The next morning, I got out of my cramped, airless hostel room as fast as I could, and I didn’t even care that it was raining because it was refreshing. The Glasgow connection with architect and designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of those things that I knew about at one point, but then forgot about, so it was a pleasant surprise when I was looking into things to see in the city. Another pleasant surprise, after walking all the way from my hostel to the city centre (and up an alarmingly steep hill), was realizing that I had read about the Mackintosh art school when I was a teenager and recognized its great art nouveau facade from a book on architecture I used to have. Unfortunately, I was there so early in the morning that nothing was open, but I stood around in the lobby and watched as parents dropped off their children from art classes. “What age group is she? And is it 2D or sculpture?” the people who worked there would ask. I thought about how these kids probably didn’t know how lucky they were to be taking art classes in that building.
Then, frustratingly, I figured out that the Mackintosh House, which I was told I should visit, was back in the other direction from my hostel (something I could have discovered earlier and saved myself much walking if I had been organized at all) so I walked briskly back up town. All I had was the photocopied map that the hostel had given me and it was sort of annoying in that sites would be indicated by numbers but it was unclear what street the numbers were actually on, which makes a huge difference when one doesn’t know the city at all and is wandering around in the rain. As well, the map was getting mushy. I found the Mackintosh House, which had an okay selection of his furniture, but I liked seeing the art gallery that was beside it (possibly the gallery of Glasgow University?) because they had some elegant Whistlers, and a painting of a Canadian moose (done apparently by a Scot to combat the claim that the North American moose was the same species as the extinct British elk. Duh!)
I phoned my friend Siobhan, who was visiting her boyfriend in Glasgow, to see when she wanted to meet up and she told me first I should go to the Kelvingrove Museum, which I was close to. I swear I followed some signs that lied to me, because I ended up on the Glasgow University campus (and it being Saturday, no one was there) and got completely lost. I was up on a hill though, and at the bottom I could spy a building that may have been a museum (it’s hard to know in Europe though, as gorgeous neo-gothic towers could also just be post offices or public toilets) so I began the winding trek down. At the bottom of the hill a gate led out to the main road but I discovered to my alarm that it was locked. ‘What the heck?!’ I thought, ‘I got in totally freely at the top of the hill! What use is this?’ I was not going to walk all the way back up and go around and when I saw that there was an open entrance on the other side of the iron fence I decided to hop the fence. ‘That’s what boys do, right?’ I thought, ‘They hop fences when they have to. No big deal. You can do this.’
The fence was too high for me to just jump up on it, but there was a plastic garbage container close by so I very carefully (it was wet) stood on top of it and raised one foot up on the fence. Then I raised my other foot and saw that they fit perfectly in between the iron spikes. Then I slowly lowered my left foot down onto the mushy ground, but I slipped a bit and fell towards a conveniently placed tree, which a caught myself on. Only I quickly realized that, while my left foot was on the ground, my right foot was bent up behind me still on the fence. “Ow ow ow ow OW!” I whipped my head around and saw that the bottom of my jeans had been pierced by the metal spike. Although it hurt a lot (I am not particularly flexible, and my legs were still aching from the crazy amounts of walking I had done) I went to lift up my foot and dislodge my jeans. But I couldn’t bend that way, nor was I strong enough to pull up my leg any higher. Then I tried to just rip my jeans, but the hole was right by a stitch and it was stuck too. Damn you Levis brothers! ‘Okay, stay calm,’ I thought. ‘Just think. Ow ow. Okay, what can you do? Ow. How long may you have to wait until someone comes along? And what if they are teenage girls, or thugs who laugh and/or rob you. OW! And you’re getting more and more wet. Crap!’
In what must have been only a few minutes, although it felt much longer, and when I was seriously considering taking off my pants (although now when I look back, I don’t know how I would’ve managed this feat either), a middle-aged man walked by. “Excuse, sir? EXCUSE ME! Hey, sir, ummm, I was wondering if you could help me for a second. I’m kind of stuck...” The man came over, instantly saw what was wrong, lifted up my leg and helped me dislodge my jeans. “Phew!” I sighed. “Thank you so much!” “Now, for next time,” the man said in his Scottish brogue, “There’s an opening in the fence at the bottom there, so you won’t get stuck again. Good day.”
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Glasgow
It was difficult to leave Edinburgh. I had had great times there with two good friends and did not particularly want to set off on the next leg of my journey by myself (or return to Dublin at the end of the weekend, for that matter). Megan took more time off work to wander around the city with me that last morning. We went back to the National Art Gallery to see the Impressionism gallery which Alyssa and I had missed the day before, but as most of it was closed for some reason we only got to see a couple new paintings, including Gauguin’s surrealist painting of angels wrestling which I had no idea was in Scotland. As we were walking in the park, I started to point at where the fellow was singing the other day, only to spy him in the exact same spot, going at it again. I’ve since learned through fellow-Scottish travellers on facebook that he’s kind of a legend. Finally, we went to the Children’s Museum (really a toy museum) which has multitudes of creepy porcelain dolls as well as many racist ‘golliwogs’.
I bid my farewell and set off on the Scottish rails again reading Fred Kaplan’s ‘1959; The Year that Changed Everything’ to distract me from my melancholy (having firmly set aside Ian Rankin). I was a bit nervous, as I didn’t have a little Lonely Planet book for Glasgow, but I told myself that all train stations in big cities have free tourists maps at the information booths. I also should add that my legs were still very much aching from all the climbing we did in Edinburgh, and I was very stiff when I got off the train. Eventually, I found where I thought an information desk should be, but all the pamphlets were train schedules and, bizarrely, info about sites in Edinburgh, the city I had just left. I finally gave up and went to get on the bus. I usually avoid buses as they never provide maps for where they go and you are just assumed to know (I even continue to do this for strange buses in Toronto!) but the other information my hostel provided on how to get there was via bus, so I braced myself for it. As in Dublin, your bus ticket differs in price depending on where you’re going (a practice that might make sense for locals, but is infinitely more complicated for tourists) and when the driver barked at me about where I was going all I could remember was that the street name started with Woods. “Woods...bridge? Woods...lawn...?” I attempted. He shrugged his shoulders as though the words were of a foreign planet. “Alright!” I cried irritably, and made him wait as I pulled out all my hostel info from my bag. “Woods...land.” “Ah, Woodlinds. Two-thirty-five.” ‘That was so difficult, wasn’t it,’ I thought bitchily as I looked for exact change. In British sterling 2.35 is FOUR pieces of coin, a ridiculously stupid price for a standard bus fare, so I ended up giving him two pounds. As if my frustration wasn’t enough, no effort was made at all to announce the stops, so I had to crane my neck the whole journey searching for every street sign. The bus ride was less than fifteen minutes, and I definitely could have walked it.
