Monday, October 14, 2013

Obar Dheathain

After a week in Glasgow (posts still to come), I went to my friend's hometown of Aberdeen for a day. The mouthful you see as the post title is the Gaelic version of 'Aberdeen'.  As a point of interest - because I was getting this wrong the entirety of my time in Scotland - the Scottish Gaelic is pronounced 'gallik' not 'gaylick'. Apparently the pronunciation 'Gallik' is the Celtic language native to Scotland, whereas the language referred to by the pronunciation 'Gaylick' originates in Ireland. Who knew? 

Built almost entirely of granite from the most 
impressive monuments to the smallest tenements, Aberdeen is understandably a very grey city. This being said, it has a mind boggling number of flower beds and hanging baskets overflowing with bright blooms, stationed all over the city. It is Scotland's third most populated city, and has earned the nick names 'granite city', 'grey city' and 'silver city with the golden sands', the last one being because, as a seaport (the largest in the north-east of Scotland), it comes equipped with a lovely beach.




Aberdeen thrives primarily because of the oil industry, and also happens to have one of the busiest heliports in the world. Oil in the North sea was discovered in the 1970s, and since then Aberdeen has acquired the nicknames 'Oil Capital of Europe' and 'Energy Capital of Europe'. 




During the mid-18th to mid-20th centuries, Aberdeen's buildings incorporated locally quarried grey granite, which, because of such a high mica content, sparkles like flecks of silver in the sun. Granite was readily available, as it is the geological base for the North-east of Scotland; and also extremely durable. Once people had figured out how durable and practical it was, granite high demand, and was exported to London in particular for road surfaces. By the end of the 19th century Aberdeen was the world centre for the granite industry, and I seem to recall my friend saying that for a while, it was mandatory to build in granite, homes and offices alike. 


The manga-style statue, wish
I'd found an explanation.
On my one day visit, I experienced a street market sampling of Black Pudding, White Pudding, and Haggis. I actually quite liked the Black and White puddings, but wasn't overly sold on the haggis. All I could really distinguish flavour-wise was the pepper, but my tongue informed me that it was offended and I should cease this taste test immediately. 
Claire made sure that I saw inside the Art Gallery, which had an interesting and alternative display of arts, including a stick which someone had gone to the trouble of inserting human hair into - 'the Hairy Stick' - which, according to it's design justification, represented the fragility and pain of human relationships. I remain unconvinced and far from impressed...

There was also a manga style sculpture which I did really like, and a painting of a modern-day representation of Jesus on the cross depicting a cows skull wearing a barb-wire crown in front of a cross, with someone holding two butchers knives poised to strike on either side. Yes, I know, it sounds positively barbaric, and I wont deny it was quite a disturbing image. But it was a thought-provoking one, and the more I looked at it the more I liked the originality of the idea, and the daring portrayal of such a sacred and admittedly barbaric event. It certainly made you stop and ask "whoa, what's that all about?" 

Inside the Art Gallery is Cowdray Hall - with a memorial to soldiers. It is a peaceful place with some stunning and intriguing sculptures. 






Next on the list was Claire's favourite place to take tourists - Dunnottar Castle. A gorgeous ruin in Aberdeenshire; perched on a cliff overlooking the North sea 50 metres below, and surrounded by rolling green hills that are occupied only by beautiful Friesian cows. In keeping with the Scottish theme, I'll include that the Gaelic name for Dunnottar is Dùn Fhoithear, which means 'Fort on the shelving slope'.  


Shows how isolated the castle is -
good luck invading that in a hurry!

The ruins themselves date around the 15th and 16th centuries, but the original castle dates back to the middle ages. Its strategic position made it similar to Edinburgh castle in terms of defenses, and in the 17th century the Scottish Crown Jewels were hidden from Oliver Cromwell's army there.
Dunnottar Castle was the property of the Keiths from the 14th century, but went into decline when the last Earl decided to take part in the Jacobite rebellion in 1715, thereby forfeiting his titles. 


After this we went to Aberdeen University, specifically because I wanted a photo of the library. Now, this library design was given a certificate of excellence, and its seven storeys are collectively nothing short of jaw-on-the-floor impressive to behold, so on that front I'd give it ten out of ten for aesthetic appeal. As a functioning library though, out of ten I'd give it a minus three. You may be thinking this is a bit harsh - surely a library with seven storeys can only be a good thing?
Well, I agree, but for one flaw in the form of a giant hole. Oh yes. Smack bang in the middle of this engineering marvel is a sort of atrium, which by the way, 20% of the libraries books had to be removed to accommodate. So the students frantically studying as far up as the seventh floor have the privilege of being able to hear the conversations being held in the cafe on the ground floor. How delightful. Nothing like the endless buzz of conversation and laughing to remind you of the fun you don't have time for, and of course help you concentrate. 
Inside the library, looking up from the ground floor.
I can only conclude that whoever designed the library was either a creative genius who has never needed to spend time in one and is therefore ignorant of the 'silent' concept, or has spent so much time in one resenting the silent rule that when given the opportunity, he decided to ensure silence was unachievable. Since every student who ever needs to study there will curse the designer, I sure hope it was worth it...



