24 Jul 2012: Bacon, Brie, and Cranberries

24 Jul 2012:

Bacon, Brie, and Cranberries

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK/York, England, UK

H: 20/20 L: 13/9 Weather: Mostly Cloudy/Partly Cloudy

My hostel in Edinburgh was pretty wonderful, as you heard, and it was no exception when I was checking out - they were asking me about how my stay was, where I was going next, what I had planned, and so on.  I honestly felt a bit guilty that I hadn't done more "hostelly" things when I was staying there; all I used the place for was sleep and a place to have internet access!  I feel like it would've attracted a fun clientele to hang around.  Ah, well, the morning of your departure is not the time to have such thoughts.  Off to the train station for me.

My trip to York was even more enjoyable, believe it or not, than mine to Edinburgh.  For one, I got a bit of free Internet access.  Second, the seat in front of me was high enough up to make it possible for me to put my backpack under it, rather than putting it with the rest of the luggage.  Most importantly of all, though, there was a doggie in the seat across from me!  And it was adorable.  It was being a good doggie, so it was being quiet and just paying attention to its parents, which meant I didn't have much of a chance to say "hi" to it, but it was fun nonetheless, and represents another reason why I'm sad the US doesn't have trains.

On my way out, though, I freaked out a bit because I had no idea that doors don't open completely automatically on trains—you have to press a button—and I was at the door and it wasn't open and OH GOD I WAS STUCK ON THE TRAIN AND WHAT DO I DO.  (wait until the person on the outside presses their button, of course.)

Once I got to York, I made my way to my hostel there.  Now, though I booked my way through in hostels intentionally, because I had heard they were good places to meet people, I didn't really believe them.  However, no sooner had I checked into my hostel than I met a nice woman named Cindy, who grew up around Toronto.  We decided to head out and see the city together.  Voila!  Instant temporary travel companion.

We headed out towards the center of York to grab me lunch, and I got a "bacon, brie, and cranberry wrap", which tasted just about as ridiculous as it sounded.  Then we headed back to the train station to check out the nearby National Railway Museum.  Wow!  I don't really care about the actual physical train part of trains (my interest in them arises pretty much from 1) the fact that you can cross long distances with them without having to go through airport security and 2) the fact that they have maps!  and timetables!  and route planning!  and maps!), but even I thought that it was pretty cool, thanks in part to the helpful and engaging descriptions they gave of each train.

My favorite part of the exhibits was the Royal Mail, looking at how mail was delivered by train until about 6 years ago, because there was a ridiculous exhibit where some guy in the 1930s wrote poems about the Royal Mail being delivered by mail (?!?) and we were challenged to recite along with him.  One of the reasons why it was good, besides the fact it was just entertaining to match his "interesting" rhythm, was that, look, my research is actually practical in some way!

Yes, that's right, a whole exhibit in a museum about "Speaking Rhythms"!  I know I've been awful about posting pictures, so I might go back and add some to the posts I've already made at some point.

After much zaniness there, we headed back to the hostel to regroup and see if anyone else was interested in going out for dinner with us.  We weren't able to find anyone, so we went by ourselves, after walking past the place a couple of times because it's at the top of a little liquor shop, a restaurant called "The House of the Trembling Masses".  Yeah, that's a real name of a real place.  I know, right?  There I had some delicious fish, but unfortunately the tasty salad (Europeans do salads way better than Americans) was covered with what I think was called "insanity sauce" and made me literally start to tear up, that's how hot it was.  I think it may actually have been of a level that most people would call "moderately spicy", which is much more than I'm used to.  I also had a strawberry beer that tasted like I was drinking liquid strawberries.  Not just liquid "strawberry flavor"; literal strawberries.  Mmm.  The meal was accompanied by discussion of Cindy-from-Canada's job as a primary school teacher.  She had some interesting stories!  (before working in London, she worked in Vietnam)

Cindy-from-Canada and I made our way back to our hostel, where we chilled out and I used the time to catch up on some internet and prepare for Derby and London.  Unfortunately, though, the internet being the internet, I ended up staying up too late, making me the last to go to bed in my 10-bunk hostel.  As such, this presented a problem when I went to use the bathroom.

