Trip to Edinburgh¶
Scotland - or better: Edinburgh. Home of Harry Potter, people throwing trees and man wearing skirts. To make it short: I’ve been there for a short weekend trip, following an invitation I’ve kindly been offered.
Everything looked in the beginning a bit old. Not in a bad way, I mean a kind of settled down, massive and reliable. The building I could see from my window had a brownish/gray colour and they look like a mix between the 18th century and the middle age: Castles with windows. Very interesting.
I took a free city tour, which is literally free (costs nothing), but the guides are based on tips and tried to gather that way as much impressions as I could during two days. Instant culture, eaten with spoons, skip the water.
I’ve seen the castle of Edinburgh, the Museum of Scotland and all the stuff on the free tour. I’ve done a Ghost-Tour as well (Mary Kings Close), which was mainly focused on the background information about how the lower society people lived at that time. Funny enough: Nowadays this is completely in the underground of the city and no daylight at all is reaching that place. From that tour I couldn’t take any pictures (for security reasons, since the tour is taking place under some government buildings, as they said), but feel free to follow the link to their website. By the way: There are hundreds of different tours and it’s quite difficult to figure out on which one to go. Luckily I had some hints and recommendations I could rely on. Thanks for that, folks!
I also tried the local dishes like: Haggis, fried MARS and IRN Brew. To Haggis I can say that it sounds worse than it looks. Just ignore what you’ve heard about that and eat it. It’s definitely OK. Fried MARS isn’t that way. It looks like shit (probably because frying something and Chocolate doesn’t go well together), but it tastes quite well. Irn-Brew ( a kind of lemonade) has more or less the same quality as Coke, but looks like the anti-freezing liquid you put in your car. Or the stuff that is leaking out of an nuclear power plant, if you don’t watch out. Just to make it clear: It’s worth to try all of them at least once.
But to describe it in more detail: * The free tours: These tours are really free, take about 3 to 3.5 hours in English or Spanish and are only based on tips, meaning if you don’t think it was worth any value at the end, you don’t have to pay anything. Of course you should have the courage then to go to the guide at least and thank him for the tour. Something that isn’t mentioned and will probably not mentioned on any of those tours: The guides have to pay the company they are employed at about 2 Scottish pound per attendant, no matter if they tipped or not. So if you don’t tip, the guide actually looses money at you. It’s fair that they don’t mention it at all (but it’s easy to find in the internet) in order not to make you feel guilty, but I’m questioning a bit the morality of that company. But hey: Who am I? * Edinburgh castle: Quite and expensive amount of money to get in (about 13 Scottish pound, 14 with an audio guide), but you can spend easily a couple of hours in there. No problem at all. My personal opinion is: If you don’t know anything about Scottish history at all, then it’s worth the 13 pound, but not 14. Let me explain. You get quite quickly an overview about the last couple of centuries in quite a detailed level as well. I could even surprise one of the tour guides as well with the information I just gathered in a couple of hours spending in the castle. You can also see the Honors of Scotland for real and the story behind them. It was interesting for me, definitely. * Ghost Tours: There are a couple of them. I was a bit skeptical about them, since I didn’t want to attend to one which was using effects to scare people (which of course wouldn’t work with me anyway) and just makes everything silly. The one I got recommended (The real Mary Kings Close) was more informative than scary. And that was what I wanted. Of course you got involved in some kind of mysterious story and it was quite dark the most time, but this didn’t make me uncomfortable at all and it helped as well to pick up an idea how the living conditions might have been at the time people lived at this place. Oh, by the way: The Scottish accent is quite difficult to understand in the beginning (it sounds a bit like a Dutch is speaking English for me), but after a while you get used to it. * The Scottish National Museum: A good place to start and a good place to end. This Museum is big. About six floors packed with information and an additional area with modern stuff as well. On top of it there’s a terrace with a good view about the city. Entry is free, guided tours as well. But it has still the charm of a museum: None. Though the building is quite interesting, it’s mainly walking around and reading and walking and watching and walking and reading ….
If you don’t want to afford the quits for the Castle, go there, then you’ll pick up at least something about Scotland and the Scottish history.
Things I learned: * Every bank in Scotland can make it’s own money. So there are a couple of different notes and coins around, which look different and you can’t use them anywhere else then in Scotland. * Getting used to look right and then left when you’re crossing the street is harder than you can imaging, when you grew up in a country where everybody is driving at the right/Right side of the street.’ * It’s raining a lot in Edinburgh. * The size of the coins not necessarily reflect their value. * The second famous place to have sex in Scotland are graveyards. You don’t want to know about the most famous one, believe me.