I quite liked Aberdeen. We walked through a tiny area called Footdee, pronounced 'fittie' by the locals, which was gorgeous and quaint with tiny cottages and beach style houses with brightly coloured rope-knot door mats and flower beds; and beautiful vases, ornaments and flower boxes in the windows. In a children's playground on the other side, I was surprised to find a sea mine, complete with hertz horns. Dormant of course, but I do find its location in a children's playground slightly curious - can you be certain its dormant? Apparently you can. 

What did the conversation for that decision sound like I wonder?

"Now gentlemen, where shall we display this sea mine?"
"Well Doug, how dangerous is it?"
"Glad you asked Bob, a sea mine is designed to blow up ships and submarines - very impressive stuff"
"Right. And uh, what triggers it?"
"Oh, see those horns sticking out? It lies dormant until something hits one hard enough."
"Gosh. Is it safe?"
"Of course it is. Some of the ones from the 1940s can stay active for decades, but we don't think it's that old."
"Oh good. In that case, how about putting it in that playground round the corner?"
"Excellent idea Bob! All in favour..." 



Thursday, October 3, 2013

Déjà Burgh...

After a fab week in Glasgow, I thought I'd better go back to Edinburgh to refresh my memory and make sure I wasn't imagining things. 

So, at some point mid-morning, Claire and I hoofed it down to the bus station and hopped on a coach back to Edinburgh. We arrived around lunch time and were informed by our bellies that food was a priority, so I made a beeline for a hill containing an awfully steep and agonisingly long set of stairs, but housing a lovely cafe at the top. I knew I had been there quite a few times by this point but when the staff recognised me and greeted me by name, Claire was no doubt starting to wonder just how much time I had spent sitting in a cafe the previous weekend...

The Scott Monument

Having silenced our growling stomachs we decided to climb up the Scott Monument. It only cost £4 to go up, and has an amazing view of the city. Good thing, too. Once you've puffed and fought your way up the increasingly narrow spiral staircases, emerging triumphant at the very top to force yourself onto the sardine can that is the landing, which is holding at least three times as many people on it as can actually fit - there's no going back down. 
   
Views from the top of the Scott Monument








Picture, if you will, the circular landing around that very top spire, packed so full of people that bits of them are poking out between the bars. They have just climbed 287 steps to get up here, bare in mind. Now imagine the combined hilarity and panic when someone says "excuse me please, I'd like to go down" from the side of the landing furthest from the only door.

Much snarling and gnashing of teeth ensues as the entire mass starts to rotate around the spire, until eventually the person needing to exit makes it back around to the door. Not somewhere to go if you've got personal space issues or a fear of heights.

View from the top, all 200 feet of it...

So, having just walked up 287 steps, Claire graciously let me convince her that walking up Arthur's Seat with her lack of jacket and my lack of two functioning feet (my right foot ceased to function several weeks ago) was an excellent idea. Up we went. It was quite a long walk since I was, for all intents and purposes, semi-lame; but we got there and wow, what a view. And what a wind! 
While we were up there I noticed a fair few iron loops hammered into the rock, all of which had padlocks clipped on them. Since there was no chance of King Arthur coming along, the loops looked incredibly happy to be there, anchored in stone, and I can only guess they were for attaching something to the hill (perhaps yourself, given the wind), and that people were trying to start another padlock trend. 


The mysterious padlock trend...

Seriously windy! But a great view of the city.

More views from Arthur's Seat


Another iron loop. Not exactly a sword,
but certainly not going anywhere.



On Sunday we would head back to Glasgow via Stirling Castle. We stopped off at a cafe for breakfast, which turned out to be the most entertaining breakfast I myself have ever experienced. I ordered the 'yoghurt and granola' and also a croissant, since usually the granola-yoghurt combo is served in a small glass or ramekin, and I was starved.
As you can imagine, I was very confused when I was presented with an entire cereal bowl full - to the brim - of granola, and a tiny milk jug full of yoghurt. Now imagine my confusion when I was given a large soup spoon to eat it with. To be fair, I was going to need a shovel to get through all the granola, so I could sort of understand the giant spoon; but for my first meal of the day, when my mouth has only just figured out what to do with itself, the last thing I need is a wider one. 
So, I asked for a dessert spoon. The waitress explained, very apologetically, that they did not have dessert spoons, only soup spoons or teaspoons. Since if I switched to a teaspoon we were likely to be there for the next decade, I opted to stick with the soup spoon. 

