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Published: July 23rd 2008
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I'm back now, but I still have a few entries to publish. I wrote this entry about two months ago, so if the text indicates that I'm still in England, that's why.
A year ago, when my plans to spend a year in England were finalized, my good friend Megan promised that she would visit me while I was abroad. We decided she should come over during my reading week and travel with me through Scotland. We kept up these plans for a long time, until around the end of April, when she suddenly bailed on me. I was heartbroken, and this entry is meant to serve as a thorn in her spine, making her regret forsaking me. Also, Megan, after you decided not to come visit I ate this fancy chocolate bar I had bought for you in Malaga out of spite. SO TAKE THAT.
I put off going to Scotland for a long time, even though it's really nearby, because Scotland has crappy weather for most of the year. I hate walking around outside when it's cold and wet, so I bided my time and waited for the return of spring before heading north. This was
a good plan, as even though I was in Scotland during the end of May the weather was still fairly chilly and even downright cold at times. The scenery left nothing lacking, though. Scotland is SO green and lush! During both of my days of travel I crossed the Cairngorm Mountains. They were rugged and occasionally snowy and wonderful to see rushing by from my window.
Speaking of trains, my first day of travel, due to a plethora of train cancellations and delays, ended up being pretty long. I was standing at the bus stop on campus at 9:00 in the morning and didn't arrive at Inverness until 8:45 that night. LAME!
Inverness is a very cute, snug little city. It's got its share of old buildings and nice views of nearby hills. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the city itself but while I was there I enjoyed:
1) Having lunch at and poking around in Leakey's bookstore. Leakey's is this really cute little bookstore ala Beauty and the Beast that also sells neat antique prints and maps and has a cafe upstairs. On my first full day in town I had coffee and
blueberry cake with cream cheese icing here and then drooled over all the neat prints I couldn't afford to buy. The cake was homemade and delicious (I LOVE cream cheese icing), and one of the best things about Scotland is that if you order coffee there, they don't bring out one cup, they bring out a whole cafetiere. I love coffee, so that's good news for me.
After hanging out in Leakey's I embarked on a boat tour of nearby Loch Ness. I had a variety of cruises to chose from but a meagre wallet with which to pay for my cruise so I picked the cheapest one, a 3 hour ordeal that cut out the castle tour that most people go on and restricted my activities to sitting on a boat and viewing the scenery. After the first hour and a half I had kind of had my fill, but it was relaxing. During the first half of the excursion an older couple started talking to me about their adventures in the United States (they'd been to Branson and Arkansas! Crazy!) and books. The wife studies handwriting and is something of an authority on manuscript authenticity. She firmly
believes that the works of Shakespeare were not written by Shakespeare but by Sir Francis Bacon. She said she once wrote an article about this for an English paper, and she got a lot of angry calls from Stratford-upon-Avon asking if she was trying to put them all out of jobs. Personally, I do not care who really wrote the works of Shakespeare. Isn't that kind of beside the point? But, she gave me her card and a pen with her info on it. That was nice of her. Otherwise, no monsters were seen (wah wah waaaaaah).
Once I was back in Inverness I walked around town a bit more and then headed to a pub that I knew sold relatively inexpensive haggis. I felt really awkward at this pub b/c 1) I guess it's weird to go out to eat alone? Personally, I think this is stupid b/c I like eating out whether or not I'm with other people and especially when I'm travelling I'm not going to let my solo status keep me from trying local delicacies, you know and 2) I felt like a totally lame tourist for ordering the stereotypical Scottish meal. The bar lady
was really nice, though, and that made me feel more comfortable. Thankfully, I did not look up the ingredients of haggis before my trip to Scotland, but I knew from my past experiences at the Arkansas Scottish Festival that haggis has something to do with sheep's stomach. The stomach part was enough to make me really reluctant to dig into my steaming scoops of haggis, but I know I couldn't have stomached it (haha) if I had known what else constituted those browns lumps. After dinner I talked to Corbin on the phone for awhile, and I made him wikipedia haggis. It seems that haggis is made from the chopped up lungs, heart, and liver of a sheep, mixed with oats and spices and then boiled in sheep stomach. MMMMMM. Often, as in the case of my experience, haggis is served with "neeps" (turnips) and "tatties" (potatoes). Between the haggis and these hearty vegetables, this proved to be a very filling and strangely appetizing meal. I would recommend that other people try haggis, but it's not something I would want to eat every day.
That night I planned to go to bed early, but I got drawn into conversation
with my roommates. They were a couple, the guy from the Czech Republic and the lady from Hungary, who are currently working in the middle of nowhere (according to them), or in other words, the middle of the more rural parts of Scotland. I told the Hungarian lady how much I liked Budapest and how I have Hungarian relatives, and that pleased her. I also flaunted my extensive knowledge of magyar. In case you don't know, i can say "thank you" and "sour cherry" in magyar. Impressive, I know. They told me how times are still tough in Eastern Europe. I know a lot of Americans are all worked up about this recession business, but I doubt things will get as bad as they are in poor Hungary. Both of them were very sweet and charming and spoke very good English. The lady told me that she doesn't know much about the different cities of the U.S., but she knows about Manhattan because of "the sex of the city." The guy told me that he had never met an American before and that talking with me was like being in a movie (b/c everybody watches American tv and movies). Ha.
In case I haven't told you before or if you've forgotten, you should know (especially if I ever spend the night at your house) that I have a tendency to scream in my sleep when staying over at unfamiliar places. This habit started in eighth grade when I spent my first night in my attic bedroom back home. My best friend, Sarah, was staying over, and when we went to sleep she insisted on sleeping on the floor in front of the window even though I warned her that she was going to get cold in the middle of the night. Well, middle of the night rolls around, she's cold, wakes up and walks over to my bed to steal a blanket. I wake up and can't place where I am AND see some alienish silhouette staggering towards me and totally flip out and start screaming. That's only the first in a series of many screaming incidences, the last of which occured while in Inverness. When the nice eastern Europeans and I decided to go to sleep I thought about warning them of my screaming habit but decided against it. Unfortunately, two hours later we were all awoken by
my terrified cries and I had to lamely explain "oh, sorry....I just get startled sometimes...". We all had a good laugh in the morning.
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