I’m sitting at the end of a five & 1/2 minute hallway.
Unknown Highland Ruins
Actually it’s only about a minute long, but the musically obsessed / literati out there will appreciate the reference to a song and a book written respectively by a sister / brother duo. I got a good four hours of sleep last night, then my good friend Insomnia dusted the sand from my eyes, I eventually got bored, showered, and grabbed my laptop and headed outside so I wouldn’t borrow my travel mates. I’m now sitting in the hallway outside our room (room #5 at the Bazpacker’s hostel) taking advantage of the free time to catch up with you, dear reader.
I’m not going to spend to much time on Day 2. I want to get to the next, Day 3, because it was awesome. That should hint to you that I’m at the beginning of Day 4.
When I left you last time, Insomnia and I were hanging out in the common room and the whereabouts of my travel companions were unknown. I wish I could tell you they were on a great adventure: fighting soccer hooligans, trapped in The City Below, walking with ghosts, carousing, fucking, haunting a graveyard, or even pulling the comely inhabitants of Scotland. They were none of these things. At six in the morning when I left the library of Castle Rock Hostel, I passed through the common room and they were there, sober as dowagers, chatting away. They swore they hadn’t moved all night and Axel had only recently left them. I don’t know how I could have slipped past without running into them, but I had. Good thing too, Day 1 wouldn’t have written itself.
So my insomnia worked out for me then, we were all sleepless. It’s not as welcome now, they’re sleeping like babes, and I shall be tired today.
Anyway, we met up. I tried to get another half hour of sleep and failed; Cameron cleaned up and Adam read. We regrouped and headed into the Edinburgh morning. It was beautiful. We’ve been damn lucky with the weather.
Cameron & Adam, CityLink bus station, Edinburgh
We found the bus station with oodles of time. We didn’t find our tickets. More properly our ticket numbers — all you need to ride with Megabus. We hunted for wifi and breakfast. We found wifi at McDonald’s, and they found breakfast there too. I had a pemmican bar. I think I won that round.
With wifi we had our ticket numbers and went back to the bus terminal. The bus ran late but we met and chatted with another American expatriate. His name was Jay, he played American Football for the University of Edinburgh while pursuing his graduate degree in creative writing. Nice guy. He’d personally met a (grammar) hero of mine, Geoffrey Pullum. Jay said Pullum was a brilliant but intimidating and snarky professor. I wasn’t surprised.
Taken from the window
On the bus we slept. I slept a little they slept a lot. I got some beautiful photos of the Highlands out the window.
We alighted in Inverness stumbled groggily to our hostel and then did stuff. OK! OK! I’m tired! I’ll try to be more descriptive than that. We at at the Castle Tavern, which is right next to the Hostel. Adam and I each had the cod and loved it. Cameron had a vegetable panino and hated it. We all drank scotch (my notes are in the room, I’ll have to remember to add them. I’m too lazy to add them. Ask me if you’re interested in my opinions on scotch.)
Cameron & Scotch
After that we went and checked out Inverness Castle. Although the site has been home to castles since 1057 — nearly a thousand-effing-years! — the current castle was built in 1837. It’s home to the Sheriff Court of Inverness and as such is not open to the public. But we walked about outside it. It was good.
I have to be honest, this day is a blur. Sleeplessness is not good for one’s memory. We did have a beautiful walk along the banks and over the bridges of the river Ness.
Shut up and eat your muffin
And the quote of the day was: “Why are you sitting on my chest?” “Shut up! It’s time for your muffin.”
Day 3 will be a much more epic post, I promise. For now, I’m waking up the troops so we can be on our way. I’m doing it with this song (is that cruel?)
It’s Day 2 right now, 5:45 pm, and the boys are both snoring. None of us slept last night, and today’s bus ride just didn’t offer enough hours to fully rest us. I think they both need it, though.
Day 1 started in a mixed fashion. Friday was a day of highs and lows, and I wasn’t quite back to normal by Saturday. I packed and unpacked half a dozen times before finally giving up and accepting that I would survive, regardless. I panicked about lack of plans, got distracted, panicked a bit again. I printed things and panicked again.
I read recently that perfectionists perform worse than non-perfectionists. They stress so much about getting something “right” that they don’t make all the wrong attempts that help them learn. They turn things in late because they don’t want to turn in an inferior version. Their writing is poor because they never get enough practice writing the lousy versions. I don’t self-identify as a perfectionist, but there is certainly an element of anxiety over making sure I make the best decision and the perfect plan and a deep fear over what happens if I get it wrong. Friday I finally admitted that this trip doesn’t need to have the best of each city. It needs to be nice. We need to have fun. We need to not spend our entire time reading in hostels. But we don’t need to do everything and see everything and feel guilty for downtime.