My hostel was up on this hill overlooking the city. The streets of white Georgian townhouses were arranged in circles, unusual for Glasgow, but luckily there were signs pointing the way. After checking in and thankfully receiving a photocopied map from the guy at the desk, I stashed my stuff and headed back to city centre. I am a traveller to the bone, and as cranky as I may be I am always relieved and excited to be in a new place. I will never forget walking down the steps towards the city centre as twilight descended.
Unfortunately, not much happened the rest of that night. I had the name and directions to one gay bar but after walking all the way into the middle of town discovered (conclusively, as I walked the street three times) it was not there. I ended up at an Italian restaurant by myself, and exhausted, went back to the hostel to discover two old men in my shared room, just hanging out with the lights on. I watched TV in the lounge for a couple hours, and when I got back and the lights were still on I ignored them and got into bed with my sequined eye mask. Unfortunately, that did not shield me from the incredibly loud snoring from below me and the hours-long bed creaking from the room above.
No more shared hostel rooms.
I bid my farewell and set off on the Scottish rails again reading Fred Kaplan’s ‘1959; The Year that Changed Everything’ to distract me from my melancholy (having firmly set aside Ian Rankin). I was a bit nervous, as I didn’t have a little Lonely Planet book for Glasgow, but I told myself that all train stations in big cities have free tourists maps at the information booths. I also should add that my legs were still very much aching from all the climbing we did in Edinburgh, and I was very stiff when I got off the train. Eventually, I found where I thought an information desk should be, but all the pamphlets were train schedules and, bizarrely, info about sites in Edinburgh, the city I had just left. I finally gave up and went to get on the bus. I usually avoid buses as they never provide maps for where they go and you are just assumed to know (I even continue to do this for strange buses in Toronto!) but the other information my hostel provided on how to get there was via bus, so I braced myself for it. As in Dublin, your bus ticket differs in price depending on where you’re going (a practice that might make sense for locals, but is infinitely more complicated for tourists) and when the driver barked at me about where I was going all I could remember was that the street name started with Woods. “Woods...bridge? Woods...lawn...?” I attempted. He shrugged his shoulders as though the words were of a foreign planet. “Alright!” I cried irritably, and made him wait as I pulled out all my hostel info from my bag. “Woods...land.” “Ah, Woodlinds. Two-thirty-five.” ‘That was so difficult, wasn’t it,’ I thought bitchily as I looked for exact change. In British sterling 2.35 is FOUR pieces of coin, a ridiculously stupid price for a standard bus fare, so I ended up giving him two pounds. As if my frustration wasn’t enough, no effort was made at all to announce the stops, so I had to crane my neck the whole journey searching for every street sign. The bus ride was less than fifteen minutes, and I definitely could have walked it.
My hostel was up on this hill overlooking the city. The streets of white Georgian townhouses were arranged in circles, unusual for Glasgow, but luckily there were signs pointing the way. After checking in and thankfully receiving a photocopied map from the guy at the desk, I stashed my stuff and headed back to city centre. I am a traveller to the bone, and as cranky as I may be I am always relieved and excited to be in a new place. I will never forget walking down the steps towards the city centre as twilight descended.
Unfortunately, not much happened the rest of that night. I had the name and directions to one gay bar but after walking all the way into the middle of town discovered (conclusively, as I walked the street three times) it was not there. I ended up at an Italian restaurant by myself, and exhausted, went back to the hostel to discover two old men in my shared room, just hanging out with the lights on. I watched TV in the lounge for a couple hours, and when I got back and the lights were still on I ignored them and got into bed with my sequined eye mask. Unfortunately, that did not shield me from the incredibly loud snoring from below me and the hours-long bed creaking from the room above.
No more shared hostel rooms.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Edinburgh (cont.)
My second full day in Edinburgh began with a visit to one of the prettiest (and most shockingly cheery-staffed!) Starbucks I had ever been to. Then Alyssa and I walked up the Royal Mile once again to Edinburgh Castle, which is on a cliff and has yet more incredible views of the city. Unfortunately, it’s one of those tourist sites where you’d have to pay extra to get the little guide book about it (and the entrance was pricey enough), so neither one of us bought it. Inside we saw Mary Queen of Scots living quarters and a family tree (or thistle, in this case) of Scottish royalty going back to the 1000s. “Oh, they don’t have Wallis Simpson!” I said. “She was never queen,” Alyssa pointed out. After seeing the crown jewels and a piece of rock on which Scottish kings used to be crowned, we sat out on a picnic table by the castle walls and pieced together our combined knowledge of Scottish history (mostly Alyssa’s).
After an Indian buffet lunch, which both of us Toronto kids were craving, we eventually found the Writers Museum, which is housed in a beautiful wood-paneled home with an amazing spiral staircase. It was again educational for me as I knew basically nothing about Walter Scott, Robbie Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was around this point that it started to sink in just how ignorant I am about Scottish history. Having walked so much the day before, we both needed breaks in between sights and after viewing the art gallery (which included a Scottish collection and an absolutely hilarious art nouveau-style painting of a fey male angel) we ended up resting in the park for quite awhile. Well, it was mostly because a young man, dressed all in black, at the bottom of the valley starting singing Scottish ballads, which there don’t seem to be that many of, so it was a lot of ‘I’ll take the high rrrrrroad if you’ll take the low rrrrrroad...!’ He was holding something in his ear, which we assumed to be a headset playing his accompaniment. He was totally nonplussed at people waking by staring at him, and when this group of teenage boys starting taunting “Who’s a pouf!?” and even sat around watching him for awhile, he just kept on going. His girlfriend joined him (sometimes singing herself), and then two other friends and we gathered that they had just gotten engaged. He sat and listened to him for longer than I like to admit. I love how when travelling you can plan and plan and do all the stuff you’re supposed to do, but often the most memorable things turn out to be incredible stuff that just happens.
