6/28/06 - Brighton, England

Edinburgh - St. Andrews - Glasgow - Newcastle - Carlisle - Manchester - Widnes - Liverpool - Norwich - Brighton

Highlights, Observations, Rants, etc. :

• The World Cup: For the past several weeks, one thing and one thing only has dominated the English national consciousness, due in no small part to the relentless coverage of the British media. A British scientist could discover the cure for cancer, or Tony Blair could announce his decision to have a sex change, and I still think the World Cup would dominate the headlines. First it was Rooney's foot (could he possibly be fit in time), then Sven's tactics (how to arrange the squad to maximize the quality of the 11 players on the pitch), and now building on unconvincing victories (whether the team can improve enough to realistically beat the Portuguese, not to mention Brazil or Argentina). But underlying everything has been a barely contained feeling (somewhere between hope against hope and unbridled optimism) that This Is England's Chance. The entire country is perched on a balloon of hype that will positively explode if they somehow do manage to win it all, and that will splutter and deflate disappointingly if they lose, just as they have in every major championship since 1966.
  It's a great atmosphere to be in the middle of, because the entire country is captivated. St. George's crosses fly from windows, cars, you name it. I watched the England-Sweden game, which actually meaningless except to determine who would get to avoid Germany in the next round, in Newcastle, and the pubs were filled with Geordies (as people from Newcastle are affectionately known) decked out in jerseys and facepaint. The same with the England-Ecuador game in Liverpool. There are even a host of World Cup pop songs, including Stan's World Cup Song, sung to the tune of She'll Be Comin' Round the Mountain and with a chorus of "Singing ay-yay-yippee, the Germans bombed our chippy, ay-yay-yippee-yippee-yay" (Bob Dylan, eat your heart out), and a version of Come On Eileen reversed as Come On England.
  But all the unbridled enthusiasm hasn't exactly endeared the English team to its British neighbors. The majority of Scots I spoke to actually wanted to see England get 'stuffed', although they couldn't seem to decide whether they would prefer England to make an embarassing early exit or to come tantalizingly close to winning only to lose in the semifinal or final. At first this suprised me, especially since the Scottish team didn't even qualify for the finals, but after experiencing a few days of the intense media barrage, I could start to understand. The English commentators aren't exactly impartial, and the most trivial of stories relating to the English team (Peter Crouch's (in)famous Robot Dance goal celebrations, for example) are given precendence over everything else, including highlights from other games. As one Scotsman pointed out, "People make the mistake of thinking Great Britain is one country; it's not, it's four countries." I can see how all the pro-English rhetoric comes off as grating and/or condescending to the Scots, Welsh & Irish (who are historically sympathetic to underdogs anyway) and leaves them longing for their own independent match commentators & pundits.
  But I'm in England now, and as long as the lads keep winning, everybody (including me) is happy.
• Golf in St. Andrews: Travelling was getting tiring, so I decided to stop for a week in St. Andrews, an ancient and relatively small town on the east coast of Scotland whose only claim to fame would be its prestigious university, had some bored Scots not started whacking a little ball around with clubs several centuries ago. So now, the place is absolutely mobbed by tourists every summer on a pilgrammage to the Home of Golf (honestly, I think I heard more American accents there than in the rest of my time in Britain).
  The plan was simply to relax with a few rounds and watch the first week of the world cup. So I played golf and watched soccer, but "relaxation" isn't exactly the best word to sum up the week. Having played only once since last fall meant my swing was pretty rusty, and a lesson from one of the resident pros helped me to fix some problems but created a host of new ones; my time off also meant my hands were less calloused than they have been in a while, so by the end of my second day in St. Andrews, I was developing blisters on top of blisters, and I had to tape up my hands to the extent that they probably would have looked right at home in an Egyptian sarcophagus. All this, plus a newly developed (albeit relatively minor) case of tendonitis in my right shin, combined to severely inhibit my attempts at relaxation...
  And then, of course, there is the Old Course, the shrine of the game. This may be a bit irreverent, but I've now seen a fair number of world-renowned places/things, and like so many of them, the Old Course loses a certain amount of its mystique when you're there staring the hype in the face. In person (and of course this is just my perhaps overly cynical opinion), the Mona Lisa is surprisingly small, the Book of Kells is just another old manuscript (albeit a painstakingly ornamented one), the Giant's Causeway is a far from gigantic clump of hexagonal rocks, and the Old Course is, well, just another golf course, and not a particularly tricky one at that -- the general consensus seems to place it only 3rd most difficult of the 6 courses officially run by the St. Andrews Links Trust. I'm not saying each one of these world treasures can't be appreciated by a knowleadgeable onlooker; it's just that there's a tremendous tendency to go and see and ooh and aah, just because that's simply what one ought to do. So I decided to pass on playing the Old Course, and the corresponding GBP 120 for greens fees, GBP 40 + tip for a caddy (not required, but if you're going to do it, you might as well do it right), and 4:30 wake-up to get an available spot as a single. Instead, I played the New Course ("New" in St. Andrews being a relative term, as the course has actually been around since the 1890's) for three consecutive days. And despite hobbling, cursing, and spraying balls all over the course the entire time, it was absolutely brilliant. The "links" golf we have in the States isn't really links golf; it's a little too manicured, a little too Disneyland, as one of my playing partners put it. Between the ever-present wind, the rock-hard ground (think cement covered by a few strands of grass - I don't think I saw a ball-mark on a single green), the gorse, and the bunkers deeper than you are tall, it's rougher and more raw and arguably less fair, but somehow it's still great fun. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, blisters and all, except next time I'd hope to play a little better...
• "Quiet" Night Out in Liverpool: I met up with Steve Ellis, one of the guys I worked with during my internship in Germany 6 (yikes) years ago, for a few days in Widnes just outside of Liverpool. Friday night we went out looking to relive our days in the Altstadt in Dusseldorf with some good old-fashioned boozing. Steve & his friends surprised how quiet it was for a Friday night. If that was quiet, I'd love/hate to see Liverpool on a busy night. We went to a bunch of different places in the Ropewalks, an area in a several-block radius filled with bars and clubs, and all of them - plus the streets - were jammed with Scousers (the colloquial term for Liverpudlians) on the piss. An absolute blast.

