Done with the stifling human infestation that is London, I boarded a train to Edinburgh to visit my friend Daniel and his partner, Suilin. I presented on a panel with Daniel a couple years ago at a conference in Victoria and we have continued to meet up at other conferences since as my let’s-go-see-some-blues- and-drink-whiskey-conference-friend.
The train was a short ride, about 4.5 hours. On it, I believe I was seated across from a true Buddha incarnate that looked nothing like what you’d think but rather was a tall 60-something year old Scottish man in a business suit. As we were all being served our dinners, the little mini ramekin of gravy that was accompanying his sausage roll slid off the waiter’s tray and spilled all over his laptop keyboard, the viscous brown sauce seeping into all the nooks and crannies. Now, if that were me I would be in the fetal position weeping, demanding that Virgin Railways pay me damages that would be sufficient for me to never have to work again. This man maintained such genuine composure and kindness as he filed a quiet, formal complaint with the food service manager and spent an hour trying to clean as much gravy out between the letters on the keyboard as he could using napkins. It humbled me.
Daniel picked me up from the train station and we walked back to his place, stopping for a pint on the way (naturally). Suilin, a professor of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, came home a bit later and we listened to their eclectic record selection and drank homemade gin before hitting the hay.
The next day my hosts went to work and I went touristing, beginning with a slow meander through the calm, quiet streets of Edinburgh as I made my way to the Royal Mile. The Royal Mile is the long street in the old city that leads up the Edinburgh castle, lined with souvenir stores.
At the foot of the Royal Mile is Holyrood Palace, the Queen Mother’s urban Scottish home. It cost 12 pounds to get in and so I decided that I most certainly did not care about the queen that much so these are the only pictures of it I was able to get:
Also, as part of my mission in Scotland I wanted a Scottish wool sweater. Easy enough to find given every second store in the area is a woolen product store. I ended up with a hand knit sweater, knit by Mrs Edna (according to the hand written price tag) and a lovely tartan lambs wool pashmina.
I wound my way through the blackened buildings of the old city (the blackness, I heard tell, still the remnant of the industrial revolution) and found my way to the National Museum of Scotland (also free). While not an excellently curated space, there were so many great, beautiful pieces of jewelry and other accouterments that had been dug up in archaeological digs, items from the advanced bronze-age culture that was very unique to this part of the world. Whaddya know!!?? The early Skots weren’t total savages after all who needed civilising by Romans and the English.
After the museum, I found a cozy pub for lunch where I had my first taste of haggis in bon-bon form (mini little balls of deep fried haggis) and Cullen Skink (a thick and creamy fish stew), two very Scottish dishes. And as if that wasn’t Scottish enough, I chased it with a pint of Innis & Gunn while trying to drown out the dissonance being created by a loud, motor- mouthed and drunken French Canadian man yapping away AT his table of people, making himself heard across the whole pub in his thick and grating Quebecois accent, and made me wish people were mistaking me for an American (I can speak like this about Quebecois accents because I am half Quebecois).
Afterwards I slowly meandered back to Daniel and Suilin’s place to meet up with them post-work for a chilled out vegetarian meal and a movie night.
The following day, Saturday, Suilin had obligations at the university so Daniel and I hopped a train that carted us away to a tiny and charming little town, Aberdour, located on the shore of the North Sea and boasting the most lovely secret gardens:
Here we visited the ruins of Aberdour castle, a small castle originally built around 1200:
I have been watching so much Game of Thrones and Outlander these last years that of course being here, standing in this ruined old castle made me wish I had been alive during medieval times…but of course only if I was wealthy noblewoman, naturally. My love of romantic gloominess would have fit right in, I think:
The area around the castle had been, at one point in history, turned into a little party garden/fruit orchard and, to this day, there are still apple trees you walk among and here we settled in for a little picnic on this beautifully sunny and crispy fall Scottish day.
Also, I saw for my first time a structure called a “dovecot”. This is essentially a medieval version of battery farming for edible fowl.
