly whisked away to the Highlands (during the time we were supposed to enroll for classes, register, and go to fun Fresher's Week...not that I'm bitter or anything). It was incredible and I'm sure lots of pictures have been shared by now and you saw the endless rolling green hills, sheep, cows (pronounced coos), and general wonder that was the Highlands. There was much rain, but we stayed in cozy chalets with super warm fake fireplaces and, wait for it, satellite tv, which was much appreciated after long, fulfilling days of hiking and hearing Scottish myths from our very talented host Eddie Stiven (his wife also cooked two incredibly delicious meals a day for us 20 hooligans which was wonderful). We came back after what felt like a week at summer camp and then started the super stressful/confusing/challenging endeavor of trying to sign up for classes and get all our shit together.
It's been two weeks now and we're all successfully enrolled and registered. I'm taking a comparative lit class which is focused on heroic men, and since I am a huge Joseph Campbell nerd, it is right down my alley. I am also taking a television studies class which is incredible. The focus this semester is television in eighties, which I think is excellent, because for the most part, I don't really know that much about eighties shows, especially British eighties shows, which is the primary focus. So far we've watched Live Aid clips and terrible terrible British soaps Brookside and Eastenders, and I love it! I am taking two classes with my group too, Scottish Culture, and Scottish Theater, which we start tomorrow and is going to rock I'm pretty sure. I also joined the Film Society on campus and am psyched for that since they do weekly pub quizzes on movie trivia (score!) and weekly screenings as well (Rocky Horror here I come!).
I'm sure you're all dying to know about the title as well, and it is as disgusting and mouth-wateringly good as you're imagining. After a night of watching football at the pub last night (Manchester won, yay! Celtic lost, boo!) We decided we wanted something completely wrong and fattening, and so we found our way to the nearest chippie (take away joint where they fry pretty much everything on the menu) and asked for a round of deep fried Mars bars (they're like Milky Ways, only with the far superior UK chocolate) which are battered and deep fried so that they're crispy on the outside and gooey and warm caramel, chocolate and fluffy stuff on the inside. Basically they are the most ungodly, high calorie edible treat ever and we all just about died on the street. If you still don't get their allure, watch the latest episode of "How I Met Your Mother" online about the quest for the perfect burger, and I think you understand. Anyways, I actually have homework to do (shocking, I know) and I will catch you all later, but not as late as this time I hope.

Edinburgh Weekend

So last Friday I decided that before school started and I actually had a schedule I would get in at least one fun trip to Edinburgh.  I booked a cheap hostel really close to the train station and fairly close to the Royal mile that night.  Since I had never been in a hostel before, I was a little worried, especially since I was trying to do my trip on the cheap and my 10 pound a night room had 9 roommates to go with it, and it was in partnership with the bar below it named Belushi's (as in John Belushi).  The train station was no hassle thankfully, and a trip from Glasgow to Edinburgh is only 10 pounds and the ticket is good for anytime of the day since a train leaves every 15 minutes.  

After about a 50 minute train ride I was in Edinburgh, which is breathtaking as you exit the train station which divides old town and new town.  I saw my bar/hostel as I was walking up the street but couldn't check in till 3 so I had to lug my big backpack around for most of the day.  I decided to first look for the this French chocolate cafe that one of my guidebooks had mentioned, but since it was an older edition, the restaurant was no longer there :(.  I found another small cafe down on the lower part of the Royal Mile close to the Palace of Holyroodhouse, which is where the Queen stays when she comes to Edinburgh.  Next I wandered up the Royal Mile and found this tour that I had read about before coming to Scotland.  It's a tour of Mary King's Close, which is now partially underground because a few hundred years ago, instead of expanding outwards, the city destroyed the tops of the 9-12 story buildings of Edinburgh, which where separated by closes named after the richest people who lived there or the types of businesses that inhabited those spaces (Advocate's Close was where lawyers worked), and placed new buildings on top of those sturdy stone homes using them as foundations.  So this tour is lead by people in costumes representing the people who actually lived and worked in this particular close and they tell their history as well as have cheesy wooden manequins in some of the rooms where murders took place and the plague struck.  I thought it was really neat, especially the plague information since it wiped out like half of Edinburgh's population and was particularly gruesome.  It was also the origination of the word "quack" for a doctor, because one man who lived in the close and was a doctor and survived the plague for 14 years after the rest of his family was killed off wore this crazy duck billed type of mask and heavy rain gear when he treated his family so as not to take in the bad smells, and thus "quack" was born.  I also learned that people back then just threw their excrement out the windows, which ran along the closes into the Nor Loch that was where the Botanical Gardens now are in Edinburgh.  The people could only do this, though, 2 times a day, in the morning and at 10 at night, which was also when the bars closed up, so if you happened to be wandering home and you heard someone shout, "garde a l'eau" which was French for "throwing out the water" and you accidently looked up (as drunk people are want to do) then you would have a very nasty surprise and thus the term "shitfaced" was invented.