Mundane Reasons Why Life in the US Isn't Perfect:

• If you want to withdraw $100 (actually I guess GBP 100) from a British ATM, you type 1-0-0, not 1-0-0-0-0 like you do in the states in order to get the decimal in the right position. I've never understood the need to enter 2 decimals when specifying a withdrawal amount, since no ATM I've ever used has ever been capable of dishing out cents. Leave it to the sensible Brits to get it right...
• Tipping isn't completely out of control. For dinner (or any other table service with a bill), you leave 10%. When ordering drinks at the bar, you just pay for them. None of the 20% or dollar-a-drink nonsense, but at the same time the 10% means your waiter still has a reasonable incentive to provide decent service (unlike Germany, for example, where in general no tipping = no incentive = horrific service) .

Blog Issues:

• So finding an internet cafe and then sitting there for a few hours every few days was starting to get impractical, plus I found myself simply not having that much to say. So let's give this new format a try, where I'll post less frequently and just expound on the highlights and spout off any other random observations I might have...
• Photos -- I finally got around to uploading the pics from my digital camera onto Flickr.com. Most of them are pretty unspectacular, since I tend to use my digital camera for quick souveneir shots and my 35mm SLR for everything else. But for each post, I'll list a link to the photos I've taken since the last post (I've now done this retroactively as well).

6/9/06 - Finally, Summer

Edinburgh, Scotland
After a month of drizzle, overcast skies, unreasonable cold (even for the British Isles) and only sporadic sunshine, I was starting to worry about developing my own case of Fair Irish Skin. Thankfully, my week+ in Scotland has been dry, and the past few days (in Ft. William, Inverness, & now Edinburgh) have been absolutely beautiful. It's amazing what a few rays of warm light can do: the scenery of the highlands, impressive even under grey skies, positively crackles, pubs & cafes spill their customers out onto the sidewalks, and parks fill up with people looking for a bit of a tan (read: sunburn). Everything is suddenly all that much better. This is the Europe it's hard not to fall in love with (although granted, with weather this good, you might not have much trouble falling in love with New Jersey). After a few hours under the warm summer sun, the beer tastes (even) better, accents that were frustrating become charming, and the occasional Eurotrash fashion foible or unwashed armpit becomes more forgiveable.
I've long had a theory that the general mood of a place is intricately intertwined with its climate. Though I haven't had that much extended interaction with the Scots, having spent more time hiking than socialising, in general they've struck me as a bit gruff but also friendly, a quality that is clearly accentuated under a wee bit o' summer sun.
And it's not just the mere existence of sunlight, it's the abundance of it, because the days this far north seem to last forever. Scotland is actually at the same latitude as southern Alaska (thankfully the temperatures are kept a lot more mild by the moderating effects of the Gulf Stream), and the sun now sets around 10:00. This means it stays reasonably light until after 11, which has more than once been the source of some confusion when I've walked out of a pub at 10 or 10:30. By 4:30 it's light again, so forgetting to properly draw the curtains in your hostel room leads to a bit of a rough morning.
According to the (notoriously unreliable) weather forecast, the next few days are supposed to continue to be nice. I'll take all I can get...