And with this, my romantic ideal that those producing food from this time in history had a deeper and more meaningful connection with their earth brothers and sisters, not yet perverted by rationalist, modernist perspectives on the natural world.
The castle grounds also held it’s own little functioning chapel with a quaint graveyard in which the earliest graves, engraved with skulls, marked back only to the 1600s:
After stopping in at the local pub for a pint we sauntered down to the shore. It all of a sudden hit me that I had just been shown the meditative ways of hunting for sea glass in August by my friend Karen in Nova Scotia and here I could maybe find some Scottish sea glass. I became instantly stoked and told Daniel I was going to search for sea glass. First I had to explain to his English sensibilities what sea glass was (the shattered hearts of mermaids). Then I explained how popular hunting for sea glass is in places like Nova Scotia. So popular, in fact, that all that were left there these days were tiny shards of brown and clear and you might find a blue if you’re lucky. Even more rare, pink and aqua! And the rarest of all RED! Daniel thought it was ridiculous…at first… and then he started helping me. And within a few short minutes, his British excitement came to match mine in our hunt for a piece of red sea glass.
And evidently sea glass hunting really has not become popular here, as this particular little Scottish beach was littered with it! And huge pieces:
I’ve since begun populating a “Sea Glass Craft ideas” pintrest board. Hand crafted Scottish sea glass gifts for x-mas for everyone!
After searching an hour, we gave up on the elusive red sea glass and began to make our way back to the trains station, our pockets heavy with my treasures.
When we arrived home, Suilin was also less excited about my sea glass haul than I and suggested that the sea glass was probably all radioactive due to some sort of nuclear waste storage site nearby….but no rashes or bald spots yet so I think I’m in the clear (and so are your x-mas gifts).
Suilin has spent a significant amount of time in Canada over the years and, upon her suggestion, we decided to have a little thanksgiving celebration while I was there. I myself had forgotten entirely about thanksgiving but was stoked at the thought of some sort of meat with gravy and other cozy nice edibles and wine, naturally.
We even ended up making a pumpkin pie from scratch, a lovely added touch.
After our thanksgiving ‘lupper’ (lunch-dinner) Suilin was off to sing in a choir for a Beethoven concert (I think she might be a little bit of genius) while Daniel and I sauntered around the city on our way to see a movie, first climbing up one of Edinburgh’s many many many hills for a view of the city:
As we continued on towards the movie theater, we made our way through a park, across from which is the cliff upon which Edinburgh castle sits
I left the following morning for Budapest and moved into my new airbnb apartment, my home for the next one and a half months. I had enough time to drop my little luggage, pick up my big pieces of luggage from my friends place, re-pack and finish preparations for my next presentation at a conference in Toronto. In total, I had one day in Budapest before heading to the airport again for Toronto where I spent four or five non-memorable days informally gathering data on the incidence of people in downtown Toronto on the street or on a bus who would just yell angrily to themselves, a wall, or another human. At least the Food Secure Canada conference was great and I got to go back to my fave little jazz bar, the Rex Hotel.
You know you’ve had enough glamorous jet setting when every person you encounter while in transit drives you fucking bonkers… when all equanimity has committed suicide out the window and a zopiclone, chased with a couple glasses of wine, are your only respite from the aggravation. That was me on my way back to Budapest from Toronto. I was a little asshole.
So glad to be back in Budapest, I settled back into my riverside comfy, cozy airbnb, soooooo ready to put my head down and work my little so-so-for-a-thirty-four-year-old ass off. That evening, I went for a walk along the Danube, breathing in the fresh cool air of fall and relishing the abundance of space and the lack of street-yellers, drinking in the iconic monuments across the river displayed amidst the ethereal glow of touristy lighting displays. I was overcome with feelings of being immensely fortunate to be able to be doing this right now, abiding in this very extra special, beautiful gem of a European city whose beauty, to me, has surpassed even Vienna with it’s charm and old world shabby luxuriousness.
I might be falling in love.
Play us a little love dream, Franz, old boy:
