Edinburgh

Editor's Note: This is lengthy and internet is oddly harder to obtain when you're busy, even if you're in America. Also, I couldn't get all the pictures to load. A thousand apologies. 

On my last night in Edinburgh, I went to go see a comedian with Christine, Kerry, and a couple of people from the hostel. Being of Scottish heritage but born in Canada and currently residing in England, he had a, shall we say, unique perspective on the different societies that he had viewed. He was hilarious and I laughed so hard that I cried throughout much of the show. Just one of the positives of visiting Edinburgh during the Fringe Fest- the place was full of comedy, plays and other performing arts. The comedian remarked that arriving in Edinburgh is much more impressive when one arrived by train in Waverly Station. You get off the train and there are bagpipes and people dressed up for performances and tourists galore and then there's this castle- you're generally a little overwhelmed when you get off the train in Edinburgh.

I loved it there, despite the rain and cold that I will almost incessantly complain about when I talk about the city, having become very homesick for heat that hits you like a wall of boiling air and humidity, and near drought conditions. Neil Gaiman stuck it into my head that Oscar Wilde once said that if this is how the Scots treat their summers, they don't deserve one. I don't know that the Scots must have done to offend summer so, but the entire time I was there it felt more like January of perhaps a cold snap in March than early August.

Still, the hostel I was at was small and full of interesting, friends people. On my second night a group of four came in from London and I spent many of my nights listening to their conversations and easy friendship. As wonderful as it was to find new people to be friends with, that wonderfulness was exceeded by having more familiar faces to enjoy the city with. Christine returned from her visit with her family in Ireland and brought Kerry, a friend of hers and an acquaintance of mine, with her from the independent island off the British coast. Her friend Jesse also came to visit, taking the bus up from London where he had been studying this summer.

Together we took a walking tour of Edinburgh that I highly recommend if you have the means. We listened to the history of Scotland as told through the lens of its capital, walking up and down the Royal Mile, stopping by  the outside of the cathedral, John Knox's grave, the Grassmarket, Greyfriars Kirkyard, home to Greyfriars Bobby, walking past Fringe venues and ending up in the Princes Street Gardens. Did you know that James Clerk Maxwell was a Scotsman? Good, because if you did it would probably be because you learned his equations in E&M and I would fear for your state after enduring the merciless tyranny of physics. But there are plenty of other notable Scotsman besides William Wallace- Robert Burns, Ewan McGregor, Sean Connery, David Hume, Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. JK Rowling has a small castle up there. I have also visited the Elephant Room, the café where she wrote the first three books of Harry Potter. Nerd moment of the trip completed.

I went back to the cathedral on my own for the Sunday morning service, taking communion in a huge circle by passing the loaf of bread and the cup of wine, each eating and drinking on their own before being blessed as a group by the priest. The choir sang an anthem, little bags were passed around for the offering, the priest preached a sermon on a letter of Paul and a gospel lesson about Jesus walking on water and Simon Peter sinking. Later, as I walked around, I noticed the lion and the unicorn protecting a shield as I'm used to seeing in Scotland and thistles in the decorations, proclaiming the national symbol of Scotland. 

The cathedral was interesting and historical. It was laid out in a Greek cross, the first church I had visited like that and the altar stood at the intersection of the arms of the cross with the congregation on either side coming together for communion. It's a different kind of space and coming forward for communion made me think about the service back in St. Mary's in Berlin, passing the peace to people whose language I didn't speak. Here, I walked to the heart of the church and circled around the altar and smiled and shook hands with kind Scots and thought about how far I'd been.

The last thing I did in Edinburgh was climb Arthur's Seat. It's a huge hill on the edge of town, a touch of the highlands for which my heart ached. We had climbed it earlier, Christine, Kerry, Jesse and I, and we had stopped by the small ruin of a chapel near the beginning of the climb. 

There's not much left of this chapel, just and entry way, two windows, an arch support and a couple of corners, but the space lends itself to an absolutely mystical quality. You can rebuilt the chapel in your mind and imagine the monks who must have come here, lighting torches or candles for late night vigils. The crag around you minds you of a faerie world where sprites and nymphs could come and infest the stone of a place meant for Someone else, packing the place with a meaning all to different from the one you're accustomed to assume. And if you let your thoughts run wild you can imagine a day when we've all but left these places, these cities and these cathedrals, when the grass will grow again in the wind-deposited dirt and the walls of all of these grand houses of God that I've seen time and again in my months abroad will be reduced to a doorway, two windows and a corner, blackbirds racing each other around the ruins.

I didn't revisit the chapel on my solitary hike up and we didn't stay long as a crew the first climb up. We were beat up the hill by a trio of middle aged men determined to scale the mountain quicker than the college kids in their prime. We stopped often to take pictures and be distracted by a man walking his cat along the heath at the bottom of the valley. We paused just before the final trek up to the rocky peak, collapsing on the oddly-well maintained grass to guess at the shapes hidden in the clouds, watching as the high wind demolished them, leaving us with new patterns. I paused to look out again at the sea the sneaks into Edinburgh when I climbed by myself, but only for the briefest of seconds before picking out another path among the rocks.