Now let's ponder this for a minute. In the event that you are running a cafe and are forced to choose between soup spoons and dessert spoons, and 'soup of the day' does not feature on your menu, whereas cake and granola do, why in heaven's name you would choose the soup spoons? 


The Granola/yoghurt/honey combo...
as combined as it would ever be! 
Anyway, not to be daunted, I dug around in the bowl for a brief moment wondering if perhaps there was more yoghurt underneath and the little jug I had been given was in fact extra. But no. A recurring question between us for the next week was, "would you like some yoghurt with that granola?" Well yes actually, I would. Not to worry though, they gave me an equal portion of honey (in a nice accessible ramekin dish, curiously). It was at this point that I discovered the soup spoon was too big to fit in the tiny jug to get the yoghurt out, so I was reduced to inverting the jug and attempting to launch the contents onto my granola by way of force. 
Having unceremoniously dumped as much of it onto my cereal as I was ever going to and added the honey, it became apparent that I would now be requiring a cement -mixer. Claire had long ago finished her breakfast and could no longer look at my plight without dissolving into fits of giggles, and I was just about crying with laughter myself. Who would have imagined such a  deliciously simple breakfast could be made so complex? What a hoot. 






You'll huv hud yer tea?

 According to everyone in Scotland, if you turn up at someone's house in Edinburgh they'll invite you in, sit you down, and state the rhetorical question "you'll have had your tea" - meaning, they won't offer you any.
By contrast, if you rock up on the doorstep of a Glaswegian they'll invite you in, sit you down, and ask what you would like to drink.
View up at Edinburgh castle from street level.
We got perfect weather on this particular day,
and clouds with icy wind thereafter...
While I didn't put this theory to the test, I did notice that compared to the general public in England, the people on the streets of Edinburgh were very friendly, so I have no idea what they're all so miffed about. A skeptic pointed out to me that this could have been because all the people on the streets of Edinburgh are tourists, and upon reflection he was probably dead on. But, friendly locals or not, the whole place had a pleasant low-key sort of frenzied feel to it, as though everyone was in a rush and on their way somewhere, but not overly stressed about actually getting there on a deadline.
I really enjoyed it.



The reason I went was to have a mini-reunion with some girls I had met while in New Zealand, and it was fantastic. It was great to see some familiar faces and pretend we were back on tour and didn't have jobs (or job-hunting, for me) hanging over us. We were free to behave like complete idiots for three nights, and we did.

View of Edinburgh Castle while walking up to it.
Edinburgh is quite a beautiful, clean and exciting specimen of a capital city, with lots of side streets and alleys littered with little cafes offering a cooked lunch and home-made cakes, and bursting at the seams with freezing patrons holding steaming cups of tea. Once the sun has gone down, the pubs and restaurants fill to overflowing, and live music drifts up at you from stairways leading to bars where people with good knees and bad are dancing the night away, cider in hand.



The city is fairly easy to navigate around once you've realised that simply standing on the Royal Mile and siting where you want to end up, then walking in that direction, is not a reliable navigation solution. The Royal Mile is the highest street in the city so far as I could tell, which means you can see exactly where you want to be...while you're on it.  As soon as you start walking down that side street the place you're pursuing becomes as elusive as your earplugs at 3am in a youth hostel. The streets slope downwards, and there's no obvious point when it happens either - you just suddenly become aware, as you're taking in the shops and sights, that you no longer know what direction you're going in, you're not sure at what point your destination slipped out of view behind the hundreds of other buildings, and to find out you can either continue down the hill in the hopes of finding a map - or walk back up it to find a view. Drat, not again!

Our little gang in front of Holyrood Palace;
from left: Nicola, Sarah, Rachel and myself.
During our brief stay we traipsed up and down the Royal Mile, first going to Holyroodhouse Palace and garden, which was beautiful. Holyrood Palace is the official residence of the Monarch of the United Kingdom in Scotland, and it chills (quite impressively) in the shadow of Arthur's Seat - a seriously decent sized hill with views across the whole of Edinburgh for miles and miles. The Palace has served as a residence for Scottish Kings and Queens since the 16th century and is also used for state occasions and official entertaining, and it's not hard to see why. It is absolutely gorgeous inside. When you walk in pretty soon you go up a staircase, and the plaster ceiling above it is breathtaking - it was sculpted on a wire mesh frame and features angels in the four corners, reaching down to you, as well as bunches of fruit and animals as well - it is impressively 3 dimensional for a plaster ceiling, it's such a shame you're not allowed to take any photos in the Palace.  The Abbey next to it - Holyrood Abbey - was founded in 1128 by David I, King of Scots. It is now ruins, but still very beautiful.