British people do bathrooms wrong.  Infuriatingly, many of their sinks have two taps: a hot tap and a cold tap.  In order to get a temperature in the middle, you have to stop up the drain and combine the water from the two taps in the middle.  Furthermore, lights to bathrooms are always on the outside of the bathroom rather than the inside.  As such, using the tiny bathroom within the 10-bunk room was a bit of a chore.  I had to put all my stuff in the bathroom, then swing the door open as little as possible and close the door quickly in order to make sure I didn't disturb everyone.  This required a bit of acrobatics on my part, but I did it as well as possible, used the bathroom, then open the door... only to discover that there was a light connected to the same switch on the outside of the door, so I had disturbed everyone anyway.  Argh.

23 Jul 2012: Passive-Aggressive Photography

23 Jul 2012: Passive-Aggressive Photography

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

H: 18 L: 14 Weather: Rain (sometimes heavy)

The 23rd of July was the kind of Scottish day that you hear about all the time: cool, wet, and windy.  Not exactly the most pleasant weather to be traveling in.  But Scottish people tend to not let the weather get to them, and I resolved to mimic their resolve in ignoring the rain.  Plus, I had places I wanted to see that were indoors.

First on the list was visiting the National Museum of Scotland, which was enormous and, most importantly, free, which is one of the best things about the UK.  It's a lovely place - the most random conglomeration of exhibits possible.  There were five wings to it: the natural history wing, the foreign cultures wing, the style and fashion wing, the science and technology wing, and the "LOL SCOTLAND YAY" wing.  The problem is, each wing could have been a perfectly self-respecting museum of its own, so trying to cover it all in a few hours was basically impossible.  I spent most of my time in the "LOL SCOTLAND YAY" wing, because I figured it would be the most unique to the museum, but I also checked out the natural history and science and technology wings, because why not?  It reminded me very much of Alex Smith, because everything was Celtic studies.  Everything.

I also played around with my camera settings a bit, to get the right time and to try to figure out why the camera kept taking awful pictures.  As I discovered, turning the camera to "Aquarium Mode" (which is apparently a mode) is great for museums, because it no longer thinks that the glare from overhead lights is the object I'm trying to take pictures of.  A bit odd.

Next, I met up with my friend Vasco, and we headed down to the Scottish Parliament, another thing we could see despite the rain.  Apparently tours of the Scottish Parliament were all cancelled the day that we went there for some random reason (and besides, the security guard said, we should book a week in advance.  er, yeah, oops, leaving the next day.), but we were able to wander around on our own and see the place.  It's a quite striking building, though one of its best features, its ample windows everywhere, was spoiled by the fact that the views out of the windows were largely of other parts of the building.  I'm not really sure why they did that.  The main chamber, though, is really, really impressive, and seems like it would be rather comfortable to sit in.

While we were ogling the parliament, I decided it would be a good idea to take a picture in front of the Parliament with Vasco and his girlfriend.  However, none of us are particularly straightforward, so, rather than asking someone to take a picture, we ended up saying to each other, repeatedly, "Jee, it would be nice for us to get a picture together here" and speculating whether we should ask someone to take a picture of us rather than, you know, actually following through.  Finally someone took pity on us and offered to take a picture.  Hooray for Minnesota!

After that, our random wanderings up towards the castle took us by a shopping mall, and we went in to avoid the rain.  Inside, we found a place called "Americandy", which sold what it claimed was American candy.  It wasn't entirely - neither all American (lots of British candy) nor all candy (Lucky Charms and other cereals were there in abundance).  Entertainingly, the store had some American flags on the walls, but flags with 55 stars.  I suppose the store was showing solidarity with the statehood movements for DC, Puerto Rico, Guam/the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, and the US Virgin Islands.  Happily, though, Americandy had Happy Cola, which is THE BEST CANDY EVER OMGZ AM I RIGHT SAM/PETER/JUSTIN???