Still full from lunch, we ended up at a Turkish cafe at the bottom of the Royal Mile and I had my first Turkish coffee since I was in Istanbul last year. Then it was back up the Mile to do the St. Mary Close haunted tour of the underground rooms and alleyways buried beneath the Royal Mile. The Lonely Planet book said the tour was a bit cheesy and obsessed with the scatological, which it was. We learned a lot about how the old denizens of Edinburgh would throw their human waste out their windows and let it ooze down to the river. “I understand they didn’t have our technology,” I said to Alyssa. “But there HAD to be another way!” My favourite moment of the tour was when we walked into a room and our guide told us not to touch the walls. “Partly because it’s the original plaster,” he explained. “But mainly because the original plaster had ground up animal and human remains in it.” When you’re standing in the middle of that room looking at the walls, that gives you shivers up the spine.
After that, it was time to walk Alyssa to her train. I was sorry to see such a good, old friend go. She told me not to worry about my quarter-life crisis and enjoy my travels, and we’d see each other at Christmas time.
After an Indian buffet lunch, which both of us Toronto kids were craving, we eventually found the Writers Museum, which is housed in a beautiful wood-paneled home with an amazing spiral staircase. It was again educational for me as I knew basically nothing about Walter Scott, Robbie Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson. It was around this point that it started to sink in just how ignorant I am about Scottish history. Having walked so much the day before, we both needed breaks in between sights and after viewing the art gallery (which included a Scottish collection and an absolutely hilarious art nouveau-style painting of a fey male angel) we ended up resting in the park for quite awhile. Well, it was mostly because a young man, dressed all in black, at the bottom of the valley starting singing Scottish ballads, which there don’t seem to be that many of, so it was a lot of ‘I’ll take the high rrrrrroad if you’ll take the low rrrrrroad...!’ He was holding something in his ear, which we assumed to be a headset playing his accompaniment. He was totally nonplussed at people waking by staring at him, and when this group of teenage boys starting taunting “Who’s a pouf!?” and even sat around watching him for awhile, he just kept on going. His girlfriend joined him (sometimes singing herself), and then two other friends and we gathered that they had just gotten engaged. He sat and listened to him for longer than I like to admit. I love how when travelling you can plan and plan and do all the stuff you’re supposed to do, but often the most memorable things turn out to be incredible stuff that just happens.
Still full from lunch, we ended up at a Turkish cafe at the bottom of the Royal Mile and I had my first Turkish coffee since I was in Istanbul last year. Then it was back up the Mile to do the St. Mary Close haunted tour of the underground rooms and alleyways buried beneath the Royal Mile. The Lonely Planet book said the tour was a bit cheesy and obsessed with the scatological, which it was. We learned a lot about how the old denizens of Edinburgh would throw their human waste out their windows and let it ooze down to the river. “I understand they didn’t have our technology,” I said to Alyssa. “But there HAD to be another way!” My favourite moment of the tour was when we walked into a room and our guide told us not to touch the walls. “Partly because it’s the original plaster,” he explained. “But mainly because the original plaster had ground up animal and human remains in it.” When you’re standing in the middle of that room looking at the walls, that gives you shivers up the spine.
After that, it was time to walk Alyssa to her train. I was sorry to see such a good, old friend go. She told me not to worry about my quarter-life crisis and enjoy my travels, and we’d see each other at Christmas time.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Edinburgh
I have never thought that much about Scotland. I have been an Anglophile since late-childhood (shuffling around with my Agatha Christie and E.F. Benson books and using words like ‘vulgar’) and I have obviously more recently became interested in the history and culture of Ireland. But if you had asked me about Scotland I would respond with a shrug: a rowdier bunch of British-decedents with a savage history and the unfortunate legacy of their greatest citizens emigrating, and all the back and forth about whether they are part of the United Kingdom or not is rather exhausting. Plus, family tartans are kind of made up.
Now, before Mel Gibson leads a pack of blue-faced rioters at me, I have to say that I did a serious disfavour to Scotland. Edinburgh is one of the prettiest cities I have been in, with beautiful buildings, more trees than you would believe, a vibrant culture and a people with a spring in their step (in great contrast to Dubliners these days). Megan, the friend that I was staying with, absolutely loves it, and that probably rubbed off on me as well.
On my first day, after a very sound wine-and-roast-chicken-induced sleep, Megan showed me around the Old Town. Edinburgh’s city centre is divided by a lovely valley-park, which I learned once at one time the river into which all the citizen’s waste was thrown in (and by thrown in I mean thrown into the slanted alleyways and then dripped down towards the river!), but now it’s a beautiful spot to sit in the afternoon. On the one side is the New Town, which is Georgian and reminds one of London or Dublin. It’s where the good shops are, but we didn’t spend much time there as they are tearing up Princes Street in order to put in a tram. Megan informed me that you have to hate both the tram and the new modern Scottish parliament building because all Edinburghers do. On the other side is the Old Town made up of towering 17th century grey facades with chateau-details and reminds one a bit of Quebec City. The main stretch is called the Royal Mile, and because all the museums seem to be on it we spend a lot of time walking up and down it, over and over again.
We also climbed up to the very top of the flamboyantly-gothic Sir Walter Scott memorial and looked out over the whole city. Edinburgh is a place made for views. When my old friend Alyssa, whose studying in Durham, arrived, whom we almost missed at the train station in one of those thank-goodness-found-you! travelling close calls, Megan said she’d show us the foot of the giant hill called Arthur’s Seat which is at the bottom of the Royal Mile. When we got there, even though it was late afternoon and the light was fading, someone decided we should attempt a climb up. And of course once you start going up a hill you just have to get to the very top, no matter how many times you need to stop to catch your breath, which you pretend is to take pictures, because the view will make it worth it. We got to the very top at twilight, with still enough light to see the view but also getting to witness the illumination of the city’s lights. A magical moment. We took our time walking down the hill in the dark, bonding by making fun of the accents of the various places we live.
My legs ached for the next three days.