The climb up to the top of the seat is up uncovered rock, different from the steep slope of grass that came before. As a group we laughed, first following the chains and posts and then guessing at the easiest climb before stumbling up to the open vista of the crown of the hill. I meandered around when I returned by myself, not pausing at the top but instead selecting a hidden outcropping to sit and think and read. Leaves of Grass lay abandoned in the pocket of my pack. I broke out a collection of stories by Neil Gaiman and immersed myself in a world of wonder, feeling the wind blow my hair around for the last time. When we four had climbed the seat, we had found our way around to the tops of the rocks, laughing and taking pictures and waiting for a group of Spanish-speaking tourists to give up their place on the highest before giving up and climbing up there anyway, crowding around the back of the dulled peak of peaks.

I left the last of my locks on a iron hook up on Arthur's Seat, the hefty one I had bought for five euro in Paris. I hadn't needed it in the hostel and wouldn't need it for our one night in Dublin before flying from there to Chicago to Charlotte. I can remember the jokes the group told as we picked our way down the rocks and flew down the hill before, but as I walked back by myself I turned a corner I hadn't seen before and walked down a stair step of rocks and trickling water. I walked through grass and by thistles, purple and green and perfect as I tugged my jacket closer against the wind.

On our way out of the city the next morning we sat on the top of the double-decker bus to the Edinburgh airport and Kerry cut off the conversation for a few moments so she could say her goodbyes to Edinburgh. I had been woken up that morning by a goodbye- Brooke, the Australian nurse from my room, had left the hostel group early to get on a plane for a night in London, despite the riots, before leaving out on a tour of the continent. We had said multiple goodbyes to the people in the hostel before walking in the rain to the bus station. Through all of this, I had never thought of saying goodbye to the city. Faced with the thought of leaving, I found my mind distracting itself from the idea. I don't do goodbyes. I was glad when Kerry finished hers and Christine and I discussed plans for surprising Pam when we returned to the States for her birthday.

I sat in an aisle seat on the plane. Given a window, I'll stare out at the ground, memorizing the place I've been from the air before it disappears in the clouds. With that moment taken away, I think I'll keep long montage of pictures taken from the upper floors of castles and cathedrals and hills looking over the cities I've seen in my mind as my memorization of Europe. I'll begin in Prague and I'll end at Arthur's Seat and I'll think of all the things I've left. And all the things I've gained.

Glasgow

It's not a bad train ride from London to Glasgow. I took an early train because it was literally fifty pounds cheaper and oscillated between reading and staring out the window. Tiredness and excitement vied internally- I remembered loving Scotland the last time I was there but I hadn't slept well in the large dorms in Paris and London and so, though I stared out the windows with anticipation, it was difficult to bounce around as one is said to do when excited.

Glasgow Central train station makes my top three favorite train stations (you know you're backpacking around Europe when you have favorite train stations). I arrived before my check-in time, so I enjoyed some Starbucks internet and watched the pigeons harass passengers before walking down a couple of blocks and catching a glimpse of the Clyde River before walking into my hostel.

Here's a hint, if you're ever planning on doing something like this yourself: If you have the option and the funds, pick smaller hostels. Big hostels might have... well... well, actually, the only thing bigger hostels have that smaller hostels don't is an excess of floors. You can find a kitchen, laundry and free internet at smaller hostels and in smaller hostels, you actually get to meet people. In a big place it's easy to get lost among the crowds of school groups there on holiday or packs of friends traveling together with no need for another person. I hate being excluded like that.

Thus, I was quite happy when I found myself in a smaller room than requested- I was in a four bed room instead of a fourteen bed dorm. Through lucky happenstance (by the way, did you know that our word happy has its roots with the older English word hap, or by chance?) I was in a room with, among a rotating door of others, two girls my own age, one of whom was a musician (the aforementioned Bec Sandrige, who you should go give a listen to now) and the other her friend just visiting in Glasgow for a few days to support Bec at her shows.

It's crazy nice to come back to a room with people you like to be around. It's ridiculous the amount of empathy you develop over the course of trips like this- I understand much better the feeling a body can have when you don't want to go home but you don't have anywhere else to sleep. And so I was, again, delighted to have good roomies. I went out to see Bec perform at a venue one night and loved it, and spent the rest of their time in Glasgow enjoying chance meetings at the hostel even after they had to book another room.


Other than that, much of my time in Glasgow was spent walking over to the Starbucks with the internet and catching up on things. I'd go down to the river on less rainy days, watching people walk, bike, stroll, skate and sit on calm paths that bore witness to the night's excitements the next day. I went up to the cathedral and wandered through the Necropolis, walked through museums and shuffled through shops, spending every day other than my Sunday when I visited two churches just outside of Glasgow with a friend, in town filling the time between the early sunrise and the late sunset. I read.

It's amazing how caught up a person can get in the news and thoughts of the world around them. It does not do for me to have that much extra time on my hands, spotting potential TARDISes that turned out to be ice cream shops and musing on my trip long before it's over. I spent an afternoon in a bookshop, having become determined to buy Looking For Alaska, sitting and reading from my two new books. I had to put Looking For Alaska down. The talk of summer heat in Louisiana made me homesick. I had to put the internet down for a while too. Thinking over the headlines made me worldsick.

In the end, though, I was glad to head on to Edinburgh. Eventually, even the destinations become part of the journey and you start to look at the days on the calendar like hours on the train, carrying you along to a not-too-distant end. Oh, distant enough, I guess. But approaching.