Daily Summary

• Tues, 5/30 - Arrive Glasgow. Bit of shopping to prep for what I anticipate being even cooler weather up in the highlands (apart from a fleece jacket & a rain jacket, I only brought one long-sleeved shirt that wasn't a button-down). Watched the England v. Hungary soccer friendly in a local pub, and very quickly figured out that the Scots *won't* be supporting their southerly neighbors in theWorld Cup
• Weds, 5/31 - Bus to Oban, ferry & bus to Tobermory on the Isle of Mull. Tour of the Tobermory distillery, which was cool because they were actually in the middle of a distilling batch, so you could smell the barley, feel the heat coming off the pot stills, etc. 7-mile hike to & from Ardmore Bay, which wasn't all that scenic because much of the timber had recently been harvested.
• Thurs, 6/1 - Bus/ferry to Iona, an early Christian monastery / holy site from where St. Columba spread Christianity into Scotland. Actually pretty boring. Ferry, bus, & ferry back to Oban.
• Fri, 6/2 - bus from Oban to Fort William. Climbed Ben Nevis, at 4408 ft the highest peak in the British Isles, in just under 5 hours. First 2/3 of the way up was great, then it was pretty much just cloud, cold, wind, and snow near the summit. Coming down was arguably worse than going up, because I didn't save much energy for the descent. Went with some of the hostel staff to a housewarming party thrown by a couple of local Scottish guys, where I was reacquainted with International Drinking Rules.
• Sat, 6/3 - hiked up through Glen Nevis to Steall Waterfall. The hike was absolutely beautiful: classic highland scenery of rough grey mountains and cliffs intermingled with lush green forests.
• Sun, 6/4 - bus to Inverness. traditional Irish/Scottish music at local bar.
• Mon, 6/5 - visit to Cawdor castle (the setting for much of MacBeth, although that was a bit of poetic license on the part of Shakespeare, since MacBeth the historical figure dates from approx. 1100 and the castle wasn't built until the 1480's). But the castle is still the residence of the current Thanes of Cawdor for 6 months out of the year, so it's immaculately maintained and offers an interesting glimpse into the lives of modern-day aristocracy. Then Culloden battlefield, where the Jacobite rising of 1745 was crushed by the forces of the English king and thousands of Highland Scots were slaughtered, due to both incompetent leadership and English cruelty. Then ancient tombs known as the Clava Cairns, interesting really only because they were constructed such that the rays of the setting sun on the first day of winter would illuminate the insides of the tombs.
• Tues, 6/6 - bus to Edinburgh. while standing in line to board the bus, ran into a German guy I had first met in Fort William. Ended up hanging out with him for most of the rest of the day.
• Weds, 6/7 - toured Edinburgh Castle. Went on a literary pub tour, tracing Edinburgh's role in Scottish literature from Robert Burns to Irvine Welsh (the guy who wrote Trainspotting). Met a few Aussies & Canucks, & ended up boozing pretty hard with them after the tour.
• Thurs, 6/8 - Bus (although not as early as intended) to Stirling to see Stirling Castle. Probably one of the largest, most intact, and most historically significant castles left in Scotland, and currently the site of some interesting archaeological and restoration work. Also wanted to try to see Bannockburn battlefield, but ran out of time before the last bus back to Edinburgh. Evening hike up to Arthur's Seat, an extinct volcano overlooking Edinburgh.
• Fri, 6/9 - Scottish National Museum in the morning, then watched the kick-off of the World Cup (Germany v. Costa Rica). Had the obligatory Scots meal of haggis, tatties & 'neeps (the latter two actually being potatoes - mashed - and turnips). The haggis wasn't bad, as long as you try not to think what's in it. Kindof like a hot dog, except less finely ground, meaning it's easier to try to figure out which of the bits are the lungs, and which are... like I said, all you have to do is keep that out of your head.
  

The World Is An Amazingly Small Place, Especially On The Travellers' Circuit. It's now happened to me more times than I can count on one hand that I've run into people I've met previously, either in a different hostel or pub or randomly on the street. A lot of this is attributable to everyone relying on a handful of guidebooks (Lonely Planet being by far the most ubiquitous), and my so far having spent time in relatively small countries where there are pretty logical sequences of places to go, but a lot of it is also just pure, random coincidence. The strangest of these happened while I was driving around Donegal. I spent a night in a tiny hostel in Malinbeg at the end of the Slieve League peninsula, where I met a group of 4 European students driving around northwest Ireland for the long weekend. The next morning, we went on our merry ways. I was driving up to Dunfanaghy on the northern coast, & gave a lift to 2 other Americans who were also heading up that way but didn't have a car. We stopped in Glenveagh national park to hike around Upper Lake Dunlewy for a few hours. Towards the tail end of the hike, we ducked into a gas station to pick up a snack, and who was standing outside but the four I had met the previous night. On their way to Derry, one of the guys in the backseat had gotten a bit carsick on Donegal's spaghetti roads. They had stopped in order for him to get a breath of fresh air, only minutes before I strolled up to the very same gas station...

Reading

• Almost done with David Copperfield

Photos

Next Stop: St. Andrews for a week or so of golf, then back to Glasgow & down into England