Sunday, not Friday!

A crackling good day for cheese

A REAL cheese shop!











Also--Irn Bru, the only soda that outsells Coca Cola in Scotland.  Makes you a hardy soul, ready for anything. Although, somehow their marketing campaigners never tasted the stuff--its an awful blend of orange soda and cotton candy (quite sissy in fact). 

Also--they don't refrigerate their eggs in the grocery stores. In fact, they're often next to the bread. I know that eggs do not need to be refrigerated, but its strange to see them not.  Produce isn't readily refrigerated either.  Although, that doesn't say much, because their produce isn't that great.  Terrible fruit, except for the berries and some of the apples. 
  I checked out Edinburgh Farmer's Market this last Saturday morning.  It was smallish, but not tiny. The weird thing was that over half of the booths sold meat--pork of all kinds, aberdeen beef, game birds, ostrich and bison, etc.  Only two fruit and veg stalls, and the rest were cheeses, breads--including a German baker who had really good looking pretzels--and other various food stuffs. The did have a crisp fryer there--hot, freshly made potato chips, each made to order by one guy in a little cart.  You could get any topping or seasoning you wanted. Oh they looked so delectable! But alas, I was by myself, and I had just woken up, and didn't think I could eat a whole order myself.  I'll just have to go back.

oh yeah

I was lost in a little American world and didn't realize that most of the developed world has
daylight savings. I'm walking back from class in the dark now (4:30).  December is going to be rough.

wiggles

i seem to like the smell of decaying wet leaves and the slosh that they make as i scuffle through them, not as good as the crunch of dried ones though. and its damn cold making me walk into the ever ferocious wind like a bent old grandma.  my refuge are the books i get from the public library (small but stately) and the endless cups of tea that burn my mouth only sometimes.
  we saw fantastic mr. fox the other night walking there that makes it better, more air in your lungs.  will recommend to you; a smart movie, made by a smart man (and written by a smart man). but the silly thing about the whole thing were the commercials they went on for an entire half hour 30 minutes of pure commercials before the previews even started. and the adverts were very poppy and overdone reminded me kind of public tv commercials if they existed. the first one was for oral health so typically british.

Street Art, Edinburgh Style

Green, Yellow, Red, Yellow, Green

Did you know....
   -that traffic lights go in the above order, telling them both when to slow down, and when to get ready to go?

   -Princes St. Gardens, in the middle of the town between Old Town and New Town used to be a man made
   loch in the 18th century? But soon it became really vile and nasty because people used it as a sewage dump, as a place to commit suicide, and a place for witch trials by dunking (over 300 of them supposedly).

   -its cold here now?

   -they love their cheap sandwich meal-deals over here? White bread, a little filling, a lot of mayo. With a bag of crisps--all under 2 pounds!!

Notice the cheese and onion sandwich (gross--shredded cheddar cheese and raw purple onion) and the kinds of crisps. Walkers, in case you are blind, are the Lays of this side of the Atlantic. Similar quality, but crazy flavors, like prawn cocktail (not much of a flavor, but alright), smoky bacon (tastes like bacon--weird), roast chicken, chilli (two ls), cheese and onion again, ready salted (just plain salt), etc.  

    -the morning is my favorite time to be awake in Edinburgh? Its not too cold, but rather crisp.  Everyone awake is quiet; they know their place in the whole cog of things, and are very respectful; the sky is either blue and streaky pink, or drizzly grey--two perfect climates; the architecture looks especially beautiful: not drab like it does in the middle of the day, but stately yet approachable; but most of all, the morning allows each person to think that its "theirs", that they own it.  And its a fine thing to own.

    -that I really miss truly spicy food?

Crannogs

Field trip!  Crannogs are traditional housing structures built by Bronze and Iron Age Scottish and Irish people.  They are artificial islands, built out of wood, standing in lochs or bogs.  We went to Loch Tay, where this guy has reconstructed a crannog as a form of experimental archaeology (which allows for fanciful interpretation based on finds).  All evidence of this past life is submerged under water, so everything has to be found by sonar and diving.  The awkward thing though is while everything is beautifully preserved underwater (cold peaty water does wonders for preservation), if brought up and stored in just air, it would decompose quickly. So all of the wooden finds on display in the museum are encased in a tube of water.  They even found a 2,500 year old wooden butter dish with remains of the butter still crusted to the sides.
  Also at this amusement park of sorts are demonstrations on how the old Scots went about their daily tasks.

