open doors day

yay for free entry to things. got to see the general register building, the old college library, and the assembly rooms. georgian architecture is lovely. i felt like i ought to be wandering through an austen film.
also went on a quest for flaxmeal. apparently i'm to go looking for a store called real food. stopped in a lovely bookshop in victoria street and had to resist the urge to buy an 1890s edition of cranford. did break down and buy some lovely cheese, which tastes very much like the fresh goat's gouda kim, beth, and i found in bruges. i've forgotten its name and shall have to go back and ask. also ended up buying a pain au choco in a tiny and delightful confectioners shop down in south clerk street.
i keep paying more attention to cooking than to my studies. look for "recipes" by which i mean my rather helter-skelter kitchen experiments to start appearing either hear or in an attached bloggish thing. speaking of which, everyone go fall in love with two fat als: twofatals.com
wish midd were more of the mind that travelling and living outweighed studying in importance where study abroad is concerned.

edited to add: succumbed and made food blog.

stirling adventuring

got up. took the train to stirling. walked up the back walk, alongside the back ridge of the volcanic rock just outside the old town walls, overlooking all those famous drifting scottish mists, which stuck around all day. made muffins last night, which i took with me. picked wild blackberries as i walked up. ate two of them with a muffin before i got to the castle. magical start to the day. toured the castle. ate my lunch. toured argyle's lodgings, a 17th century nobleman's house full of shmancy reproductions of what would have been in the house which means... you can sit on the chairs, feel the tapestries, touch the china. walked into the holyrude church with every intention of seeing the hammer beam ceiling and scurrying off to the wallace monument, but then i was the only one there. so i ended up getting a private tour of the church from a guy who knows insane amounts of its history. holyrude, in case you were wondering, is where james the sixth and first was crowned james the sixth. so after a goodly long, and enjoyable time, i finally headed down to the bus station and off to the monument. a lovely elderly couple got special permission at the gates to take their car up, as the shuttle bus was out of order and muriel (the wife) doesn't walk so well, and they were kind enough to give me a lift. loads of stairs later, and i know something more of the whole william wallace/ robert the bruce story, although still not quite enough to make sense of it. lovely view. got on the bus heading back to the station, but as i was the only person who actually wanted to go all the way to the station, and as the stop button near me wasn't working, the driver didn't know i was still on the bus until we were a bit past the station on the way to the bus barn. so i rode all the way out to the bus barn and then got a ride with another driver back to the train station. and took the train back to edinburgh and hiked my way back to my room to write this.

the checklist

this'll keep getting updated

things i've done, places i've been, foods i've tried

eaten vegetarian haggis
visited edinburgh castle
seen stone of scone/destiny
visited culzean castle
visited loch ness and urquhart castle
visited glamis castle
seen hairy cows in real herds
attended and participated in a caleigh
climbed arthur's seat
took ghost tour of edinburgh
visited the museum of scotland
visited stirling castle
climbed wallace monument
took jacobite steam train
went to isle of skye

to do, see, try

eat a scotch egg (if vegetarian option exists)
stay in that castle hostel up north
visit orkney islands
visit that triangular castle down south
visit museum of childhood
attend christmas market in princes street
climb scott monument
climb nelson monument
visit national gallery
tour hollyrood palace
climb salisbury craigs
pull off scotch accent
learn to caleigh and/or scottish country dance
see a puffin live and up close
visit dynamic earth
visit the world's largest tree house
take decent photos of hairy cows up close
visit fort william in summer
wander through glencoe
stay in glenfinnan sleeping car and take good photos of viaduct
visit portree on skye
see folk music in concert
see glasvegas (the ofthemoment band in scotland) in concert
attend a wicked-sweet saltain festival
go to excellent bonfire day bonfire

basics, academic

right, several folks have brought it to my attention that i've neglected so far to provide basic information. to that end:

Attending:
University of Edinburgh
College of the Humanities and Social Sciences
School of History, Classics and Archaeology

Taking:
British Society 1650 - c1880 (Social History 1.1)
The Rise of American Slavery, 1619 - 1790
Rwanda: Ethnicity, Conflict, and Reconciliation in the Great Lakes Region

Meeting:
BS 10.00-11.00, Mon, Tues (tutorial), Wed, Thurs
RAS 16.00-18.00, Mon
RECR 11.10- 13.00, Mon

Wednesday adventuring - long, rambly, and piecemeal

i knew this was going to be hard. i've never been to a school larger than midd and i've never lived in a built-up city. that's a good bit of why i'm here. sort of like going to school in new england in the middle of nowhere, the operative theory is that by pushing myself way outside my comfort zone, i'll force it to expand. or, to use the usual phrasing, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger.