After my dark tour of the underground, I went up to the top of the mile and saw the castle in all its glory, but did not take the tour inside because I'm cheap and it was 12 pounds.  I also took a look around the Whisky Experience where they do a big tour and go through the process of making whisky and have a HUGE shop of pretty much every type of whisky made in Scotland.  I was pretty tired and sore by this point so I decided to head back to the hostel to check in.  It was about everything you could expect and was essentially a party hostel, but my room, though it had 10 people, was on the 4th floor so it was relatively quiet.  I was sharing it with a group of Australian guys who have been traveling the world for the past couple of months or so and they were pretty funny and had some great stories involving getting lost after a pub crawl in Madrid amid many other mishaps and adventures.  I went down to the bar later that night and was just hanging out since I got a discount for drinks since I was staying there.  I got to talking to a Swedish girl who was staying there and who had been traveling around Europe for a while.  We decided to head to a different bar and found one close by called Tron.  The place reminded me of somebody's den back home, because there was a downstairs that had worn, comfy couches and a pool table and I totally felt like I was at somebody's house party (where they happened to charge for drinks and had a fully stocked bar).  We met one very funny drunk Scottish guy who when we asked for his name, he held up his finger and went, "wait" and then proceeded to lift up the back of his shirt where he had the name Grant tattooed on his back.  We then asked where he was from and this time he lifted up his shirt sleeve where a map of Edinburgh was tattooed and we decided he was probably one of the best things we had seen of Edinburgh so far.

Saturday I heard about a free walking tour that started near the Starbucks on the Royal Mile so I decided I would go do that.  After getting my drink (which was increased by one size for free if you told them you were on the tour) I went outside and stood around with the super large group of people.  I started talking to another guy shivering in the really aggressive Edinburgh wind who had unfortunately not heard about the upgrade before ordering.  I found out his name was Paul and was from Toronto and after talking to him for a while decided that he was exactly like my friend Colin in pretty much every way, which was kind of spooky.  I had a really good time on the tour and learned a ton about Edinburgh (those Scots came up with a bunch of common phrases) and its sometimes bloody, irrational past (redheads got totally screwed, as most of them were thought to be witches-the Nor Loch where all the sewage went was part of their punishment, let me just say that much).  Paul and I mostly noted the odd stuff we had found in Edinburgh (there are tons of Australians there) and Scots in general since we both had a North American perspective.  As a sidenote, he also saw that there were inflatable sheep for sale in restroom bathrooms which I personally do not want to know the reason why they are there.  We learned that there was a pub crawl also hosted by the same company later that night and decided to do that as well.  We separated for dinner and I went back to the hostel to get some rest in because I was fairly exhausted.  At 8 we met for the pub crawl, which was a pretty good deal:10 pounds got us a free drink at the first pub, then discounts on drinks at the 4 next pubs the rest of the night, and free entry into a club at the end where we also did not have to wait in line.  Needless to say I had a very good time and got to see a group of different Edinburgh spots, which was cool because some had live music, some had DJs, and each place had its own unique character.  The leader was really energetic and fun and I had my first whisky (it was terrible by the way, though it was a blended Famous Grousse, so I don't know if it's just an acquired taste or if that was bad whisky or if it was a combination of both).  The next morning I had to check out by 10 so I had breakfast and then caught a train and got back safe and sound.  I took a nap and then had a dinner with the Prof whose leading the trip, her family, and the handful of people in my group who are now in Glasgow.  Sorry that was so long folks, but it was an eventful weekend.  

Here's the link to my Edinburgh pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/schoolgirlbyday/Edinburgh#

Buff Nights and Lazy Days

So I will try to remember the past couple of days, since I really should be writing these daily since I tend to forget stuff.  Let me see, Roxie and I decided to show Caitlin around the West End a little bit and take her to some museums and Dumbarton Street.  We got coffee and then went to the Kelvingrove museum, which is another hodgepodge sort of museum that has natural history stuff as well as art.  We made it to the natural history section that had a lot of random stuffed animals, including an elephant that had been at a Scottish zoo about 100 years ago that they shot because he maimed his caretaker when he was in heat.  He looks a little worse for wear now, and most of that section was just kind of depressing since most of the animals that were from Scotland are now extinct because so much of their natural habitats were destroyed.  Then we went to the Harry Benson exhibit.  He's a Glaswegian photographer that shot the Beatles as they were getting famous and then went on to to shoot lots of famous actors, politicians, and famous scenes around Glasgow.  I definitely recommend checking him out since he's now up there with Annie Leibovitz in terms of cool photographers in my opinion.

