Today was a lovely day.
And why wouldn’t it be? I’m in Edinburgh. And this city is… what’s the word? Magical.
I arrived here yesterday afternoon, via bus, New Year’s hangover fully intact.
Even the hangover couldn’t detract from the feeling of awe, of wonder, that just gushes from the streets of the Scottish capital.
I headed straight to the house of my host, a Taiwanese guy named Yan who has been living here for the last 7 years. Yan is a botanist, and an extremely interesting fellow. He originally came here to study, to earn his master’s–but through some form of witchcraft, or perhaps a clerical error on their end, his school allowed him to skip his master’s degree and jump right into a PhD program. Which means that he’s somewhat of a genius when it comes to plants; his house is covered in them. He has so many plants decorating the inside of his house, that he’s unable to take a vacation for longer than one week. Who, then, would water the plants? These plants need their food, damnit.
So in lieu of travel, Yan has opened his house to travelers like myself, of which he shelters and enthusiastically shares stories and local history with.
Yan the man
My first two days in Edinburgh have been spent primarily getting to know Yan, and getting to know this city. And let me just say: I am immensely impressed with this place. To the point that, as critical as I can be on any new city I visit, I can find almost no faults with the place.
Yan’s flat is centrally located, a couple of blocks from the central park of Edinburgh, called “The Meadows.” The park has been wet and marsh-like, thanks to some inclement weather that seems fairly regular for the season. But this has not deterred runners, people playing with dogs, and people playing free outdoor mini-golf. I imagine the park to be heavenly in the summer.
Yan and I took a little stroll through the park, and made a visit to the very large, very impressive University of Edinburgh, which was built here back before the city was really a city. The University was constructed in 1582, in the countryside, and throughout history, little by little, this city has caught up to meet the needs of the school.
From one corner in the city center, we could see four churches on one street alone. But what was once a deeply religious city has become more of a religiously apathetic one. But the churches remained, and thus, the churches found alternate uses. One of the churches was given to the students, and is now a theater for performing arts. Another church became a bar, a Frankenstein themed bar, with a 20 foot tall Frankenstein monster greeting you at the entrance, a big screen showing the 1931 Universal film on loop, and a special tunnel overhead that, every hour, after the lights dim and some scary foreboding music plays, Frankenstein himself pops out of and scares the shit out of everyone inside. It’s mental.
We marched on to the main castle, the highest vantage point of the city. Even from the outside it has the sense of an iron-fisted, physically imposing stronghold, that watches over and protects the city below.
At the seat of the castle is the old town, a stone-paved street lined with shops, pubs, various museums, and healthy amount of tourists that never feels too touristy. Several of the shops have numbers carved into the stone archway overhead–1740 or such–indicating the year they were built. They have modernized without compromising, and there are stories of Starbucks, of the Virgin Hotel wanting to buy the property of some historic space, but being denied by the city, which is always nice, hearing about a city with a backbone, of turning down money to stay authentic.
The Greyfriars Kirkyard is a church flanked by a cemetery, where people were regularly buried in the 1800’s–until parties from the nearby medical school, eager to learn more about human anatomy–would rob the graves and steal the bodies to be used in public dissections. Apparently body pilfering was such a big thing here that they started locking bodies under the earth with cast-iron grills.
In the nearby Prince Street, situated along side a large, lush green plot of land (once a lake filled with sludge and sewage), there are now amusement rides, Christmas markets, and a giant carousel that lights up extravagantly at night, really adding to the whole picturesque quality Edinburgh has day or night.
New Town has a ton of pubs, one of which me, Yan, and another American Couchsurfer visited today called The Auld Hundreds. Auld, as in Auld Lang Sine, means “old,” and is a Scottish term. Many authors and great minds came from this city, such as Arthur Conan Doyle, and the guy that wrote “Treasure Island.” Also the guy that created anesthesia.
We concluded our tour today at a pub called Sandy Bells, filled with locals, some of whom looked like they haven’t left since the creation of Corn Flakes. The pints were cheap and a guitarist, a singer, and a trumpet-(ist?) serenated the bar and the dogs that stumbled around its tiny walls freely. An American guy bought me a glass of scotch which I sipped reluctantly, because I will not turn down a free glass of alcohol, although–yikes, how can people drink this shit?
All in all, it was a good couple of days here, and I’m absolutely ecstatic that I’ve got two more days here.
I’m still figuring out the Scottish people, and while I previously mentioned how I adore their silly accents, I’ll get around to the more general observations before I leave. I’ll leave you with one curious fact:
Did you know that UK regulations forbid the household bathrooms from having light switches on on the inside of the bathroom? They always have to be outside. Weird, huh?
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