Now, before Mel Gibson leads a pack of blue-faced rioters at me, I have to say that I did a serious disfavour to Scotland. Edinburgh is one of the prettiest cities I have been in, with beautiful buildings, more trees than you would believe, a vibrant culture and a people with a spring in their step (in great contrast to Dubliners these days). Megan, the friend that I was staying with, absolutely loves it, and that probably rubbed off on me as well.
On my first day, after a very sound wine-and-roast-chicken-induced sleep, Megan showed me around the Old Town. Edinburgh’s city centre is divided by a lovely valley-park, which I learned once at one time the river into which all the citizen’s waste was thrown in (and by thrown in I mean thrown into the slanted alleyways and then dripped down towards the river!), but now it’s a beautiful spot to sit in the afternoon. On the one side is the New Town, which is Georgian and reminds one of London or Dublin. It’s where the good shops are, but we didn’t spend much time there as they are tearing up Princes Street in order to put in a tram. Megan informed me that you have to hate both the tram and the new modern Scottish parliament building because all Edinburghers do. On the other side is the Old Town made up of towering 17th century grey facades with chateau-details and reminds one a bit of Quebec City. The main stretch is called the Royal Mile, and because all the museums seem to be on it we spend a lot of time walking up and down it, over and over again.
We also climbed up to the very top of the flamboyantly-gothic Sir Walter Scott memorial and looked out over the whole city. Edinburgh is a place made for views. When my old friend Alyssa, whose studying in Durham, arrived, whom we almost missed at the train station in one of those thank-goodness-found-you! travelling close calls, Megan said she’d show us the foot of the giant hill called Arthur’s Seat which is at the bottom of the Royal Mile. When we got there, even though it was late afternoon and the light was fading, someone decided we should attempt a climb up. And of course once you start going up a hill you just have to get to the very top, no matter how many times you need to stop to catch your breath, which you pretend is to take pictures, because the view will make it worth it. We got to the very top at twilight, with still enough light to see the view but also getting to witness the illumination of the city’s lights. A magical moment. We took our time walking down the hill in the dark, bonding by making fun of the accents of the various places we live.
My legs ached for the next three days.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Belfast
Or, Now I understand why they invented airplanes.
For my trip to Scotland I decided to go the long way and see a part of Ireland that I hadn’t on my first trip here with my family two years ago. The plan was to take the train up to Belfast, spend the night there, quickly see some of the city and then take the ferry across to Stranraer, Scotland, from which a train would whisk me to Edinburgh and my friend Megan’s outstretched arms. The trip to Belfast was painless enough, but their train station is one of those that’s a bit out of the city centre, with nothing near it and no way for a newcomer who has just stumbled off their train to figure out where to go. I had to use my parent’s big-ass Lonely Planet guide to Ireland just for a rudimentary map of the city, and wandered around with my giant backpack (because, naturally, I packed too much), getting more and more frustrated that the city lacked street signs for even major streets. Also, it was a dark afternoon and the light was fading already and I did not really fancy getting lost in Belfast at night time. A group of young chav-y mothers came out of a park with their prams, and as I was passing them my backpack got hooked on a streetlamp and I flung a bit backwards, and although I recovered quickly and acted as though nothing happened, I distinctly heard one of the women go “ha!”
I found my hostel and was put in a good mood on hearing that I had my four-person room to myself. I am a traveller at heart and no matter how tired I am, I always embrace a new city and cannot wait to explore it. I set out for the city centre with a vague plan of getting dinner and seeing a bit of the city, maybe even one of those political murals from the height of the ‘Troubles’ which I remember reading about in poli-sci at Guelph.
I did not expect Belfast to be Paris. I thought it was be a bit downtrodden and derelict, but in a picturesque way, largely based on the film ‘Odd Man Out’ with Eddie Izzard-favourite James Mason as an IRA-rebel on the run from authorities in the dark and watery old city. But it turns out much has been rebuilt and not in a good way. Giant modern buildings with no shops or restaurants at pavement level line street after street. I could find barely any restaurants, and some I did weren’t open, and I got lost frequently (street signs!!) and as evening set in I got disillusioned on discovering the ‘real’ Belfast experience, so I had Chinese food. And went to see ‘Up’. Which made me cry and miss my dog.
I went back to the hostel and ended up talking to a nice Australian girl in the common room. I didn’t meet anyone at my Amsterdam hostel, and I think this is a giant difference in the sexes; girls will try to chat with people and make new friends while travelling and boys keep their head down, awkwardly avoiding any interaction. She had been travelling for almost a year with a girlfriend and said parts of it was really hard. I told her my favourite travellers’ mantra from travel writer and transgendered-pioneer Jan Morris (which I first read while stranded in a train station on the Spanish-French border, exactly when I needed to hear it): don’t worry about the inconveniences of travelling, for the things that go wrong are the salt that give travel its flavour. “Yeah,” she replied, “but if I had known about some of the things that would happen, maybe I wouldn’t have left.” “Oh! What could have been so bad that happened to you?” “Umm, my friend and I had thousands of pounds stolen from our hotel room in Spain.” “Ah... I see...”
The next morning it was raining pretty heavily, so I thought ‘Fuck the murals. I’m just going to go early to the ferry docks and get the heck out of here.’ On my way though I stopped at a cozy little restaurant and had the traditional Ulster fry breakfast: sausage, bacon, hash brown, cornbread, pancake and, oddly, half a friend tomato. The cab driver who took me to the ferry asked how I liked the city, and not knowing what to say I mumbled something about street signs and no restaurants. “Well, it’s too bad you didn’t get to see more of it. It’s a lot better than Dublin!” To which I wisely stayed quiet.
When I checked in at the ferry port everything went smoothly until the very end when the man said, “Unfortunately, due to weather conditions, we’ve put everyone on the ‘super ferry’ which will take an extra hour to get to Stranraer.” ‘Weather conditions,’ I thought. ‘You mean like RAIN? In the Irish Sea?! How unbelievable!’ All I said was, “But I already bought my train ticket to Edinburgh.” “One of our buses will take you from Stranraer to Ayr, and there you can get the train to Glasgow and make the connection to Edinburgh.” “...Thanks.” Then when I went to board and I asked the woman about how that would all work she snapped at me, “I only deal with departures!” and then was boggled by the question of whether my standard ferry ticket determined any specific areas in the boat I was to go to. “Umm, I have never taken this boat before...” I said, pleadingly, attempting to make her feel guilty for being a bitch. But they did give us all ten percent off our next ticket with them, which is going to be SO useful for me.