Our guide for this was a properly scruffy German guy named Dirk. He showed us how to turn wood, drill holes in rocks, spin wool, grind grain, and make fire.  I participated in the latter, and had a smoldering ember within about 10 seconds of vigorously bowing a wooden dowel into a piece of softer wood.  Whether or not I could expand on that and make an actual fire remains untested.

  Loch Tay is a great little place though, even though its in the middle of nowhere.

Drumnadrochit

Hiya!
  This last weekend we managed to get out of the city and head north.  We bought the cheapest tickets to Inverness, a city about 3.5 hours north of Edinburgh. We thought that our train was to leave at 11:40 PM, but it turned out it was 9:40 PM; we were stupid about reading military time (21:40).  I unfortunately bought the last ticket out of Edinburgh's Waverly station, so the boys had to walk to the next stop, about a 30 minute walk west. They got lost, and ending up almost running. They got to the station, and Josh didn't have his confirmation number and couldn't get a ticket, but a kind porter took pity on them and gave him a handwritten note in the place of a ticket.  I had the same issues at Waverly, but luckily it was a big enough station that the ticket windows were still open and they could just look up my number.
  The train ride passed quite quickly--hangman and such diverted our boredom. Around midnight, we arrived in Aberdeen on the eastern coast, where we had to get off. The train station was going to be closed all night, and although we had a train to catch at 6 in the morning, we could not stay there. No room at the inn. So we headed off into the rain, unsure of where to go.
  We managed to meet some uni kids on their way to a club, so we asked if we could come along, and they obliged.  We followed them to this really awful club with bad music and no one there, but it was a roof over our heads. When they closed at 3, a few of the kids offered to take us to his flat to hang out till we left.   I promptly fell asleep on the couch when I got there (as well as Devin), but Josh braved the wee hours to make sure we got up on time.  He also paid for the cab to take us to the train station when we got lost in the dark morning rain.  VIP of the weekend?  I have a picture of the guys at the train station that morning,  but I'll be nice and not post it, since we looked rather haggard.

  Caught the train and made it to Inverness.  Cute little town--not much going on though.  They have a castle--but its not even old!

Onward to Drumnadrochit though.  We took a double decker bus along the A82 (parallels Loch Ness). Its rather scary riding in the top in front. It kind of feels like a hovercraft, but since the driver manuevers that thing  like a small car, you feel like you might go careening into the loch at any moment. It even sputtered stop one time, waited for two minutes, heard the driver making a call detailing the problem, shuddered back to life and continued the journey.
 

 Drumnadrochit is a tiny town (hamlet) of about 200 people, right on the edge of Loch Ness about 20 minutes away from Inverness. While it is tiny, it has a booming and overwhelming tourist side, a disappointment. There are more craptastic clutter stores about the monster than need be.  But we booked some beds in an old farm house converted into a hostel, a bit away from the center of the city.  It was a nice place--they had a great coal fireplace in the small living room where we go to hang out in when the weather turned cold.  The lady who ran it told us all the things to avoid, and when to go to other things.

  The first thing we did was walk up to see a waterfall.  The walk was rather nice; the countryside is in full fall gear right now, but it was a gorgeous warm day. Lots of sheep farms.   The sheep in the foreground was renamed "Stubbs" by us--he literally did not have front legs, but managed to scoot around grazing anyhow.

 
  Cheeky little boy.

Then we walked back to town, the boys singing a capella the whole time.  The country needed that music.

Every road sign in Drumnadrochit is written in both Gaelic and English, as evidenced by Devin's apparent confusion.





A Hairy Coo!  A hairy highland cow.  This one was quite scary to me, but Josh said he was quite friendly.  I'll believe him.

The lady at the hostel told us to go to Urquhart Castle at night to avoid the 7 pound entrance fee. All we had to do was "hop a couple of fences.  Public Property in Scotland belongs to the people, so there are no trespassing laws."  So grabbed a pizza and some beers, and played a game of UNO in front of the fire with these German travellers before heading out.

  The walk wasn't bad, and when we rounded the corner, the entire castle was lit up along the edge of the loch.  Who pays for it to be lighted all night, I don't know, but it sure looked cool.  We had an entire castle ruin to explore by ourselves, and as the bats flew over our heads, we made silly shadows on the wall.