After hanging out with Vasco for a while, it was time to be off for dinner with Zoe, who's going to be entering a closely-related PhD program (i.e., the Linguistics program) at Maryland this fall.  We decided to go out for fish and chips at the University of Edinburgh student union after she led me on an entertainingly informative tour of some of Edinburgh's historical sites.  Unfortunately for us, the student union was completely closed, and was instead covered in trippy-colored lights that changed quite a bit while we were standing there.  We headed to a different pub instead.

When I got back to the hostel, about to pass out, a pleasant situation awaited me in my dorm: not only was there no one else in my room, but my clothes were freshly cleaned and folded sitting by my bed!  I had dropped them off earlier that day, knowing they'd be cleaned, but I definitely wasn't expecting them to be folded as well.  It was crazy, and all for £3.50.  I definitely recommend Castle Rock if you stay in Edinburgh in the future and want to have a hostel experience!

Instead of heading to bed, though, I had to work on catching up on emails and blog posts, and my plans to get to sleep at a decent time were foiled.  Ah, well!

22 Jul 2012: Feeling like Joe Biden

22 Jul 2012:

Feeling like Joe Biden

Glasgow, Scotland, UK/Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
H: 18/21 L: 13/13 Weather: Mostly Cloudy/Mostly Cloudy

On the morning of July 22nd, I slept in a whole hour.  This was apparently significant enough that I added it as a separate bullet point on my notes of the day.  Okay then.

Next, it was off to the Kelvingrove Museum, the most highly recommended attraction in Glasgow that I cared about on Tripadvisor.  It's a bit of an everything museum: art, science, history, etc.  And it was a nice place.  Unfortunately, though, at the time I got to it, I was an hour early for it to open.  Instead, I wander over to a food stand, where I request a donut.  "We're out of donuts," says the vendor, "but we do have candy."

Okay, could someone clarify this for me?  In the US, his response was definitely very odd, particularly as right next to the candy were muffins.  In fact, something along the lines of "sorry, we're out of donuts, but we do have muffins" is pretty much the only valid answer here if he was seeking to provide an alternative.  Candy is not a viable alternative to a donut.  However, I feel like I read once that doughnuts are not considered a breakfast food in the UK; they're more like a snack.  If so, his response could be considered an entertaining portrayal of trans-Atlantic differences in cuisine.  If not, wtf?  Candy is not for breakfast.  I get a cherry muffin and eat it while wandering around.

Finally, at 11, I meet up with my friend Andrew and head inside.  We wander around aimlessly inside, mostly because we're mostly interested in talking to each other.  Public service announcement: the tartan only dates to about 1600.  They're quite new, really.  After heading out of the museum, I had some salmon pizza (!) at the restaurant across the street, which was delicious.  Andrew was a lot of fun to hang out with!  He and his partner are getting engaged, and I happened to get the scoop a bit earlier than our compatriots on the political forum we met at.  Hopefully DOMA will be repealed in time for he and his partner (a Pittsburgher) to marry and get some legal recognition by the federal government over here.  We headed out to the train station, taking half of the underground transit system of Glasgow to get there.  (Almost literally.  It is a circle.  Literally.  And we did almost a semicircular track around it.  So, yeah.)  The Glasgow Central train station is beautiful; pretty much exactly the representation of train stations that one is trained to expect from the US.  Before I knew it, it was time to be off to Edinburgh!

For more about what the trip was like, see this post, generally the stuff in allcaps.  I truly felt like I understood Joe Biden more when on the train.

Edinburgh is a very pretty city.  It's old, a lot older than Glasgow, and it shows.  At the very least, it shows in that the streets can be very, very steep, as I learned.  As I made my way precariously up the practically 45-degree slope, I finally made it to my hostel (the Castle Rock Hostel, pretty much right across the street from the castle), where it took about 20 minutes to check in.  Why?  Well, they were being super nice, and rejiggering my reservation (which I had made on two separate occasions for each night) to make sure I didn't have to move around.  I was relieved to hear it!  At Castle Rock, rooms are named—I, naturally, got the "Scottish Slang" room, specifically the "Nae Bother" bed.