We decided to save the other wings of the museum for another day (since it's free) and wandered down Dumbarton and Ashton Lane.  We stopped for lunch and I finally had my first fish and chips here, which was quite delightful.  We decided to pretty much head back after that because we were weighed down with shopping bags.  Then last night Caitlin's friend Chris, a University of Glasgow student who studied at LC two years ago called her because he was in town and Caitlin and I joined him and his friend Karen for a night out.  We went to a bar first called the Bunker, which was aptly named because it was literally in the basement of a building, although it was very nice and posh, so not a basement like you're probably thinking.  After our drinks and lively discussion over the way each culture spells words wrong, we headed over to the Buff nightclub which was very cool because it had a cheap cover for students, yay!  There is a typical room upstairs with your basic crappy techno, but downstairs there was a great room that played cool 60's music like the Beatles and other various pop, Elvis, Johnny Cash, some soul, and some seriously old school twangy country.  We had a great time actually being able to dance and do the twist into the wee hours of the morning.

Today I've just been laying low.  I did laundry (for free! the machines for our complex are totally free!) and watching the Office while it rains outside.  We had a fajita making party tonight which was very enjoyable.  Not sure what plans are for tomorrow, but I will at least try to venture outside and stop slacking :)

Thrift Stores and Lebowski's

So today was a really good day folks. I met up with Roxie this afternoon and we ventured over to the University to see about our starter kits of cookware and perhaps getting Roxie into her room and out of the various hostels she's been staying at. Once we got that settled (she's now in the room next to mine so living is a little less lonely) we decided to go on a thrift store adventure. We found some amazing finds: she got a great pea coat for 5 pounds, we both got awesome clothes at the 99 pence thrift store, I got this kick ass sequinsy skirt, and we both got really cheap hangers. We then had lunch at a little cafe and headed back to the dorms. We then went grocery shopping and through our collective budgeting skills managed to get a few cheap dinner options for the next few days and enough sandwich material to last a long while.
After dinner, Caitlin arrived. She's been in London for a while and is now moved into the dorm next to ours. We decided that since she was hungry and we were ready to finally hit the pub scene we would go out. We ended up at Lebowski's, which the best way to describe is simply epic. Roxie and I of course had white russians and as it turns out, there are about 10 different white russian varieties at the bar, with names like "the Dude," "the Walter," and "the Saddam." Since I love the movie and of course am a patriotic American, it is my goal to try every white russian variation while I am here (not in one night mom and dad). We then finished off with Guinness and Tennets and have plans to hit up the museums and clubs tomorrow. With a few more people here now, I think the next week or so will be an amazing whirlwind of Scottish life.

View From The Top (of a double decker bus)

So here goes for two days of fun adventuring.  Yesterday I met up with Roxie who is also on the trip with me, but has been staying in various hostels around Glasgow.  We were set to meet at the University main gate, so I went early to have a look around the place since from what I've seen it is one of the most beautiful places in the city.  I wandered a bit and found the gift shop which is across from the elevator that takes you up to the Hunterian museum.  Since I had about an hour and a half (and the museum is free, which I also found out that like all the museums in Glasgow are free, yay!) I decided to check it out.  Apparently a large portion of it was donated by Mr. Hunter from his own collection so it's mostly a hodgepodge of ancient tribal artifacts, gems and minerals, bugs, some dinosaur fossils, a science section dedicated to Sir Kelvin, and a large medical section with tons of diseased and healthy body parts and medical devices.  My favorite part was the small section of conjoined and mutated animals that were apparently of great fascination and were once termed "monstrosities."  The museum itself is beautiful and has large arching ceilings and I believe is one of the oldest buildings in Glasgow.

After my little tour I met up with Roxie and since we were both starving we headed down a little ways to Ashton street, which is this small very pretty little cobblestone side street with a ton of little restaurants (at least 5 were mentioned in my guidebook), clubs, and my favorite part, a little cinema called Grosvenor Cinema that has two screens and comfy leather seats where you can get a bite to eat and enjoy a pint with your movie...so I'll be there a lot.  We ate at a restaurant called Brel that used to be stables but is now known for there selection of Belgian beers.  They had live jazz going on on the back patio and we enjoyed a very nice meal and a pint.  From there we pretty much ended our night, although I have plans to meet Roxie again on Monday to find the Accommodation office and see if she can't move into the dorms early as well because the whole hostel thing is definitely not the most convenient situation.