The next morning we walked to the loch.
Its quite a nice lake--huge actually, but rather skinny.

We did not see the monster--unless you count the unusual specimen that the boys came across while on our journey back to town.  Should they call National Geographic, or maybe just National Enquirer?

It was a fun trip--good to get out of the city, see some new places, have a few adventures.
 May there be more!

HO!  So I just found out that Scottish people say the word skeletal "skeh-LEE-tal".  Isn't that strange?

  This is my "living room" Its attached to the kitchen in a pinched L-shape. The walls are very tall, and the lighting is terrible. There is nothing on the wall except for an Art Garfunkel record and a pop art poster of Marmite.  Worst of all though, is that this entire room DOES NOT HAVE A WINDOW. I know--my life will end. But honestly, its such a depressing place without a window that we never are in here except to cook.  Why couldn't they just give us a bit of natural light?

And here are some lovely pictures of my flat.  Sorry its a bit blurry. That is the fridge on top, and the freezer on bottom. There is an awkward 2/3 to 1/3 combo, with the refrigerator sadly falling into the 1/3 category. That means we have a mini room fridge (It is exactly the same size as some kids have back home) for 4 people. Our freezer is empty, although they would like us to fill it.  There is an entire grocery store chain here called Farm Foods that only sells frozen food. Nothing farmy about it.  People like their frozen pizza, but luckily none of my roommates are in that category.

And this is my stove.  Its tiny, as shown by the regular sized pots there.  Those are soup pots, and a standard frying pan.  Electric pad things, with terrible heat control.  The oven is on the bottom, and fits a small cookie sheet long ways. I swear that the temperature on it does not go past 350 F, which is not that handy. The top drawer is supposed to be a broiler, but does not work.


**Pinkie**
Yes, I have seen Scotties here.  People do have them.  But what I've perhaps seen more are West Highlands Whites.  They are so damn cute for a small dog. 

Field Day

This weekend I had the pleasure (read: I had to get up at 8 to go to school on a weekend) of getting to do my first field work as a geology student. We were to map Holyrood Park, a big natural park in the middle of the city. It is home to the Holyrood Palace (where royalty stay. The Queen last came in last August) and Arthur's Seat, a bid peak over-looking the city that is the reminant of an ancient volcanoe 40x its size.

We went out the first day with a group under the tutelage of a teacher, who taught us to map. Measured dips, strikes, dip angle, location; identified rock types, intrusions, and fault scars; created our own intrepretation of how this bit of land formed. Note on the latter part--geology and geography employ a good deal of imagination. Because most of what we study is underground (think the iceberg rule: the part that you see is only 10% of the total iceberg) and most is completely eroded, leaving giant (hundreds of thousands to millions of years) gaps, you really must be creative in your prediction to how the landscape formed. Sometimes you can get a little ahead of yourself--"...and then giant hippopotami came and trampled the ground until it was compacted, and then a volcano erupted and lava flowed into a lake where it instantly cooled and was shot back by shear force to the valley that the hippos created and that's what we're looking at..." Anyways, you have to think a little fantastically sometimes.
But the wind was crazy on Saturday. Almost blew me over several times. If you were walking and a gust came up, it would make your feet stumble and you would look like you were walking drunk. It was damn cold too, but really, really pretty. A very Scottish day--crisp and stark and beautiul.
       We had to go back on Sunday (today) to finish up, and this time we were just in pairs. My partner was this guy born and raised in and around Edinburgh named Scott. It wasn't nearly as windy today, but still cold, and my hands got so cold I couldn't hold a pencil anymore. I must invest in some gloves (mitts). And then we accidentally trekked through a bog (it looked just like the long grassland that we were walking around in) and got my feet soaked up up to mid-calf. That was 10:00 in the morning, and we got done at 4:00. So my feet were really cold too.
     But we managed to go to a pub for lunch to watch the football match that was on. It was my partner's favorite team, and they were playing their biggest rivals. Rangers v. Celtics. Both Glasgow teams, but with a rivalry that goes back centuries. They even manage to bring religion into it; Rangers are protestant, and wave posters of the Queen up at games; Celtics of course are Catholic. But it was a good game--very very brutal. Some guy even had a big gash in his temple and no one blinked an eye.
              Then after we finished mapping, I got to go see another game in the student union. This one was Chelsea v. Liverpool, and Chelsea is my mate Malcolm's team. Its good to watch the game with someone who knows what's happening and will stand up shouting and cheering when a goal is scored.
But raining again now. I suspect you'll see that written here a lot. Oh yeah--that picture up there is of St. Anthony's Chapel ruins at the park. Built no later than 1400. The other picture is some of the rocks that we were mapping. Very green.  That whole formation is old lava that has protruded up.  This bottom one is to show you how close the park is to the city.  Its our Central Park.  (that picture has snow!  it was not snowing)