Adam and I timed our visit quite well. A run by Tesco for red pepper hummus, sourdough bread, crisps and Maltesers still allowed us to be among the first on the bus. A moment of awkward eye contact with FF as the bus drove away took me back to that obnoxious self-absorption about boys that I really need to stop indulging myself in, but Adam proved a wonderfully distracting companion for the rest of the trip.
The trip passed uneventfully, but with a great deal of cooing over baby animals on farms we drove by. We successfully navigated our way to the hostel, despite the fact that my entire conception of Edinburgh is based on the false idea that the castle is North of Princes Street. After checking in and dropping our stuff off in the room Gregory and I were sharing (Only one bed? Good thing it’s large), Adam and I wandered. One of our first discoveries, aside from some awesome scaffolding, was that my sense of direction is dire in Edinburgh. I successfully chose the least interesting direction every time I decided which way to turn. Eventually we turned around and started to explore a more interesting section. We discovered lots of old book stores, a few vintage clothes shop, and a place that sells yarn and tea. (I think I found heaven). After searching for a few of the spots Adam remembered from his last trip here, we made our way back toward the hostel. We were stopped along the way by a street performer whose banter was nearly matched by his ability to swallow a 20″ sword, juggle machetes, and extinguish a flaming torch in his mouth. The last trick was made more impressive by the board of nails on his stomach and the 20stone man on top of the board. I was entertained, Adam was in absolute awe. I don’t think of myself as jaded, but watching his reaction made me realize just how much I was under-reacting to the performance. I did work – fairly successfully – to revive my childlike awe. (Not to be confused with the emotions of two of the actual children in the crowd who fully expected the performer to die, and told him so. Loudly)
Gregory’s arrival was joyous. He arrived, blue hair and all, a bit after five and immediately injected energy, silliness and a sense of purpose into the evening. We took off for dinner at the Black Bull, a pub which (despite lacking fish and chips) served a few great Cask Ales and some fairly tasty onion rings.
Walking to a pub that evening involved a great deal of scampering over scaffolding, a process of which I invariably approve. I’m sure Gregory and Adam are tired of hearing my excitement over converse, but I’m really enjoying having the freedom to climb again. My normal tendency to monkey and act like a 5 year old has been seriously impeded by the poor choices I made when bringing shoes to this country. I feel more me with the ability to climb things, and luckily I’m in good company.
By our second pub of the evening we’d picked up one more, Tufts student from Argentina named Axel. He looks disconcertingly similar to a neuroscience postdoc I knew in NY, though this is at least as much stylistic as bone structure per se. As Adam and I discussed matters of emotion and psychology, Axel and Gregory chatted away. I kept catching bits of talk of literature, much of which sounded quite interesting.
It’s been ages since I’d pulled a true all-nighter, and by 5:30 am I felt remarkably energized. While deeply disappointed to discover Gregory had successfully avoided us during the course of his simultaneous all-nighter (He snuck by us! Hiding! Not saying hello!) Even so he eventually admitted his wakefulness and joined Adam and I for a morning chat, marking the official transition to day two.
This is not a fact I was hoping to discover. Anyhoo, it’s four am, I have to get up in two hours to catch a Mega-Bus, and I figured I’d use the time to blog day 1. Fortunately, not all that much has happened, so this should be short.
My flight was technically KLM, but really Ghetto Delta. It was direct from Portland to Amsterdam, with a four hour layover before a transfer to Edinburgh. Normally I have no trouble sleeping on planes, but my insomnia had come back all last week and didn’t loose its grip just because I was shimmying across time zones.
I should confess to you, that for about a week now I’ve had a drowning, haunting feeling that something will go imminently wrong in my life. I rarely pay attention to such fanciful fears, so I assumed that when I hit the ground in the U.K. I would have a pint and the dreadful feeling would shed like a snake’s skin. I was wrong.
Anyway, I can’t complain about the flight. It was under-booked, so, luxury of luxuries, I had two seats alone together: window and isle. I’d requested “gluten free” meals, which turned out to consist almost entirely of rice (which I didn’t eat, but I came prepared: more on that later). The night was long and I flew through it. I tossed and turned. I tried every imaginable position. I didn’t sleep a wink. I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows; pt 1 and later The Kings Speech. I remember them both well, but it’s a flavorless, oatmeal kind of memory.
I have a special kind of insomnia. At least I think it’s special, I haven’t met anyone else who confesses to the same symptom. When I can’t sleep, it’s an itch that keeps me awake. Literally. A small, persistent itching will afflict some random splotch of skin. If I scratch it, it will move to some other random, splotch of skin. Right now it’s the back of my left hand and my left temple. I’m not bothering to scratch either. They’ll move on their own anyway.
