Industrial tourist? Or do I live here?

I've been thinking about this post for the past month and have written in over and over in my head, and at least five times on paper. Everyday I discover something new and though it may be the slightest new perspective, I feel like it renders my previous musings completely outdated. So here is my latest version I just wrote tonight:

Since I've been here, I have been struggling with the notion of industrial tourism. I don't want to be one of those people, as Edward Abbey characterized (and I wish I could quote but I don't have the book with me) in Desert Solitaire, that drive around in their box of a car, faces glued to the window, "seeing" all the beautiful scenery and other such wonders of the world. I want to get out and really see things. Take more time in one spot, travel less, and experience things. Yet there is a part of me that keeps nagging at my adrenaline, trying to convince me that I should always be moving, always occupied, always socializing, always traveling, sightseeing as much as I can, never having a dull moment . . . but that is unrealistic. Perhaps if I had more money I could do so, but I don't; and money is that other obnoxious villain that incessantly creeps in my shadow while I am here (and when I am at home).

Four and a half months is too short. It takes time to settle in to a place, figure out where things are, meet the right people, establish relationships; you can't force bonding or memories. There is too much to see here -too much that I want to see here. I want to say I have seen Stonehenge with my own eyes, visited all the castles in Aberdeenshire, and stood on the northernmost point of Scotland in the Shetlands. I want to take advantage of being on this side of the Atlantic (because who knows when or if that will happen again), but I don't want to do it thinking I am ticking things off a list.

I am on my spring break right now -three weeks of no classes (this school system is ridiculous!). A few of my international friends are doing what I would call a power-trip of Europe. Cramming in all the cities and countries they can. This seemed a little much for me, and since I had hoped to do so before I left America, I am going to visit my Gustavus friends Raelene and Lauren where they are studying. Tonight though, I met another American girl who is also backpacking across Europe, and the way she described it made me remember how much I used to want to do that. But, this was the first time I really had that feeling and it really is not a regret. I am waaayyyy excited about my adventure plans. And very excited about the last stretch of time in Scotland that awaits me when I come back.

So, if you are curious, here are my plans:
Sunday the 29th I fly to Dublin to visit my friend and former roommate Raelene. I am sleeping on her floor until Wednesday the 1st when I fly to Nantes to stay with Lauren. On Saturday April 4th we take the train to Avignon with four of her friends for a bike trip across Provence. Then we end up in Nice on Wednesday the 8th, I think, and spend the next few days on the beach of the French Riviera. On the night of Friday the 10th I fly back to Dublin to spend Easter with Raelene. On Monday the 13th I fly back to Aberdeen to miss the first day of my week-long forestry class. Oh well. Tuesday the 14th through Friday the 17th I am in my forestry class traveling around forests of Northern Scotland. I think we are based out of Inverness. Saturday the 18th I wake up in Aberdeen and that day and Sunday the 19th I spend at CUBE –a Frisbee tournament on a beach a short drive north of Aberdeen. On Monday the 20th I sleep and start thinking about the essays I have due that week and the next and try to remember to balance my industrial tourism and life that I just wrote about in a very short eight weeks.

Pretty packed after all (try adding two or three more countries!). I am so pumped. :)
Just hope I packed the right stuff -and not more or less than I need! (Yeah right.)

Catch you all later-
Karen

P.S. Far more to say about this subject than what I wrote. Life is amazingingly huge. :)

I am sitting in the hub, the university's student union more or less, and I just read Raelene's blog.

She was commenting on the clothing here and why it bothered her: because it is gendered. This is so true. Girls trip around in heels and skirts all the time and there are very few hoodies and no sweats. The fashion is very material; perhaps that has to do with the weather, as I have noticed more flowery and bohemian clothing in stores, but I haven't seen anyone wearing any yet.

I had to go shopping in the city centre today because I needed a cardigan (found, after I combed the the racks in just about every store, looking at every dumb cut and atrocious color), still need a purse/bag, and a swimsuit for my spring break traveling. Dear god I hate shopping.

I was so annoyed with my fruitlessness, my need to be thrifty, and with all the older ladies shopping for things they probably don't need, that I haven't been able to calm down yet. Grrrrr!

I do enjoy looking nice and wearing colored tights are fun, but not all the time! I want to wear ripped jeans and feel like a slob!

I also just got a cold the other day, just in time for spring break traveling, lovely . . .

BIKE POWER!

I have a bike!!!!!!!

I saw a flyer at uni today advertising a place called Bike Fit nearby campus that collects donated bikes, sells bikes at cheap rates, and fixes bikes, it had an address on the flyer so after my last class I google mapped it and walked up there. It is operated out of a charity and I walked in, picked out a bike for £40 and a lock for £10, ran back to Hillhead to grab cash I had in my room and grab my friend Hege, ran back to the place all within 45 minutes, she picked one out, we paid, and tada! we have mobility! I am going to find a helmet at a standard bike shop tomorrow.

