caliarch.net

…it’s time to go home. And I’m getting way too close. Since this is Monica’s and my last night in Scotland, though, I guess that’s okay.

So, obviously, we’ve been without internet for a while, which sucked a little because, you know, the internet’s cool, but was also awesome in a way because it meant we were hanging out in places that don’t have internet cafes on every corner. Like the tiny little whiskey towns in Speyside, and the highlands around Ft. William.

Obviously we had way too many adventures to document right now (and shockingly, I’m once again about ready to keel over with exhaustion), but here’s a quick synopsis.

(more…)

Quickly — 8 minutes left on internet!!!!

This morning we got crafty by getting up to the mile before 10 & getting into the castle before it became a mob scene. It was large and old, but a little commercialized (I think we counted about 9 gift shops; at least one for every tower). Then we went to the Royal Scottish Museum for a while, but pretty soon we realized we weren’t really enjoying it & that our feet were killing us, so we abandoned that & went to have lunch at the Completely Insignificant Chinese Buffet of Nothingness across the street. Yeah, it was pretty crappy, & they charged for water. On the plus side, there was ice cream, & it wasn’t that expensive.

Then, went back to the Royal Mile to do a little whiskey shopping. Oh-ho-ho. Good times. Monica also bought a lot of wool, & learned that she does not particularly enjoy the whiskey. We swung by the scotch whiskey heritage center, where we found something that neither one of us would ever every drink — whiskey flavored coffee.

(Monica: “Who ruined this perfectly good cup of coffee?!?!?”

Angela: “Who ruined this perfectly good dram of whiskey?!?!?”)

Then, we picked up our theater tickets for tonight & did some more cafe sitting, at which we excel. After that we bought sherbet lemons at what is apparently the only candy story on the royal mile. Weird.

But theater tonight! That should be cool. Afterward, we might hit a pub or something, & then it’s back to the B&B to pack — tomorrow we’re off to the highlands!

Today was our first full day in Edinburgh!  This morning we walked down to the Palace of Holyrood House where the Queen stays when she’s in Scotland & toured that.  The furniture all looked very old and nice, but uncomfortable and impractical.  We learned quite a bit about Mary Queen of Scots.  After that we hiked King Arthur’s Seat (or, as Monica prefers to call it, King Arthur’s Foot; it’s not clear exactly why), an enormous hill behind the Palace from which you can see all of Edinburgh.  We definitely ended up taking the hard way not intended for the travel of humans, but after scaling a number of rock faces (& realizing that we were not physically capable of scaling many more without dying) we got back alive.  And thirsty.  It’s hot!  And also beautiful. 

Then, we had a good lunch at a cafe that Monica claims was made for her, and traipsed over to the Sir Walter Scott Memorial, a giant gothic-looking tower with 287 stairs, many of which are very narrow.  It was very high, and very closed-in, but awesome.  We enjoyed it, in spite of all the damn tourists (damn tourists!) & got a lot of nice pictures.  We tried to go to some museums, but they were closed.  Near the museums, we found a certain completely insignificant Chinese Buffet that has nothing to do with anything, & I took Monica’s picture with it.  For no reason whatsoever.  After that, we saw some freaky girls dressed up as sexy rabbits.  Monica chased them down for me & took their picture without their knowledge.  Hehehe.

After that, we walked back down the Royal Mile & found some shops we want to go to tomorrow, & then had dinner in another cafe (where we are now).  Pretty soon we’re going to go on a haunted graveyard tour — spooky!  I’m hoping to get some poltergeist action. 

More tomorrow!

Monica & I are leaving for Edinburgh tomorrow. We’ve been very busy here in Glasgow but I wanted to get something up before we go, even if it’s a bit rushed and disorganized.

So –

It’s the World Pipe Band Championships & Festival in Glasgow this week, and on Friday we were lucky enough to get really good spots at a piping demonstration in George Square (a giant square at the center of the city). There were about eight different pipe bands there from all over the world that were competing in the championships. Also, it turns out that the Lord Provost of Glasgow (which is like the mayor) was to serve as the Cheiftain for the competition, so she was there at the exhibition. Monica and I ended up standing by some city councilors (the city council chambers are on George Square), & later on when the Lord Provost came over to greet them, they introduced her to Monica & me. I have to say that that was pretty cool. (Also they all thought it was very funny that we didn’t know what ‘Lord Provost’ meant.) Apparently there’s also a highland dancing festival connected to the piping one, so before the pipe bands there was a highland dance exhibition as well. And the sweetest part of all — the whole thing was sponsored by Glenfiddich, who had a whole tent set up with information about the distillery and several different whiskeys for sniffing (no tasting, unfortunately).