-Cheers

The Fall

While there aren't enough trees here for the leaves to be changing color, there is a definite feeling of autumn in the air. The wind blows (wind=fall, that's what the Santa Ana's taught me), the crispness is there. Best felt when walking through the kirkyards (graveyards).  There is quite a famous one close to me, Greyfriar's Kirkyard, final resting place of many a Edinburger (just joking.  There's not a name for the people of Edinburgh. They're just Scottish).  There are graves as old as 1580, and the place is definitely haunted.  In fact, as I was walking through, I overheard a ghost tour group leader say that the original kirkyard was 15ft lower than today, and the accumulation of over 5000 80,000!!!! bodies made the elevation artificially rise.  Gross. But its really cool too.  Walking along those paths though, and you can feel the changing of the season.  The crunchy leaves skitter across the pathway and your feet.  There is a funny barely-audible howling that is always present in the old town section, the way the wind is forced through the narrow streets; it seems to pick up the laments of the ancient cobblestones and give a voice to them.
  But the arrival of fall is met by my frustration with all the food that I'm going to miss.  Acorn Squashes dressed in butter and spices, roasted root vegetables (parsnips! and sweet potatoes especially), whole roasted chickens that give you enough meat for another meal, baked fish with a creamy risotto on the side, apple cobbler, apple pie, apple cider, fresh apples that snap with tartness, crusty bread dipped into soup, spiced lamb kebabs with a cool yoghurt sauce (that's how they spell it here), rice pilaf, pumpkin enchiladas, and again, apple crisp, this time served with vanilla bean ice cream and a hot tea after.  That's what I would eat if I could.  And some candy corn, because even though they really aren't that tasty, I know someone who is obsessed with them...

Here's what I'm eating instead.  But I still love my tomato soup.  It was a good lunch.

Also, I made some salsa to educate my poor friends about the delicious combination of tomatoes and peppers.  Voila. Don't worry: I wasn't cooking it--I just didn't have a bowl big enough.

Ceilidhs

Alright--more info on the Scottish traditional dance.  Pronounced "kay-lee", this is a rather popular social group dance that is similar to the English contra.  I managed to go accidentally to a formal one, where all the guys (or at least all the returning guys) were in kilts and the girls were in dresses or skirts.  I happened to be wearing a dress, and it helped  to keep my movement light and easy. Perhaps this is why kilts were worn?  No, I think it was just for airflow. 

  Anyways, it was held in the grand McEwan Hall, wooden floors, frescoes and a giant domed ceiling.  The live band was something that had a name and was advertised, but I don't remember it now.  The first dance I did was the one that is shown in the video (link below).  The second dance, the last one, was a line double helix ladder of sorts.  You dance with only your partner; he swings you around on one arm, tosses you to the waiting line of people standing shoulder to shoulder, you swing around with a person, they toss you to the middle, where you grab your partner again.  You kind of hook down the line like the monkeys from a barrel of monkeys. I guess the best way I could describe it is I felt like a Jacob's Ladder toy of sorts.  Great fun, tons of energy and exertion, and as I always like to do things--best when done barefoot.

  The ending of the ceilidh was the giant circle everyone formed by holding hands. The band strikes up "Auld Lang Syne" , and everyone starts swinging your hands.  At the second chorus, everyone runs forward, tightening the circle. You run back and forward, matching the tempo of the music that keeps increasing its speed.  It ends when everyone is going too fast and is laughing. 

  Quite interesting.  I'm really glad I did it. They are held on campus through various societies every time there is an occasion (during fresher's week there were probably 5).  Oh yeah, and you don't need to know how to do it because there is an announcer, a caller, who calls out the dances and what to do.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=II9DOsmG4uA&feature=related