I am so incredibly happy that I finally have a bike. It is too bad I could not have found one sooner, but this place opened within the last week, I believe, and no where else had cheap enough bikes besides the university workshop, which never had a bike available to rent when I went in there.

Bikes here have the back break on the left handlebar not the right. Probably related to the fact that they drive on the wrong side of the road. Weirdos.

I am so thrilled!!!!!

Borders Country Can Bury My Heart

I have a lovely friend named Hege, from Norway, who also has lovely friends who have made the past two weekend trips wonderfully fun. This time our second pair were Heidi from France and Ingvild from Norway. The trip was with the International Society and the destination Borders Country, a.k.a that place where Scotland and England seamlessly blend.

Traveling with the International Society is an adventure in itself. One spends hours on a tour bus getting cramps, munching on snacks, and watching one or two obligatory awful movies (this time Ants and The Mask). That is perhaps the negative side. The positive side is all the beautiful scenery out the window and the unique circumstances, such as the student leader who couldn't string words together in a full sentence and giggled or "ummed" every four words (poor girl, we made fun of her so much, but she was American, mind you, so it was no second language barrier) and didn't know where we were going so our hour ride to the hostel from our last destination lasted three hours when we got lost or the Germans singing Backstreet Boys songs right behind us.

The time not spent on the bus was spent exploring Linlithogow Palace, ruins of the Stuart family castle where Mary Queen of Scots was born; Rosslyn Chapel, the chapel made famous by the Davinci Code, a place of carved wonders, serious restoration work, jealous masons and apprentices, and rumoured (according to our top notch tour guide) to be the final resting place of the Holy Grail, the Ark of the Covenant, the mummified head of God, and Elvis; the town of Jedburgh (we missed entrance to the Abbey by about ten minutes); Vindolanda, highly excavated and archealogically rich ruins of a Roman fort along Hadrian's Wall; Hadrian's Wall (AMAZING); Melrose Abbey, built in 1136 A.D. for some Augustinian monks, and where three embalmed hearts have been found, one of which is honestly believed to be the heart of Robert the Bruce; and, inbetween all that, rushing through a supermarket where we were instructed to buy all our meals for the weekend because no one knew if we were going to have access to food for the next 24-some hours, as we were of course so far away (or back in time) from civilization we may have starved.

Hadrian's Wall, which was by far the highlight of the trip, was breathtaking. Due to a poorly planned, jam-packed two days of sightseeing, we only had half an hour to climb the craggy hill to scale the ancient wall that in it's time reached across the island from the North Sea in the East to the Irish Sea in the West, separating Roman Britannia from the barbarous north for the four centuries that all roads (in Britain) led to Rome.

I would go back here, to the Wall and to the region, in an instant. When the bus was winding through the hills -passing fields of sheep, dense forests, brooks, small content towns- all I could think about was how I wanted to get out of the bus and just run from summit to summit and found I had a reknewed desire to learn how to ride horses and bury my head in stories of Avalon and Lord of the Rings. I curbed my lust for this beautiful country by buying a Historical Site map of Ancient Britain which I will spend the rest of the semester pouring over until I have it memorized.

Pictures to come soon, but photography will very honestly never be able to capture the vastness of the sky, movement of the hills, or force of the wind from that mystical, invigorating country.

-Karen

Stirling and a Ceilidh

Saturday I went on a day trip with the international society to the town of Stirling, known as the "gateway to Scotland". Stirling is where the Wallace monument was built in the late 1800s to commemorate the national hero William Wallace. (Familiar with Braveheart?) I don't think I have ever experienced more wind than I did that day. There was a small child at the top of the monument and I was afraid he was going to be blown off the tower. We also toured the castle, which was quite cool as castles go, but again the wind was so strong in some places it was all I could to to not be blown off the wall. Since I went with the international society it was cheaper and we just bused out early in the morning and made it back in the evening which meant we were limited on time, so I didn't get to walk around the town much.

That night I went to my first ceilidh (I kept missing the others!). A ceilidh is a traditional Scottish dance. Dress was very casual, girls were in trousers or skirts, and men were in trousers or kilts, depending on how dressed up one wanted to get. The band was called Clachan Yell (you can find them on MySpace) and the lead would give instructions on the routine before each song. He was very difficult to understand though, and I mostly just had to watch the people near the stage to figure out what to do. Most of the dances were done in groups of four couples and was like square dancing. I ending up being in groups with a lot of fellow foreigners who didn't quite get the steps right, but no one cared and we just danced the best we could. It was so much fun -I can't wait to go to the next one. :)

Still in School

I think this week I finally realized I am still in school even if I am in a different country.

I am very tired of being in school.

Senior-itis definitley has its hold on me and all the scary thoughts about the "real world" keep sneaking into my mind. I kind of wish I had another senior here with me to commiserate with, but most of the people I know are younger; if American are juniors, if Scottish or otherwise international are first-years or have some amount of school ahead of them, or are post-grad and pretty serious about their work (don't see these people that often).
We definitely went over how to cite things and what elements one might want to include in an introduction of a paper for forty-five minutes in my tutorial yesterday. I wanted to scream. Other than that classes are good though. Currently on the assignment list for English is Robinson Crusoe, which I have read before, but that was about eight years ago and all I remember is that he raised sheep on the island (if that is even true) so it's basically like I haven't read it.