Still, once we were on the SUPER FERRY I got excited and despite the wind and rain stood outside on the deck and bid farewell to Ireland. When I eventually went inside I wandered the boat a bit, which was filled with mostly non-tourists; Northern Irish and Scottish people on visits with friends and family, I assumed. I was listening in to a young mother with her two kids and was surprised to find out that I only understood every couple of words. That was my first indication that I was entering a new culture. As I walked around the boat it started to rock back and forth, back and forth. I grabbed a nearby rail to steady myself, and I started to realize why we had been switched to the bigger, if slower, SUPER FERRY. After a little bit I sat down and then all of the sudden I realized I was sea sick. Back and forth, back and forth. And I appeared to be the only one. Back and forth. And a group of rowdy men sitting across from me were actually DRINKING! How did they do that? Back and forth and back and forth and back... And I did NOT want to throw up! I was not going to arrive in Edinburgh with the distinctive acidic whiff of vomit on my breath, even if slightly disguised by Juicy Fruit. So I stared at the floor, because I had heard that was what you were supposed to do. And I begged the Celtic gods to let the ship stop rocking. And I shut my eyes, and after a little while I drifted off, sitting up right. When opened my eyes an hour had passed, the boat was rocking less and we could already see the coastline of Scotland, which looked as rolling and heather-covered as the MGM art department had taught me in ‘Brigadoon’!
But then there was the bus from Stranraer to Ayr, which, although it went along the water and was very scenic, was long and twisty enough that by the end of it I felt like I might vom all over again. At Ayr I found out that I would fortunately be able to use my same train ticket, but that the train to Glasgow would take an hour, then I would have to take a city bus to Glasgow’s other train station (a fact that annoyed me to no end at the time), from which the train to Edinburgh would take another hour, clocking my entire journey at two hours longer than I planned. And Megan had put off her Canadian-Thanksgiving-in-Scotland dinner just for me!
The next three steps of the journey were uneventful enough, but seemed to take forever mostly because I wanted them to take no time. I tried to read Ian Rankin, but his cynicism about Edinburgh and its crime problems started to really get me down. I text messaged Megan telling her to start dinner if she had to. It was definitely one of those journeys that you knew you were going to kiss the ground when it was finally over. Waiting for the bus in Glasgow that would take us to our next train, a young woman asked me something and I had to get her to repeat it three times. She was asking for a lighter, but I had no idea what she was saying, because her Scottish accent made it almost into three syllables. It was as though she pronounced the ‘g’ and the ‘h’. The Scotch accent is the only one I’ve come across that sounds difficult to get out even for native Scots.
Night had fallen by the time I caught my last train, so outside the windows was dark, but I probably just missed seeing nondescript suburbs so no big lost. When I arrived I said out loud “No more public transport today!” and splurged on a cab which took me to Megan’s flat, where the preparing of Thanksgiving dinner was running late (just like at home!). She went all out, with roasted chicken (I doubt there are turkeys here), stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, garlic bread and even cranberry jelly. We ate at a little makeshift table in her bedroom and drank a lot of wine, and I was just so happy to be there.
For my trip to Scotland I decided to go the long way and see a part of Ireland that I hadn’t on my first trip here with my family two years ago. The plan was to take the train up to Belfast, spend the night there, quickly see some of the city and then take the ferry across to Stranraer, Scotland, from which a train would whisk me to Edinburgh and my friend Megan’s outstretched arms. The trip to Belfast was painless enough, but their train station is one of those that’s a bit out of the city centre, with nothing near it and no way for a newcomer who has just stumbled off their train to figure out where to go. I had to use my parent’s big-ass Lonely Planet guide to Ireland just for a rudimentary map of the city, and wandered around with my giant backpack (because, naturally, I packed too much), getting more and more frustrated that the city lacked street signs for even major streets. Also, it was a dark afternoon and the light was fading already and I did not really fancy getting lost in Belfast at night time. A group of young chav-y mothers came out of a park with their prams, and as I was passing them my backpack got hooked on a streetlamp and I flung a bit backwards, and although I recovered quickly and acted as though nothing happened, I distinctly heard one of the women go “ha!”
I found my hostel and was put in a good mood on hearing that I had my four-person room to myself. I am a traveller at heart and no matter how tired I am, I always embrace a new city and cannot wait to explore it. I set out for the city centre with a vague plan of getting dinner and seeing a bit of the city, maybe even one of those political murals from the height of the ‘Troubles’ which I remember reading about in poli-sci at Guelph.
I did not expect Belfast to be Paris. I thought it was be a bit downtrodden and derelict, but in a picturesque way, largely based on the film ‘Odd Man Out’ with Eddie Izzard-favourite James Mason as an IRA-rebel on the run from authorities in the dark and watery old city. But it turns out much has been rebuilt and not in a good way. Giant modern buildings with no shops or restaurants at pavement level line street after street. I could find barely any restaurants, and some I did weren’t open, and I got lost frequently (street signs!!) and as evening set in I got disillusioned on discovering the ‘real’ Belfast experience, so I had Chinese food. And went to see ‘Up’. Which made me cry and miss my dog.
I went back to the hostel and ended up talking to a nice Australian girl in the common room. I didn’t meet anyone at my Amsterdam hostel, and I think this is a giant difference in the sexes; girls will try to chat with people and make new friends while travelling and boys keep their head down, awkwardly avoiding any interaction. She had been travelling for almost a year with a girlfriend and said parts of it was really hard. I told her my favourite travellers’ mantra from travel writer and transgendered-pioneer Jan Morris (which I first read while stranded in a train station on the Spanish-French border, exactly when I needed to hear it): don’t worry about the inconveniences of travelling, for the things that go wrong are the salt that give travel its flavour. “Yeah,” she replied, “but if I had known about some of the things that would happen, maybe I wouldn’t have left.” “Oh! What could have been so bad that happened to you?” “Umm, my friend and I had thousands of pounds stolen from our hotel room in Spain.” “Ah... I see...”