We took in the interesting architecture of the Scottish Parliament, where some very curious design choices
The little chapel.
have been made; then continued up the road back to the Royal Mile to do a tour of Edinburgh Castle. Wow, what a place! The tour was fascinating, and 
the castle itself is really cool, made so mainly by the history surrounding it. Edinburgh castle is the only one never to have been breached by force, and given that it sits at the stop of a cliff meaning serious business, it's not hard to see why. Up the top is a tiny little church, which our tour guide said was a bloke's idea of the perfect place for a wedding ceremony, as you can only cram about 28 people inside it, or 12 if the bride wants an isle to walk down...


The Scottish Crown Jewels at Edinburgh Castle
 (no photos allowed, but Google solves that problem). 
At the castle, we also saw the Scottish crown jewels, and the Stone of Destiny. The jewels were stunning (much prettier than the stone), but the history behind the stone is fascinating and slightly amusing from an outsider's perspective so I'll share a little.
The Stone of Destiny at Edinburgh Castle
 (again, thank you Google).
The Stone of Destiny is also known as the Stone of Scone (pronounced 'scoon'), and also as the Coronation Stone. There is so much history attached to it I won't even try to cover it all, and there are so many versions of what happened, but my understanding of it was basically this; while it was at Scone Palace in Scotland, Monarchs would come and be sat on it for their coronation, having brought soil from their home land in their boots (it was too impractical for the King to go to everybody's homeland so they brought their land to him basically - there is now a mound where all the dirt and soil built up). The stone was borrowed (read stolen) at some point by the English and placed in a throne, then 'returned' (stolen back) about 500 years later. Can you imagine? Ha! The library would not be impressed. 




Next on the agenda was a tour of the Edinburgh Dungeons, which I would recommend to anyone even thinking of going to Edinburgh; it was sensational. The way it is presented with facts and humour by actors playing a part is just fantastic, and it's a very creative way of getting the history across. Our little gang must have had "Volunteer" stenciled on our foreheads as we hadn't even made it past the first room (being the courtroom) when our little gang was put on trial for 'Crimes of fashion,' with the punishment being 'stripped nekkid, covered in super glue, then dragged through Marcs & Spencers.'  
Further through the dungeons, once we'd finished crying with laughter, I apparently gave some poor young actor a heart attack when he yelled at us for effect during a tense moment; "Calm down! Everybody just CALM DOWN!" mere inches from my face. So, naturally, I shouted right back.

Several rooms later my neon 'volunteer' sign lit up again it seems, as I was accused of being a traitor and was  dragged up on 'stage' to be drawn and quartered. I explained that I was Australian but the actor wanted revenge, demanded a scream, and specified blood-curdling. Come on, what would you have done? I deafened the guy.  For which I was then beheaded. Happily though, he missed, and so I was be-eared instead, much to the horror of some poor child in the front row on whom the ear landed.  

It was brilliant. I will say though, if you're not a fan of the Haunted House concept, or have little kiddies, I'd put it on the back burner. There was one woman in there who was actually shaking with genuine fear, to say nothing of the poor little tackers she'd brought with her - they may never sleep again. Whatever happened to doing your research? She probably took them to see Django for goodness sake...

But let's move on shall we? We also treated ourselves to the 'Scotch Whiskey Experience' which was very interesting and informative, quite strong - at a minimum of 40%, and a great help in my decision on whether or not to become a Cooper. Having watched a video on it, if I ever meet one I shall be very impressed, and if I ever become one I shall be very sore.


The National Monument at Calton Hill.
One of the girls and I made it up Calton Hill, which had a view almost as terrific as the wind - you needed a lead weight just to stay on the ground - even my heavy camera bag blew around if I put it down! But it was worth it. Calton Hill is home to the National Monument, the Nelson Monument, the Dugald Stewart Monument, the Old Royal High School, the Robert Burns Monument, the Political Martyrs' Monument and the Observatory. How does it all fit? It's a big hill.



We spent our evenings in a vast array of pubs, restaurants and bars and managed to narrowly avoid finding out what dead-I-mean-deep-fried pizza would taste like for dinner. For those who are wondering, no I did not try a deep-fried mars bar, because of all the deep-fried options available, that wasn't one of them. Go figure.

Bye for now!