When I say the flight was itchy and uncomfortable, I don’t want you to blame the airline. It was a fine flight. I was not a fine passenger.
We landed in daylight, 11:23 am local, Euro time. I stumbled through the airport with my backpack and a small, Powell’s-Books paper bag I kept the few extra things I couldn’t pack. I was bringing some shoes for Tea Elf, so as soon as I unloaded them I’d have no need for the paper bag. Anyway, I found my gate (D52) and did like the only other waiting traveler: I lay down on my bags and closed my eyes. An hour and ten minutes later I awoke in the middle of a throng. There were perhaps a hundred other people who had materialized in the hour I’d slept. The first hour of sleep I’d had since Thursday night’s four hours. It was Saturday afternoon by now.
There was some triviality of a second security moving from Amsterdam to U.K., I was on the plane and, thankfully, I awoke in Scotland with another forty minutes of sleep behind my eyes. I’m breezing by something here and it’s a diservice. This second set of security was an adventure because of my provisions. I brought pemmican.
Although I break my diet on these trips, I don’t go stupid about it. When the only breakfast available is a sugary pastry, I don’t eat. Last time I hunted for food; sometimes to the annoyance of my travel-mates — may they rest in peace. No! I kid! I kid! I didn’t murder them. They’re fine. Mostly…. So this time I brought Grass Fed Pemmican from U.S. Wellness meats. Each (cherry-and-honey-free) bar has nothing but beef, tallow, and salt. 20 grams of lean protein and all the free-range fat a body could want. And before the ignorati out there start to cry about my cholesterol or some bullshit about hardened arteries, My HDL is through the roof, my triglicerides are on the floor (52) and you need to read this article: The Definitive Guide to Cholesterol. And yes, my doctor agrees with me.
But the salient point here: each stick looks like a poorly formed bar of plastic explosives. Also, it’s technically raw beef (dried below 114°F). There are some good articles (here’s one!) that explain why this is “safe” (yeah, irony quotes…). The portland security girl stared at my bag longer than I’ve ever seen a scanner operator stare at anything. Never mind that’s my food you’re irradiating, I was a little nervous. The dutch operators were quick with the scanner, but slow with the hand inspection. They were reading the tiny, cover-your-ass words printed on the package from U.S. Wellness that read “keep frozen” when I spoke up: “Protein bars.” It was only a little lie. That was when they noticed my Vibram Five fingers and my blue hair. They laughed, gave me my bag, and let me through.
Where was I? Right! So I have 17 of these things, at least at trip’s start, minus the two I ate on the plane. Hopefully I can just use them for breakfast. We’ll see.
Ugly Elf note: it’s 5:09 am here. I’ve been writing an hour. See how much I love you?
I landed in Scotland at the appointed hour, bought a tea from Costa, tried to board the bus I needed, bus 100, was rejected for not having a ticket, bought a ticket and was forced to surrender my tea — no beverages allowed on the bus. I considered mutiny but then decided there would be other teas. Je ne regrette rien.
Last time, Sommer, Michael, and I took the Waverly Station exit to get to the Castle Rock Hostel. This time I got off at the West End station and walked up from the other side. I think the walk was about the same, but it was an earlier stop so it might have saved me a little time.
Castle Rock Hostel, now with added Scaffolds.
I was only a little shocked to see the hostel completely covered in scaffolding. [I'll have to remember to insert the picture] Upstairs I found my new room just across the hall from the room we had last time I was here.
I thought I’d reserved a double twin room (two twin beds). Apparently I only had a double bed. That would work out in the end (more on this in a minute), but I blinked awkwardly at Cameron when I saw only one bed and the two of us. I hoped she didn’t think I was being skeezy. I met Adam, Cameron’s friend and the completing member of our party for the Edinburgh to Inverness portion of this trip. He’s awesome. I approve. He out-geeks me, but only by a little. We talked Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Portal, and American McGee’s Alice. I was out of the conversation when he brought up another game, Braid, I need to play.
We went to the Black Bull for dinner. They were out of fish and chips. I cried a little. But I had the chicken Kiev, which I peeled out of its breading and enjoyed its butter-and-garlic middle. I had a beer, but it was unremarkable. I should say I’ve been so grain free as to forgo beer lately. Having a beer, breaded chicken, and chips is a big departure from my usual diet. I’m planning to get fat and ache. So be it. It’s worth saying that the waitress was beautiful. I have a thing for dark hair and blue eyes. I recently met an aerialist in Portland who fits the profile. I have a crush. I’ll get over it.