The next morning it was raining pretty heavily, so I thought ‘Fuck the murals. I’m just going to go early to the ferry docks and get the heck out of here.’ On my way though I stopped at a cozy little restaurant and had the traditional Ulster fry breakfast: sausage, bacon, hash brown, cornbread, pancake and, oddly, half a friend tomato. The cab driver who took me to the ferry asked how I liked the city, and not knowing what to say I mumbled something about street signs and no restaurants. “Well, it’s too bad you didn’t get to see more of it. It’s a lot better than Dublin!” To which I wisely stayed quiet.
When I checked in at the ferry port everything went smoothly until the very end when the man said, “Unfortunately, due to weather conditions, we’ve put everyone on the ‘super ferry’ which will take an extra hour to get to Stranraer.” ‘Weather conditions,’ I thought. ‘You mean like RAIN? In the Irish Sea?! How unbelievable!’ All I said was, “But I already bought my train ticket to Edinburgh.” “One of our buses will take you from Stranraer to Ayr, and there you can get the train to Glasgow and make the connection to Edinburgh.” “...Thanks.” Then when I went to board and I asked the woman about how that would all work she snapped at me, “I only deal with departures!” and then was boggled by the question of whether my standard ferry ticket determined any specific areas in the boat I was to go to. “Umm, I have never taken this boat before...” I said, pleadingly, attempting to make her feel guilty for being a bitch. But they did give us all ten percent off our next ticket with them, which is going to be SO useful for me.
Still, once we were on the SUPER FERRY I got excited and despite the wind and rain stood outside on the deck and bid farewell to Ireland. When I eventually went inside I wandered the boat a bit, which was filled with mostly non-tourists; Northern Irish and Scottish people on visits with friends and family, I assumed. I was listening in to a young mother with her two kids and was surprised to find out that I only understood every couple of words. That was my first indication that I was entering a new culture. As I walked around the boat it started to rock back and forth, back and forth. I grabbed a nearby rail to steady myself, and I started to realize why we had been switched to the bigger, if slower, SUPER FERRY. After a little bit I sat down and then all of the sudden I realized I was sea sick. Back and forth, back and forth. And I appeared to be the only one. Back and forth. And a group of rowdy men sitting across from me were actually DRINKING! How did they do that? Back and forth and back and forth and back... And I did NOT want to throw up! I was not going to arrive in Edinburgh with the distinctive acidic whiff of vomit on my breath, even if slightly disguised by Juicy Fruit. So I stared at the floor, because I had heard that was what you were supposed to do. And I begged the Celtic gods to let the ship stop rocking. And I shut my eyes, and after a little while I drifted off, sitting up right. When opened my eyes an hour had passed, the boat was rocking less and we could already see the coastline of Scotland, which looked as rolling and heather-covered as the MGM art department had taught me in ‘Brigadoon’!
But then there was the bus from Stranraer to Ayr, which, although it went along the water and was very scenic, was long and twisty enough that by the end of it I felt like I might vom all over again. At Ayr I found out that I would fortunately be able to use my same train ticket, but that the train to Glasgow would take an hour, then I would have to take a city bus to Glasgow’s other train station (a fact that annoyed me to no end at the time), from which the train to Edinburgh would take another hour, clocking my entire journey at two hours longer than I planned. And Megan had put off her Canadian-Thanksgiving-in-Scotland dinner just for me!
The next three steps of the journey were uneventful enough, but seemed to take forever mostly because I wanted them to take no time. I tried to read Ian Rankin, but his cynicism about Edinburgh and its crime problems started to really get me down. I text messaged Megan telling her to start dinner if she had to. It was definitely one of those journeys that you knew you were going to kiss the ground when it was finally over. Waiting for the bus in Glasgow that would take us to our next train, a young woman asked me something and I had to get her to repeat it three times. She was asking for a lighter, but I had no idea what she was saying, because her Scottish accent made it almost into three syllables. It was as though she pronounced the ‘g’ and the ‘h’. The Scotch accent is the only one I’ve come across that sounds difficult to get out even for native Scots.
Night had fallen by the time I caught my last train, so outside the windows was dark, but I probably just missed seeing nondescript suburbs so no big lost. When I arrived I said out loud “No more public transport today!” and splurged on a cab which took me to Megan’s flat, where the preparing of Thanksgiving dinner was running late (just like at home!). She went all out, with roasted chicken (I doubt there are turkeys here), stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, garlic bread and even cranberry jelly. We ate at a little makeshift table in her bedroom and drank a lot of wine, and I was just so happy to be there.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Taking a piss
There are Irish conversational traditions I really enjoy. When I first started at the store, and would have to apologize for making a mistake on till, friendly customers would say "You're okay" or "You're grand". "Aww," I thought. "They can tell I'm getting flustered and want to reassure me that I'm grand. I gradually learned that "You're okay" means "IT'S okay" as in the situation, not a personal affirmation. Whatever, it's still cute.
But then there's other tendencies that I will not miss when I go home. Namely, the supposedly-comedic rudeness that people will show you when they are "taking a piss out of ya". I've noticed this a lot with Irish coworkers in particular. They will say something personal and pretty offensive and then will brush it off as just a joke. But the thing is, it's almost never actually funny, and no one laughs. "Taking a piss" is usually intended to deflate your ego a bit, take you down a couple pegs, but to do that it usually requires a grain of truth in the joke. Which makes it more difficult to just brush off when they tell you they're just "taking a piss out of ya" because they may have just underlined a paranoid feeling you already held.
But then there's other tendencies that I will not miss when I go home. Namely, the supposedly-comedic rudeness that people will show you when they are "taking a piss out of ya". I've noticed this a lot with Irish coworkers in particular. They will say something personal and pretty offensive and then will brush it off as just a joke. But the thing is, it's almost never actually funny, and no one laughs. "Taking a piss" is usually intended to deflate your ego a bit, take you down a couple pegs, but to do that it usually requires a grain of truth in the joke. Which makes it more difficult to just brush off when they tell you they're just "taking a piss out of ya" because they may have just underlined a paranoid feeling you already held.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
My Quarter-Life Crisis and Two Films about Americans in Europe
Last night I finally rented ‘Summertime’, the 1955 Katherine Hepburn film about a middle-aged woman who travels to Venice. I say ‘finally’ because when I was not long here my friend sent me a screenshot from the film as a postcard from Italy (and on seeing the image of Hepburn in a shop with a smiling-black-slaveboy decoration in the background, I knew it had to be Venice, as they love their smiling-black-slaveboy motifs to this day!) I was planning on renting it at some point, but I put it off because I thought it might be slow or dull, and for some reason I thought it co-starred Rock Hudson and not the charming Italian actor it actually does. Last night, though, thoroughly exhausted from two opening shifts in a row (the earlier one in which I had been accused of not giving a teenage girl the right amount of change and a posh middle-aged woman guilted me because the store was out of plastic knives) I thought it was time to curl up with my old friend Katherine.