The change of pace was nice, I like being busy and kept to a schedule, and all the open time on my hands here was getting to me. I am a little frustrated that every society seems to meet the same night of the week at the same time. Grrr.

Daffodils are blooming all over the place. It is very pretty and spring is definitely in the air. It doesn't rain as much as I thought it would. (Now it will pour for the next week just because I said that.)

What else can I say? My life is that of a student.

More later-
Karen

Wow. That was a ridiculously long post. Summary: Edinburgh is a very cool place.

Trip to Edinburgh: A Summary

Last weekend I made it in to Edinburgh. After a rather uneventful weekend previous, I was itching to get out of Aberdeen and have an adventure. I set out with just one companion, another American student named Anna, early on Saturday morning. The train may have been passing through beautiful countryside but I was oblivious to this as I had a difficult time keeping my eyes open to marvel at it.
Immediately upon emerging from the depths of the train station onto the streets of Edinburgh I noticed a difference from Aberdeen. Most obvious was the color of the city: not grey. Secondly, more tourists. Thirdly, the vibe and atmosphere was more welcoming. Edinburgh, a bigger city and the capitol of Scotland, has more hustle and bustle and more things to do and see.
We started off the day by hiking to the top of Arthur's Seat(251m/823ft), an extinct volcano in the middle of Holyrood Park, which has been a royal park since the twelfth century (according to my handy travel guide). It was windy, gorgeous, and populated with many people on walks with their dogs (may have made me imagine how much fun mine would have running from hill to hill :) ). Standing at the top, all (or enough) of Edinburgh was laid out before us: the tightly packed buildings, chapel spires, random monuments, castle, and hazy blue bay of the North Sea. Most remarkable was not what could be seen but what could be heard; the notes of a bagpipe drifted all the way up from the piper's post on High Street: men and boys in tartan took shifts playing the pipes all day from a central location and you could hear him from the most unexpected places. Holyrood Park could have easily entertained me for the rest of the day, but we headed back down to tour the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the residence of the Queen when she is in Scotland and the former home of the infamous Mary Queen of Scots. Synopsis: rich royal people in olden times make pretty houses. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but I can assure you it was very ornate and if you ever go see any palace it is probably comparable in beauty and quality, just substitute era and style. But extremely cool to say I have been there and worth the visit.
We took a winding, scenic route back to our hostel and rested briefly before seeking out a place to eat. Our first lead happened to have stopped serving food (no bar menu or drunken munchies here- places stop serving food by 6 or 7 at night) so we wandered the streets with no particular destination in mind, and stumbled upon the Elephant House, the cafe where JK Rowling wrote a considerable amount of chapters of Harry Potter, including the very first lines she ever wrote! So of course we ate there, and both of us tried Haggis for the very first time. Anna said it tasted like some kind of Polish sausage she was used to eating; I am less culinarily imaginative and can only offer the meager description that tasted like some kind of spiced meat and say that I would definitely eat it again.
I was insistent on finding a place that had good folk music and no cover charge, so we went to Sandy Bell's, a very small pub with a demographic of older locals. Music didn't officially start for an hour after we got there, but one of the musicians was playing around on his fiddle for a few of his friends. I milked a malt whiskey and a couple bottles of cider (so delicious) both very Scottish drinks of choice. We met up with an acquaintance there and on our way back to the hostel he took us in to the University of Edinburgh student union . . . four bars, a cafe, a nightclub, goodness knows what else, but Edinburgh sure is a big and lively school.
Sunday we went to a service in St. Giles Cathedral . . . the service wasn't much to capture my attention but luckily I have a fetish for stained glass. We walked the Royal Mile, stopped in maybe 7 different stores that all sold the same touristy thing, including tartans, of which I bought no more than postcards as the exchange rate is a sly little bastard.
We exhausted Edinburgh Castle, which was quite fascinating as castles often are, full of tourists; artifacts, including the stone of destiny (a rock as old as any other, only they lugged this one around so Kings could ceremonially sit on it to be crowned King of Scotland -if I sound a little dry humoured here, yes, but I do think ceremonial rocks are cool!), the crown jewels (ridiculously sparkly), sceptre, and sword; National War Memorial (more cool stained glass); and museums of history and war. Edinburgh Castle also still functions as a base for something military I believe.
Annnd besides a brief jaunt to Greyfriar's Kirk, an old cemetery where famous people are buried, we headed back to the train station and thus ended our full weekend in Edinburgh.
If I told you more I will have no stories to tell in person. But I will end with saying that the city of Edinburgh had an atmosphere more to my taste than Aberdeen and if I had more time or money I would love to go back and explore . . .