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LONDON/GLASGOW Day 91
I got off the ferry last night and in to London at about 10:30pm. I attempted to get on to the night train to Glasgow but it had been fully booked since first in the morning. So I had to hold up in London for the night and wait until the morning in order to make moves to the Scottish North. I was hoping to be able to spend maybe a day or two in London before heading up to Glasgow. But with losing so many days I would rather go straight up to Scotland where I haven't seen as much of the country than spend more time in London, and England, when I have visited these places twice already. So it was off to Scotland the very next morning.
I made it on to the first train and arrived easily in Glasgow. It is nice to have things seem back to normal. The train wasn’t over crowded and there wasn’t constant chatter and whinging about the volcano disruption. I was able to escape the past few days entirely. I quickly found my hostel and headed out for some touring about before I lost the
day light hours. It is really strange to see all the signs and shops that are familiar to me in Dublin here. It is like almost being back in Dublin but not, causing me to miss it even more. Even more entertaining is the fact that for over three months now I have been living in countries that do not have English as its first language. This has meant that my senses were constantly being misguided. My eyes would scan signs and my ears would scan words for hints of English and there would not often be any. So I guess after so much time my eyes and ears have given up and process these things without expectation of understanding there meaning so that they are mere blurs or hums. But since I have arrived in the UK my senses have been shocked back into work. My eyes would glean signs without expecting to be able to get any information out of them but suddenly it is on overload because I can comprehend all the words listed. So previously I would focus on images to comprehend things now sounds and words do the trick. I don’t know, it is just
a really strange process to go through.
So I walked about Glasgow and visited the Cathedral and Necropolis. I know it seems strange to go to cemeteries but I do really like visiting them. I find them very peaceful. The Necropolis is a really interesting cemetery. It is nestled in to a hill and the monuments are interesting. There was one newer grave stone that had a very simple statement written on it with no name or anything identifying, “In memory of Sundays 1977 - 1989”. It is a really unique monument, which I think is a really decent way to remember someone. It reminds me of the monument in Paris cemetery for Ricardo, which I will never forget. These monuments tell you much more about that person than the ones that say the same thing as all the others. Anyways, I walked around the Necropolis for a while.
There was another monument in memory of a tragic practice that occurred in Britain that I had never heard about previously. Apparently, up until the late 1960’s Britain had the practice of exporting children to their colonies around the world. Many of these children were from orphanages but a
large percentage were not at all. They were children with parents and relatives who were shipped over seas to populate British colonies with Wasps. These children and their families were never told where they were from or where they went, in the families’ case. It wasn’t until the last 40 years that these children (now much older) and their following generations have tried to look for the family links in the UK. A very strange and sad policy to have in place.
I continued my walk around town looking at all the clothing shops and then made my way back to the grocery store and hostel for dinner. In the hostel I met my roommates and we stayed up chatting for a few hours before heading off to bed. It is really funny that when you meet people as you travel you always ask first, where are you from, and maybe if you see each other again or hang out for a while you will think to ask a name but generally you categorize people with their country or city. So my roommates were Dusseldorf and Taiwan and I was Toronto. It is funny that in any other situation
you would ask someone’s name upon meeting them but in backpackers world what matters is where you’re from, where you have been, and where you’re going.
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Laurie
non-member comment
It's a pitty you never managed to visit the rest of Scotland. Each city is different in its own way but head North of there up the west coast and you will see the most amazing landscapes.