I dump off my stuff and run off to the Starbucks, where I'm late to meet with Vasco, who I also know from the same political forum I know Andrew from.  (This will be a recurring theme.)  I manage to pass by it (also a recurring theme) before I double back and see it again and finally find him.  It's time for us to be off to his church for the 5:30 service.  He goes to a Free Church of Scotland service.  For some context, you should probably see this header on the church's Wiki article.  In any case, all the Psalms we sang were a capella, which was interesting; as I've learned, so much of church to me is the organ and its magical sounds, so having no instrumental accompaniment was strange.  There were also super long readings: about two and a half chapters long, total, from Acts.

I did generally enjoy the service.  At the very least, it was nice to get some Jesus during this trip.  But a couple things stuck out.  First, there was a big difference between the comments of the officials in this church—the Scottish Government just mooted a proposal to allow gay marriage in Scotland—and the comments of officials in my current church in East Lansing, where there was recently a sermon on Bible verses that included 2 Samuel 1:26:

I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother, you were very dear to me; Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.

I was much more on the side of my church!  (Don't worry, this passage is wonderfully complicated, just like every other, and the interpretation of it can be debated forever, so whatever you think about it you're probably right somehow.)

Secondly, during the service, I seemed to develop an allergy to a capella music.  Or maybe there were hordes of cats rampaging around.  I don't really know.  But my nose ran a lot, and it was frustrating!

Vasco and his girlfriend, who I met later that night, were really quite wonderful to hang out with.  We ended up going back to their apartment and watching the movie Howard the Duck, which was... special.  And not quite what I was expecting.  Somehow, I was under the impression it was a movie about a duck who travels into our universe and becomes a disco phenom, rising to prominence in the field.  It's actually a movie about a duck who comes to Earth, seduces a random disco singer, and then somehow saves the world from a very ill-defined invasion.  Er, yeah.

Other stuff happened.

Then I got to bed way too late!

21 Jul 2012: High Five Marriage Entrainment

21 Jul 2012:

High Five Marriage Entrainment

Glasgow, Scotland, UK

H: 17 L: 7 Weather: Mostly Cloudy

Breakfast on Saturday was a bit different than on previous days.  For whatever reason, Glaswegian coffee shops tend not to open until 9am on weekends.  I myself was sad for the lack of food.  Instead we stopped by a little corner store, and I picked up a package of generic brand muffins (which ended up being alright – I appreciate how pro-muffin Europe is) and a tiny little pint of milk.  The pints of milk in the UK are adorable, a bit like our quarts of milk if you blasted them with a shrink ray, and they’re perfect for drinking as a beverage.  More importantly, though, I hadn’t yet had any milk to drink since MURRKA, and, as you might imagine, my body was starved for lactose.  I was happy to appease it.

The conference was interesting again on the third day, with a particular emphasis on applied approaches.  Though I continued sometimes, er, “zoning out” a bit more than I should have, well, the Awesome Group of Awesome was good at trying to keep me awake.  That’s what groups are good for!

In the afternoon, though, I had no problem staying awake, because we had a boom stick concert.  Heard of boom sticks before?  They’re round tubes that, when pounded against the ground/chairs/other boom sticks/skulls make a single loud, pitched plonck noise.  As this was a Rhythm and Timing Concert, I suppose the organizers thought we’d be able to make a good orchestra.  The fun thing was, we actually did, at times; our “conductor” had sat next to me at dinner on Thursday, and was as vibrant then as when leading the boom sticks, and she encouraged exploration of improvisation, which for me and my Swedish friend from the Awesome Group of Awesome meant doing a lightsaber battle with the boom sticks like we were seven years old.

Wrapping up the conference was done with some pomp and circumstance: we received an official welcome from a representative from the Glasgow City Council.  Yes, you read that right: to conclude the conference, we got an official welcome (and welcome cocktail party).  The speaker, who was wearing the sort of shiny medal that British people seem to really like their officials with fancy titles to wear, made light of that in her speech.

Much to the surprise of all in the room, she was actually a friendly and engaging speaker.  Sure, she had some lines that she clearly was required to say (“as you all know, Glasgow will be hosting the Commonwealth Games in 2014”.  Americans: the what…?), but she also threw in her own entertaining anecdotes (including, for example, saying that she thought politicians should take note of the conference, especially a particularly lively presentation about speech rhythm and persuasive speech) and exuded a genuinely welcoming spirit.