The movie is lovely, and shot gorgeously on location. The picturesque but cramped architecture of Venice is used brilliantly as characters will rush out of scenes only to be glimpsed in the background, crossing a little bridge or running up a flight of stone steps. Having been there last year, I got very excited that the first scene took place on the same train route that we took (all the sudden, outside of the windows, all you can see is water and then you know you’re close to Venice) and I recognized other locations relatively unchanged in fifty years.
The plot concerns Hepburn, whose name in the film is Jane Hudson (but not ‘Baby’ Jane Hudson) who saved up her whole life to visit Europe alone as she’s Katherine Hepburn and a self-described ‘independent’. Of course, ultimately, she falls in love, because that’s what happens to Americans in Europe, but the best parts of the film for me where in the first half, when she wanders around by herself, trying to make conversation with other tourists she has nothing in common with, unsuccessfully attempting to wrangle invitations out for dinner, and her only friend is a little Venetian boy who follows her around trying to sell her pens and pornographic postcards as souvenirs. The film captures the conflicting feeling of being overwhelmed by beauty while being doubly lonely with no one to share it with. At one point, suppressing tears at a cafe, a woman asks her if something happened to her and she replies, “No, nothing happened. That’s the story of my life, really.” I could definitely relate.
Two nights ago, I wanted to get out of my apartment, as I was getting utterly sick of the British TV adverts I see over and over again, and we’re sharing our space with a psychologist now, who will exit her office only to light candles in our hallway to mask the smell of our cooking even at dinner time, but nothing was on at the Irish Film Institute. I looked for other possibilities and found out ‘500 Days of Summer’ was on at the Savoy, a big ugly movie theatre located on the North Side’s big ugly O’Connell street. I suddenly had the urge to not see the film alone, so I text messaged my new Brazilian co-worker slash protégé Eduardo. How much more at home does it make one feel when you have friends who are ready to go out at the spur of the moment? He was in, but wanted another film as he had seen that one, so I did more research and saw that ‘Julia and Julie’ was on at a theatre that appeared to be right in city centre, but I had never been too, and so it was decided.
‘Julia and Julie’ tells the (two) true life stories of PBS celebrity chef Julia Child and modern day would-be writer Julie Powell who starts a blog in order to document her attempting every recipe in Child’s beloved cookbook ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’. Switching back and forth through the decades, the film shows the difficulty Child went through as a wife of a diplomat living in Paris after WWII trying to find what she should do with her life (“The wives here don’t DOOOO anything!” Meryl Streep groans in Child’s bizarrely swoopy voice) and the resistance she encounters when she commits herself to becoming a French chef, intercut with Powell’s (Amy Adams) blog-writing, which is an escape from her depressing cubicle job dealing with post-9/11 insurance claims (although it’s interesting to see September 11th now being shown as a matter of life in New York in romantic comedies). As a failed novelist, Powell also has to figure out what to do with her life, until her blog and the spirit of Julia ‘save’ her. There’s a hilarious scene early on when Powell goes out to meet her upwardly-mobile friends for lunch at a trendy Manhattan restaurant and they all order ‘cob salads without...’ (‘cob salad without egg’, ‘cob salad without bacon...’, etc.) The joke is that if, as Powell at one point claims, Julia Child taught America to eat and appreciate great food, we seem to have forgotten again.
Afterwards, hungry (of course!) and not wanting to go home yet, Eduardo and I went to a trendy tapas place on George Street, shared a plate of what was essentially potatoes and meatballs, but the red wine was good, and talked about the big cities of Brazil, families’ religious backgrounds, and life after death.
‘Julia and Julie’ was good escapism, and also made me miss my Mom, who gets great pleasure from cooking and also gets great pleasure from Nora Ephron (mostly ‘When Harry Met Sally...’ and really, who doesn’t?) but it also inspired me to figure out what I’m doing with my life (or at least continue to think about it). I’m twenty-four years old, have a Masters degree in everything but name because of a French test (Julia Child failed her first French cuisine exam, which made me smile), have never had a job in a field I’m really committed to, am interested in all sorts of things (film, fashion, art, politics) but the only thing I ever do which I’m good at is write, and, like Powell in the film, I can only do that with a blog. And you wonder if even that is really getting out there. Powell writes a couple times on hers, “Who is reading this anyway?” and another time gets all excited for her first comment, which turns out to be from her Mom.
All that being said, I still have time. Julie Powell was thirty when she got famous for her blog; Julia Child in her forties when she discovered French cuisine; and Jane Hudson was middle-aged before she finally went to Venice and fell in love. I also have a supportive family, the ability to make friends quickly and North American optimistic energy, which is mostly being used to ask “For here or take-away... and what size...?” over and over and over again. But by moving to Dublin all alone I proved to myself that I could do the brave and at times difficult thing in order to have an adventure and change my life. I will be ready to come home when I do, and take some Ryerson courses which will hopefully point me in new directions, reconnect with old friends and make new ones, and, perhaps most importantly, continue to write.
I know that should be the ending, but the theme of this post got me thinking about films about Americans in Europe and how many great ones there are: ‘An American in Paris’; ‘Before Sunrise’; about five Audrey Hepburn movies, with the most popular being ‘Roman Holiday’ (okay, she’s not American technically, but the movies usually have someone like Gregory Peck also in them. Everyone should check out ‘Two for the Road’ with Audrey and Albert Finney, which tells the story of a married couple meeting, falling in love, getting older and more distant from each other through non-linear scenes from their road trips around Europe in the 1960s).