We came back to the hostel after monkeying around on the scaffolding, and I showered while Cam and Adam went to the common room and did some planning. I joined them. Cam was sitting down next to a man I didn’t look at and assumed was Adam. I jammed them together in order to fit onto the tet-a-tet and only later realized this was not Adam. Bear in mind how little sleep I had. Somehow we ended up with another crew member for the night. A lovely young fellow named Axel (spelling?) who is getting his English degree in Creative writing at Tufts university in Boston. He’s originally from Argentina, but the only word I heard him speak with an accent was “tattoo”. Everything else sounded perfectly american.
The four of us went out and got a little lost, but eventually ended up at the Last Drop mostly accidentally. It, too, is a place I went last time I was here. This time, none of the natives engaged us in conversation. I missed Steven (the Last Drop) and Steve (Black Bull). I hope they’re well.
Cam and Adam huddled, drank orange juice, and discussed something important. Axel and I talked circus and creative writing. I was deliriously tired. I hope I made some sense, but I doubt it.
We came back to the hostel, tried and failed to find the bus station we needed the next morning, tried again and succeeded, and came back to the hostel.
I went to bed. The others were going to hang out for a bit down in the commons. We have to get up at 7:00am to catch our bus. Cameron was supposed to stay in the room with me, and Adam, a late member to our party, had a bed in the dorm. I slept for maybe an hour, tossed for a while, read a hundred pages of Rothfuss’s Name of the Wind, tossed some more and grabbed my laptop at four am to head downstairs. There was never any sign of Cam. She’s likely off on an adventure, I hope she’s safe.
Anyway, it’s 5:46am now. There’s an hour and change until I have to get up, so I’m going to post this thing and head up to the room and pack, maybe have a pemmican bar.
I’ve had bad luck with airport food. What I mean by this, is that the second worst food poisoning I’ve had in my life was at Ngurah Rai International Airport, in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. Fortunately, it was relatively a short flight from there to Palau where I was doing a dig (still finding myself in college, I toyed with the idea of becoming an Archeologist).
I tell you all this so you will understand that when I say I’m eating at an airport bar, you will understand the reckless, devil-may-cry mood I’m in. The restaurant in question is a Rogue Brewery — a dubious establishment in the best of circumstances.
Sure, there was a time when Rogue was a flagship beer. One of the best Oregon beers… one of the best beers in the world. But as anyone who’s visited the brewery knows, their award winning brewing stopped in 2002, what remained was simply brewing. After a strong decade of accolades, they’ve had nothing to be proud of sense then. They cut the quality of their ingredients to stitch a few extra dollars onto their bottom line. Their head brewer “went another way”. Now they’re the Ass-King of beers, right along with their idiot cousin, McMenamins. At least McBeer has fun places to go, even if their beer and food are embarrassments to the northwest.
Enough of that. I’m travelling again. Like every great adventure it begins with a wait. I’ve been waiting for days, for weeks, for months! — in my own little way. But then, I didn’t really know I was waiting until now.
Now I’m through security, well into my second drink, and I know exactly that I am waiting.
If only the waiting were a guarantee of a great adventure. While the wait is a sure thing, what comes next could be anything. I’ll do my best to keep track of it all here; a little more real time than last July. Last July… the trip began so well and ended so terribly.
Oh, July.
Right! About the trip! Well this just gets stranger and stranger. I’ve kept to the policy I made after the Evil X dumped me. When I realized how much extra money I would have (she cost A LOT to support), I decided then that if anyone abroad invited me to come visit them, I would go. So when Tea Elf invited me to come while she was studying in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, I said yes. I wanted to go back to the U.K. and see more rural areas anyway. The trip quickly turned into Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Wales, but then I realized how much time off of training this was. I axed the Welsh part of the trip, changed my tickets, and now I’m going to see Scotland and Ireland.
The last time, Sommer did a brilliant job of making an itinerary. This time Tea Elf and I are mostly winging it. I took care of finding us places to stay; she took care of major transportation, but we’re going to use Google Maps for public transportation locally, and we don’t really know what we’re doing on any given day.
It’s a fucking adventure.
Man I keep getting off track. I blame drinking almost not at all and now having these two drinks do their impression of a Sea Monster in my belly — ahoy thar.
Anyway. The plan.