We spent the rest of the day doing the really touristy stuff, including Glasgow Cathedral, St. Mungo’s Museum (though we didn’t get to go inside), the oldest house in Glasgow (which has a proper name that I can’t remember right now), & a slew of other incredible churches. We had dinner at a restaurant called Oran Mor, which looks like it’s in a real live cathedral or castle or some such, though I have my doubts as to whether it’s actually historical or not.

Today we went to the Barras (giant flea market), which was a little disappointing because it turned out to mostly be sketchy people selling junk. But hey, if you need to buy Hanes boxer-briefs or old broken China in bulk, this is your place. Then we tried to find the Burrell Collection, which is supposed to be a really awesome museum, but that didn’t really work out either. After about twenty minutes we just ended up wandering around the, um, less savory parts of Glasgow staring at maps & decided to abandon that particular ambition. Instead we went to the Kelvinbridge Art Museum, which is just around the corner from where we’re staying, near Glasgow University. It turns out that it’s been closed for three years for renovation and just reopened this week, so it’s free! That was pretty fun. For dinner, we went to a Scottish restaurant recommended by our B&B hosts called Stravaigin, which was absolutely AMAZING. I had an Orkney dish made with raw salmon, cilantro, green onions, cabbage, and some kind of lemony sauce, and let me be clear that anything good enough to cause *me* to enjoy green onions and cabbage has to be pretty damn near fantastic. They also had a locally brewed pale ale from a hand pump that I tried, which I think may be the best beer I’ve ever had. Wow. So good.

After dinner we walked along the River Clyde for a while, and how could it be anything but amazingly gorgeous? The highlight of that trip was the ruins we found a ways down on the east bank. They looked very old and cool, but we couldn’t find a marker anywhere to tell what they were. Weird.

So yeah. That’s pretty much Glasgow.

Monica and I were up this morning at four am Holland time in order to catch a 4:30 taxi to the Den Haag train station, in order to catch a five am train to the airport, in order to catch a 7 am flight to London-Gatwick (& then on to Glasgow). The flight to London went smoothly enough; however, we soon found ourselves in a security queue longer than our souls due to this (in case you haven’t heard already).

(more later; i’ve slept two hours out of the last thirty-six hours & if I don’t get some sleep I’m seriously goign to keel over)

http://www.swarmsketch.com/

“…an ongoing online canvas that explores the possibilities of distributed design by the masses.”

Monica and I have spent some time recently trying to compile a list of basic survival skills for the first-time visitor to Holland. We haven’t come up with an awful lot, but there’s one thing I know for sure:

Basic Dutch Survival Skill #1: Always assume that you are standing in the middle of the road.

When possible, you should always walk on the sidewalk (more on why later). The trouble is that sometimes it’s difficult to tell where the sidewalk is. For several reasons.

Firstly, while there are curbs in some places, they aren’t everywhere, and sometimes even if they’re there they’re very shallow. Secondly, most everything here is cobblestone, even in the newer parts of the city, so it’s not as if the street has a different look than the sidewalk (especially since the streets are not nearly as wide as in the States, and the sidewalks tend to be wider). Thirdly, roadways in Holland often tend to have three parts: the street (for cars), the sidewalk (for pedestrians and dogs, of which there are many), and the bike lane.

Now, these are not the half-hearted wussy bike lanes of the west coast. Bike lanes in Holland are hardcore. In fact, they look an awful lot like sidewalks. Which look a lot like the street. Sometimes you’ll think you’re walking along a nice pedestrian path in the park, and it actually turns out that you’re wandering around in the middle of the street and pretty soon there’s a car honking at you. Or a bike. Or many bikes.