Of course, these movies usually show Paris or Rome or Vienna not as they ‘really’ are, but as the manifestation of magical old world Europe, the flipside of industrial America. This is why almost all of these movies end with the American leaving; they have to, like Dorothy clicking her heels in order to return to Kansas, because the European city was just a whimsical escape from the real world, which is, naturally, America. But that’s okay. ‘The Journey’ as an archetype is very ancient, most likely the very first story, and we need it as much as early humans did to encourage us to venture into the unknown.
The movie is lovely, and shot gorgeously on location. The picturesque but cramped architecture of Venice is used brilliantly as characters will rush out of scenes only to be glimpsed in the background, crossing a little bridge or running up a flight of stone steps. Having been there last year, I got very excited that the first scene took place on the same train route that we took (all the sudden, outside of the windows, all you can see is water and then you know you’re close to Venice) and I recognized other locations relatively unchanged in fifty years.
The plot concerns Hepburn, whose name in the film is Jane Hudson (but not ‘Baby’ Jane Hudson) who saved up her whole life to visit Europe alone as she’s Katherine Hepburn and a self-described ‘independent’. Of course, ultimately, she falls in love, because that’s what happens to Americans in Europe, but the best parts of the film for me where in the first half, when she wanders around by herself, trying to make conversation with other tourists she has nothing in common with, unsuccessfully attempting to wrangle invitations out for dinner, and her only friend is a little Venetian boy who follows her around trying to sell her pens and pornographic postcards as souvenirs. The film captures the conflicting feeling of being overwhelmed by beauty while being doubly lonely with no one to share it with. At one point, suppressing tears at a cafe, a woman asks her if something happened to her and she replies, “No, nothing happened. That’s the story of my life, really.” I could definitely relate.
Two nights ago, I wanted to get out of my apartment, as I was getting utterly sick of the British TV adverts I see over and over again, and we’re sharing our space with a psychologist now, who will exit her office only to light candles in our hallway to mask the smell of our cooking even at dinner time, but nothing was on at the Irish Film Institute. I looked for other possibilities and found out ‘500 Days of Summer’ was on at the Savoy, a big ugly movie theatre located on the North Side’s big ugly O’Connell street. I suddenly had the urge to not see the film alone, so I text messaged my new Brazilian co-worker slash protégé Eduardo. How much more at home does it make one feel when you have friends who are ready to go out at the spur of the moment? He was in, but wanted another film as he had seen that one, so I did more research and saw that ‘Julia and Julie’ was on at a theatre that appeared to be right in city centre, but I had never been too, and so it was decided.
‘Julia and Julie’ tells the (two) true life stories of PBS celebrity chef Julia Child and modern day would-be writer Julie Powell who starts a blog in order to document her attempting every recipe in Child’s beloved cookbook ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’. Switching back and forth through the decades, the film shows the difficulty Child went through as a wife of a diplomat living in Paris after WWII trying to find what she should do with her life (“The wives here don’t DOOOO anything!” Meryl Streep groans in Child’s bizarrely swoopy voice) and the resistance she encounters when she commits herself to becoming a French chef, intercut with Powell’s (Amy Adams) blog-writing, which is an escape from her depressing cubicle job dealing with post-9/11 insurance claims (although it’s interesting to see September 11th now being shown as a matter of life in New York in romantic comedies). As a failed novelist, Powell also has to figure out what to do with her life, until her blog and the spirit of Julia ‘save’ her. There’s a hilarious scene early on when Powell goes out to meet her upwardly-mobile friends for lunch at a trendy Manhattan restaurant and they all order ‘cob salads without...’ (‘cob salad without egg’, ‘cob salad without bacon...’, etc.) The joke is that if, as Powell at one point claims, Julia Child taught America to eat and appreciate great food, we seem to have forgotten again.
Afterwards, hungry (of course!) and not wanting to go home yet, Eduardo and I went to a trendy tapas place on George Street, shared a plate of what was essentially potatoes and meatballs, but the red wine was good, and talked about the big cities of Brazil, families’ religious backgrounds, and life after death.
‘Julia and Julie’ was good escapism, and also made me miss my Mom, who gets great pleasure from cooking and also gets great pleasure from Nora Ephron (mostly ‘When Harry Met Sally...’ and really, who doesn’t?) but it also inspired me to figure out what I’m doing with my life (or at least continue to think about it). I’m twenty-four years old, have a Masters degree in everything but name because of a French test (Julia Child failed her first French cuisine exam, which made me smile), have never had a job in a field I’m really committed to, am interested in all sorts of things (film, fashion, art, politics) but the only thing I ever do which I’m good at is write, and, like Powell in the film, I can only do that with a blog. And you wonder if even that is really getting out there. Powell writes a couple times on hers, “Who is reading this anyway?” and another time gets all excited for her first comment, which turns out to be from her Mom.
All that being said, I still have time. Julie Powell was thirty when she got famous for her blog; Julia Child in her forties when she discovered French cuisine; and Jane Hudson was middle-aged before she finally went to Venice and fell in love. I also have a supportive family, the ability to make friends quickly and North American optimistic energy, which is mostly being used to ask “For here or take-away... and what size...?” over and over and over again. But by moving to Dublin all alone I proved to myself that I could do the brave and at times difficult thing in order to have an adventure and change my life. I will be ready to come home when I do, and take some Ryerson courses which will hopefully point me in new directions, reconnect with old friends and make new ones, and, perhaps most importantly, continue to write.
I know that should be the ending, but the theme of this post got me thinking about films about Americans in Europe and how many great ones there are: ‘An American in Paris’; ‘Before Sunrise’; about five Audrey Hepburn movies, with the most popular being ‘Roman Holiday’ (okay, she’s not American technically, but the movies usually have someone like Gregory Peck also in them. Everyone should check out ‘Two for the Road’ with Audrey and Albert Finney, which tells the story of a married couple meeting, falling in love, getting older and more distant from each other through non-linear scenes from their road trips around Europe in the 1960s).
Of course, these movies usually show Paris or Rome or Vienna not as they ‘really’ are, but as the manifestation of magical old world Europe, the flipside of industrial America. This is why almost all of these movies end with the American leaving; they have to, like Dorothy clicking her heels in order to return to Kansas, because the European city was just a whimsical escape from the real world, which is, naturally, America. But that’s okay. ‘The Journey’ as an archetype is very ancient, most likely the very first story, and we need it as much as early humans did to encourage us to venture into the unknown.
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