Today I decided to hop on the double decker tour buses I've seen going around town.  They are only 9 pounds and you can hop on and off at any of the stops and the ticket is good for 2 days so hopefully I will get some use out of it tomorrow.  I learned a lot about the city and got a lot of good info about the East End which I had not been to yet. There is a place over there called the Barras which is pretty much like Saturday Market for those of you who have been to Portland, and I plan on scoping out some good deals there next weekend.  There are also a ton of other museums on the East side which I also want to visit, because again, free.  I hopped off at St. George Square where there are some lovely statues of Queen Victoria and other nobility and I took a few shots of the building where they conduct court.  I did some shopping and got some Starbucks, because I hadn't had coffee in days (and it was showing) and when I came out it was pouring.  Thankfully one of the buses pulled up right as I got to the stop and I spent a cold and wet ride back home.  Oh also the Celtics and Rangers played today so there were a lot of guys dressed up who were yelling very loudly.  That's pretty much it, and in the next few days I plan on going to some more museums and perhaps some pubs so I will keep you all updated.

First beer bought in Scotland (it's a proud moment folks)

That's Saint Andrew's Ale for those of you who can't read backwards :)

Cheers!

Jetlag

I'm glad to see people are reading the blog, it makes me feel connected. So the jetlag I thought I could beat got the better of me last night/today because I slept for a solid 18 hours and only woke up at 3 PM here...to a fire alarm. Don't worry though, as far as I could determine, nothing was wrong and the alarm just decided to act as a reminder that I cannot sleep my entire way through these two weeks here in Glasgow.
Once I finally got up and moving, I checked with the Cairncross House office that is across the street from my dorm to see about a little starter kit of cups and pots and stuff for kitchen that I had ordered before my arrival, but they pointed me in the direction of the Accommodations office at the University. They gave me a map and I walked through Kelvingrove park, which is beautiful and green and has some lovely views of the early architecture of Glasgow. I am happy that, though it is long, that route will be the way I get to class every day. I finally made it to the University district and managed to find the Film and Television building, the gym, and other offices, but had no luck with Accommodation. Since it was already evening, I decided that I would need to wait a couple days and go looking earlier and with a better map. I walked back towards home and then to the grocery store again to get a few more things, since I apparently forgot about half the items I had intended to come with me. I also bought my first beer here, which was exhilarating, even if I have no bottle opener and it was from a grocery store.
Tomorrow's plan is to head across Glasgow to the city center where there are many large shopping centers. I am still without a towel and now need a new blow dryer since mine shorted when I tried to plug it in, sigh. But I did figure out electricity finally, so at least that crisis is averted till another day. I have plans to meet some other people from my group on Saturday, so hopefully with another person I will have better luck finding places and exploring more.
Till tomorrow

Arrival

So welcome all to my spectacular travel journal!
I think that just getting to my final destination was probably the most challenging experiences of my life so far and for once I think I have glimpsed just a little bit of what it is to be an adult. I left Portland yesterday afternoon and had to say goodbye to my mom for longer than I have ever been away from my family and I'm not going to lie and say that I did not almost cry, because I did, and I probably freaked out some of the airline personnel. From there I had a crazy long 9 hour flight in which I watched like 3 movies and tried to sleep, which got me about 2 hours of fitful tossing and turning next to a guy who constantly hogged the armrest for the duration of the flight. We landed in Amsterdam, and after a few minutes of shear panic and confusion on my part, I finally settled down and worked my way down to the smallish airplane terminal. I then proceeded to play "Amsterdam" by Guster on my ipod because that's what you do when you're in Amsterdam. From there I hopped on a little city-hopper with a whole bunch of people who were either completely Scottish, or sounded like the Swedish Chef from the muppets.
Scotland is just as green and gray as you would think it would be, though from Glasgow, you can't really see the rolling hills or amazing landscape so much. It is a lot of brownstone buildings and the river Clyde that snakes through the city. I managed to get a taxi and figure out where I was going and I chatted up the cab driver on the way over about Scotland and Glasgow. My dorm, truth be told, is in a somewhat sketchy area, and is nothing to look at really, but hopefully when there are people here, it will be a bit less depressing. Also the electrical outlets in my room don't seem to work really, so most of my computer time will be spent hooked up to the ones in the kitchen, yay! So far I have already had to navigate a wee bit around the city to buy groceries and a plug adapter, so by and by I feel that I have already made a substantial accomplishment.
Hopefully the next posts will be more exciting, but I think that if I'm going to do a travel journal I should at least give all the gritty details.
P.S. I am already noticing the open, gregarious nature of the Scots and am looking forward to some very satisfying conversations in the near future :)