And in a residential area in the U.S., this might not be so terrible. While cyclists and motorists are likely to be a little annoyed with you, the worst you’re likely to get is a dirty look and maybe a mild honk, or a bike slowing to swerve aroun you. Which brings me to the second thing that makes Holland dangerous: the Dutch are not so much with the slowing down or swerving to accommodate your ignorance. Nope; they more kind of just assume you’ll figure out there’s a car or bike barreling toward you before they get to you and move. If you really don’t move, bikes are likely to swerve around you at breakneck pace, missing you by mere inches, and so will cars, if there’s room. If there isn’t, they’re likely to slam on the brakes at the last possible instant and blast the horn (unless you’re in Amsterdam, in which case they’re more likely to sneak up on you and get as close as they can as quietly as possible and then blast the horn).

Even the pedestrians themselves are not to be trusted. You know the thing people do in the States when they’re headed directly towards each other and both people keep trying to swerve in the same direction and it’s kind of funny? This never happens in Holland, because the Dutch do not believe in swerving. They believe in playing chicken. And winning. Do not make the mistake of thinking you can beat a Dutch pedestrian at sidewalk chicken. No; they will steamroller your ass. Without even blinking.

And while you’re at it, be careful not to get yourself steamrollered right onto a tram track. While yes, it’s easier to tell if you’re on a tram track than on a regular street and yes, you can usually see and / or hear the tram coming a ways off, some of your more hardened variety of Dutch pedestrian are not so aware or concerned with where you are in relation to the tracks. This is important to know because a) there are no barriers of any kind between the sidewalk and tram tracks (nope; not even a formidable-looking yellow line painted on the ground) and b) like their pedestrian counterparts, Dutch trams like to play chicken, and they will kick your ass.

[Interesting sidenote: When I first arrived here, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if a Dutch tram squared off with a Dutch pedestrian. I didn’t have to wait long to find out. Seriously — these people leap in front of speeding trams all the frickin time. With children. It baffles me, how people aren’t killed here all day, every day in tram-related incidents.]

And while we’re on the subject of trams, don’t screw around with getting on and off that sucker either. Unlike American trams and busses, the folding doors are not the kind that bounce back when they hit something standing indecisively in the middle of the doorway, and unlike American tram and bus drivers, they will not check to make sure that everyone is safely on one side of the doors or the other before hurtling away from the platform. I’m totally serious about this.

Not knowing a language is one of the most frustrating things in the world.  And believe me, being in a country where you really don’t know the language gives you a whole new appreciation for how much of other languages you actually do know.  Actually, as these things go, Holland isn’t all that bad — virtually everyone speaks fairly good English in addition to Dutch, and somehow written Dutch is actually pretty easy to figure out in context.  (Example:  “1 uur foto servicie = 1 hour photo service”)  Especially once you figure out a bunch of little words like “the,” “a/an,” “with,” “and,” “push,” “pull,” “of,” “to,” “from,” “out,” etc.  It’s kind of amazing how much Dutch you can read, in spite of the fact that you don’t know Dutch.

Spoken Dutch is another story.  It sounds a little like German, and a lot of the letters and letter combinations don’t sound the way they do in English or the Romance languages.  Honestly  — I can’t understand a word.  Which is what’s frustrating.  Not so much when the other person speaks English, which most do.  But some don’t.  So I’m in the grocery store today looking at cookies and this old Dutch grandfather with a cane smiles at me and points at the cookies and starts talking to me in Dutch and laughing.  I was desperate to know what he was saying but I had not a clue.  All I could do was shrug and say, “Sorry, I don’t understand.”  A regretful look came onto his face, and he said something else in Dutch with a shrug.

So there you have it — a unique, once-in-a-lifetime encounter between two humans from completely different lives, and because I didn’t speak Dutch and he didn’t speak English, I will never know what it was about.  Frankly, sickening.

Yesterday we went to Amsterdam for the day. & although I admit that we probably only saw the touristy part, it really was amazingly gorgeous, and the weather couldn’t have been nicer. Most of the city center is built around canals, which are lined by all these extraordinarily old, insanely pretty canal houses. We walked around for a while just looking at the city before we really did anything, which is what convinced me that the greatest thing about Amsterdam is the architecture. Everything is just really old and historic-looking; more than once, we’d see some beautiful, awesome building and snap several pictures of it, & then, upon closer inspection, realize that it was just a bank or office building or something. I mean honestly. Gorgeous.

(more…)