After the Glasgow City Council-funded cocktail party, it was time for the dinner bazaar.  I definitely wanted to hang out with the Awesome Group of Awesome again, but I think everyone else recognized that networking should be done with as many people as possible.  In this case, this essentially amounted to merging groups together; some of us who weren’t in the group that had reservations together the previous night ended up glomming our groups together.  At one point, I gave a high five to someone, then informed him that we were now married, to which he responded, "Wait, you weren't in our group last night!"

Yes, you heard that right.  After informing someone of the fact that high fives produced marriage, his responses was not "what are you talking about?" or "wut?" or "OH GOD I'VE BEEN MARRIED TO SO MANY PEOPLE BY NOW", but something akin to "how do you know that?"  Apparently a second group independently came up with the idea that high fives are equal to hugs, much to the surprise of both groups involved.  We decided that this was an example of "entrainment", a buzzword that had been mentioned quite a bit referring to increasing neural or behavioral synchrony over time.  For example, if you find that when talking to someone from the South you start sounding more and more like a southerner, that's an example of entrainment - or, at least, it could be treated as such, because many things can be treated as entrainment.  Admittedly, they had come up with the idea at 1 in the morning, while we had at 7 in the evening, but it just goes to show that one of the reasons I waited so long to drink is that I've never really needed it to be as crazy as people become when they do.

Anyhow, about 24 of us starting walking towards a pub that was recommended by one of the students, forming a Fantastic Swarm of Wonder with members ranging from me to full professors.  As you might imagine, though, such a group on a Saturday had a hard time finding tables, well, anywhere.  So, as we moved from place to place, people began dropping off.  I tried my best to assist the "border collie" of the group (the PhD student who seemed to know where all the big places to go were) herd members of the group around (I appointed myself "vice border collie"), but, eh, that's life, we were basically never going to find somewhere big enough anyway, so whatever.

In the end, the group I went with ended up at the most hipster restaurant ever, where we split into different tables.  What do I mean by the "most hipster restaurant ever"?  Well, let me put it this way: there were two menus, one normal, and one for "food without faces" (i.e., the vegetarian menu).  Many menu items were accompanied by little comments, often in the form of deliberately bad puns, enclosed by {curly braces} |because, dear, regular parentheses are simply too mainstream|.  I had a really fun group; we talked about Minnesota, naturally—this is where I received a second opinion, that a Minnesotan accent sounds like a gay German—and I was also informed that I do a great impression of a drunk Englishman.  The Englishman who told me that could not do an American accent as well.

Later, some of us went out to a pub, where we continued the fun and mixed and matched groups a bit more. I ended up talking politics, immigration, and a certain Ms. Maggie Thatcher with someone I much respect.  I was asked, by some of the people I was sitting at the table with at the hipster restaurant, if I'd like to go clubbing with them, but I begged off, citing the fact that it was already far too late and OH GOD SLEEP PLEASE NOW.

As I was leaving, though, a couple of funny things happened.  First, I got high fived by a Glaswegian.  She was thrilled that we were giving up the table that we were leaving (admittedly, it was a wonderful table, so we all totally understood), and decided to celebrate with a high five.  This led to one of the most entertaining conversations I've had.

Me: I mean, we're married now, you know, now that we've high-fived.

Her: Great!

Me: You can come live with me in the US!

Her: You know I've always loved you!  (holds out her hands and extends them towards me)

Me: (takes her hands in mine) I know!

Her: (goes to goose me, but decides that's a bit too much and just grabs the back of my knee affectionately) See you!

Me: Bye!

Did I mention I love Glaswegians?  I love Glaswegians.  Borderline sexual harassment in the US?  Yes.  A wonderfully entertaining and somewhat flattering exchange in Glasgow?  Yes.

On the way out, the second entertaining thing happened.  The entire rest of the Fantastic Swarm of Wonder showed up en masse.  Unbeknownst to us, they had merged together again and go to the same pub.  We were just upset that we had given up our awesome table before they showed up.  I made it home happy.