but sometimes it's hard to keep in mind that you've intentionally set yourself up to get your ass kicked. the brain just seems to assume that it wouldn't do that to itself. so when monday proved that, yes, i get to be culture shocked on multiple levels, i decided, in the style of wise seven year olds everywhere, to run away.

after some consideration, i elected glamis (pronounced glahms) castle as my destination and spent tuesday evening plotting and packing. i must admit, at freezing 5.45 when my alarm clock went off, i entertained sincere doubts on the score of getting up, getting dressed, and trekking down to the train station, but i made in time to get my britrail pass validated and catch the train i wanted.

in order to get to glamis, which is located in the village of glamis, one must first take the train to dundee and then a bus or two. depending on who you ask. and where. and when. don't ask the castle website at any time as it was apparently written without consulting the time tables, which of course i got to learn from experience several times throughout the day. i am evidently slower than your average sloth. in any case, upon arriving in dundee, i eventually found the seagate harbour bus station, where i discovered that the bus i needed to take didn't actually start running until an hour later than i thought. so i spent half an hour or so wandering over to the frigate unicorn, the oldest british built ship afloat (it's wooden, though not a sailing ship, ali, if you're reading this, and yes i took pictures).

when i returned to the bus station - no, random aside first, at the restroom at said bus station, in order to use the facilites you must not pay as in normal stations, you must purchase a ticket, to be retained, should anyone demand to see it, in order than you may prove that you have paid for the rights to use the facilities. right, bus station, got back, got into talking with these two older couples who had just missed their bus. they thought they'd just missed the 22, which is what i was to take, but it had said 20 on the front and left at the right time for the 20. except then the 22 didn't show up for ages. and when it did, it went out of service for twenty minutes.

there are lots of fairly predictable reasons for busses going out of service, like needing to refuel or to check something mechanical, to clean something. in order for the driver to get directions is generally not one you expect. but, twenty five minutes or so past when the 22 was due to depart, the driver assured us that he knew vaguely where he was going. sort of. a kind older gentleman, the sixth of six passengers on the bus, kindly volunteered to stand near the front and direct the driver until his stop. and speaking of stops, i missed mine. not by a whole lot, but i ended up getting off the bus just at the edge of the woods outside of the village. which is about three minutes walk from the centre of the village and the castle gates.

glamis is gorgeous. well, the castle's exterior's ok. but all the rooms open to the public (it's still a family residence so the top floors are off limits) are beautiful, especially the queen mother's sitting room (she grew up in the castle). in all seriousness, i want my living room to look that homey and comfy one day. but what's really wonderful about the castle, well, aside from the four hundred year old bed hangings that kick all modern textiles' collective butt, is the grounds.

the drive you walk down (well, drive if you're anyone except me) is probably about and mile and a half straight from the gates to the castle. there are big, storybook trees and herds of cows on either side of the drive. and the pinetum (nope, no idea what that means) is this huge grove filled with huge american evergreens that smelled like home, bordered on one side by a creek which apparently houses otters, and on another by a herd of hairy cows (technically highland cows). and there are grouse all over the place and this lovely vine-covered house tucked at the back of the property away from the visitors' area. i think if culzean had the pinetum, the hairy cows, and the river dean appended to its grounds you probably couldn't improve the spot any more than by adding some sunshine.

getting back proved another mild adventure, as i had all inaccurate bus times. so i walk-sprinted about two miles to the bus stop only to sit there for an hour, switched busses in forfar, walk-sprinted from the seagate station to the train station, made the train, and arrived home exhausted but very well pleased with the day. hopefully this means i'll keep this up. maybe in future posts i'll actually write them all at once and thus cut out half the rambling.
maybe not.

vegetarian haggis

just because so many people have and/or will ask:
yes, i've eaten it (first real meal here)
it's weird. it's strongly spiced but also mild at the same time.
it's not great, but it's certainly not terrible.
and yes, i would and probably will eat it again.

in medias res; john lewis

i suppose i must start by comparing john lewis to a department store, which is what it is. it has all the usual departments of cosmetics, clothes, shoes, linens, kitchen equipment, china - there's probably some furniture lurking on an upper floor i've yet to see. but john lewis doesn't stop where us department stores stop. it also appears to produce custom pillow cushions, curtains, and the like. it carries soaps and shampoos next to the cosmetics and shoes. there's a toy department which, uncontent to rest with the usual stock of dolls, teddy bears, books, and trucks, also stocks trampolines. and if you ever need fabric, colored pipe cleaners, or glitter, john lewis has you covered.
so far i've only visited two floors of john lewis (emerging with a pillow, pillowcase, and paring knife, all of which, rather miraculously i might add, i actually like), but i'm sure that if i ever undertake a proper expedition to the store - that is, one which begins in excess of twenty minutes to closing time - rest assured i shall regale you with any futher discoveries of it's contents.