I arrive in Edinburgh tomorrow after nearly a day of travelling. It will be a little before four. I’ll take bus 100 to the same stop I took last year, and hike the same hill I did last year, and stay the night in the same hostel I did last year. I knew it was good, so I picked it. I hope Sommer and Michael won’t mind — it’s just for the night. The next day we take a bus to Inverness, the Capital of the Highlands, and far to the north. We’ll stay in inverness for two nights, then take a couple of train rides, including the Harry Potter train route (not the steam train, that’s only available in the summer) and a ferry to get to the Isle of Skye. Two nights there and then we head back to Edinburgh. The plan that night is to dance tango with the locals, then, the next morning, catch a flight to Dublin. In Dublin we’re renting a car and driving down to Cork for two nights. That will be our base as we do a little international road tripping. I hope to get to the western coast and see some more castles. Then stay the night of the 3rd (of April) in Dublin and fly out on the 4th. I have Straps class on the 5th and a normal life awaiting me.
Anyway, me and my blue hair need to make our way to the terminal. Not long until the point of no return.
Our little family is growing again! And by family I mean the elves that live in this sever.
We’ve been joined by the lovely and talented Cameron McClure. A Portland native living in New York, she’s whip smart and a talented tanguera. I can’t wait to see what she’ll be bringing us!
I think you’ll find that unlike my circuitous, garrulous, mad ramblings, her posts are eloquent and entertaining. We’re lucky to have her.
Within the week she’s traveling to St. Andrew’s, Scotland, and will be journaling her trip.
Welcome, Tea Elf!
Woot! Scotland! More excuses to talk about my epic, tweed cap! Your’s trullllly,
Ugly Elf.
I had thought the country stopped using the color code for our terror levels, but apparently I was mistaken. I’m spending the night in Denver and we’re at the orange level. I realize these are trite comparisons, but there is no danger level on my car when I open the door. The likelihood of me dying in a plane crash as a result of weather or mechanical error is minuscule, but far larger than the likelihood of my dying in a terrorist attack.
I made an airport friend today. He has an ex with a daughter who was almost exactly my age, which means I have him firmly categorized as “the same age as my mother’s bf” even though I really don’t know. He’s reading a book of beat poetry, and pointed out a line about McCarthyism and bomb shelters and the cold war and the general feeling of (largely unfounded) fear. Having listened to Sting’s “Russians” recently, this had already been on my mind. So much of our collective energy is spent focused on fearing things over which we have minimal control, and I see little benefit.
This may seem like a strange connection, but it bothers my mother that I talk to strangers. The fact that I am about to go to sleep in a barely populated airport, a few feet away from a man I (realistically) know nothing about would cause her to toss and turn all night. I’ve conveniently avoided mentioning couchsurfing around her, because trusting strangers is such a poor idea. And, realistically, NY has taught me several times over that trusting strangers can end badly. Yet, regardless of airport announcements, I’m going to make the (quite logical) decision that my life really isn’t at an orange level.
A week from today, I’ll be in St. Andrews. Well, exactly 168 hours from now I’ll be there. Next Monday at 12:05pm local time I’ll be making my way through customs, getting my luggage, and heading back through security to fly from London to Edinburgh. Yet I’m only focused on Scotland in passing. I know it’s happening, but there are so many things I need to do before I go. Unfortunately it’s a mix of “things I don’t want to do” and “things I want to do but don’t have time to” that make it slightly easier not to think about the fact that I leave for New York on Wednesday.
So THEY contacted me, and asked me to remove them from my posts. Which seems reasonable, except that it’s a lot of work and nobody is actually reading this stuff anyway.
No, I’m serious! I have the power of Google Analytics behind me, and he tells me that I am talking to myself in a closed room. (Except for one old friend in Ashland. Hi Kate! Do you realize we’ve been friends since 1998??!! How fucking old are we!!).
While I’m talking to myself in an empty room I’d rather not do “real work” on this site, so I’m going to lock the door. I still don’t care if you read about my life, but now you have to register. I’ve turned on the register button. Anyone can do it, it only takes a second. It’s annoying, but it will email you a temp password. You log in, set a password you can remember at the bottom of the page, and then you can read good stuffs.
When I get more time I’ll either strip them out of the posts, or use a better plugin to manage users. I don’t like that you are sent to manage yourself by default. You should be routed back to the page you were logging in from. Annoying! I’ll fix as soon as I can.
This will prevent any of the eurland stuff from showing up on a google search and render SEO null and void, but even with those things, no one was reading it anyway.
I’ll try to post more useless little posts to the site, while I write out the whole euroland adventure. Stuff that will be publicly accessible without registration. Euroland is taking me way longer to write than I thought. It’s a time thing. I can write about 1k words a day. Each post is 6 to 8 k words. Then there is research. Then there is photo organization. Then there is editing. And I only get about a day per week to work on it.
So please, register! Walk into my lonely room and listen to me talk to myself. The only difference is you have to knock first before you enter.
