A Tourist in my Own Town

The problem with blogging is, the busier you are, the less likely you are to blog, but the more you have to write about. So this is going to end up either being an extremely long post, or a quick overview of everything. I'll see how things go.

Last Sunday was taken up with a highland bus tour. Though we spent much of the time in the bus, we saw beautiful highland scenery everywhere, including Loch Tay, the longest loch (lake) in Scotland, and tasted some whiskey.

Wallace Monument in Stirling:

The southern highlands in Perthshire, where we focused our tour:

Loch Tay:

The highlands were really beautiful and wild. It's no surprise it's the setting and subject of many 18th century romantic Scottish (and even English) literature. And of course, single malt Scotch cannot be beat. Fun whiskey fact: it's actually clear. The wood barrells whiskey sits in for usually 10-20 years is what gives it its amber color, the color of the wood soaking into the liquid.

A few days after my highland tour, my friend Destiny, who is studying in Germany, arrived for a visit, so I was able to take some pictures of things I see every day.

St Andrews Castle, right across the street from my hall, and something I can see from my window:



St Salvators Chapel, right next door:




Destiny and I also checked out the St Andrews Botanical Gardens, which were beautiful, despite it still being winter (though there are flowers blooming already here, in February, green grass, and warmer temperatures).




Scotland is tropical, didn't you know?

OK, well, maybe not tropical, per se, but for the past - get this - 3 days in a row, it's been bright and sunny. All. day. long. This is incredible. Destiny is sick of hearing me blather on about how beautiful the weather is. I told her it's fake Scottish weather, and that she should move here permanently so we can have sunshine all the time. It was especially nice to have sunshine on our beach adventure.

Pictured above is Castle Sands, from which you can see St Andrews Castle, pictured below.


Of course I've taken Destiny to several of my favorite pubs and fish and chip shops close by. Of course we had haggis, as well, fried with chips, and this time I got documentation:

Then, of course, I did something every little, cliché girl dreams of: I saw a prince. Prince William, to be exact, who studied here at the University of St Andrews (geography, as I understand it) and was back with his fiancée Kate Middleton, who also went here, to open the celebrations for the University's 600th anniversary. I was incredibly lucky, and managed to snag a ticket to the speech. However, all guests had to be on their toes. No one could mess up. I don't think I've ever been to an event with a specified dress code before this but luckily the dress code was only "lounge suit or day dress" (I looked this up online and it's a little less formal than semi-formal, and a little more formal than smart-casual.) Very few things were allowed in the quad, where the Prince delivered his speech. No hats. No bags or handbags. No photography. No mobile phones. Stay in the yard and be in before dark. Cops were swarming around the town, particularly the quad and my hall, next door to the quad. There were sniffer dogs, bomb detectors, guards, snipers, barricades, and squealing girls, women, and probably men. We waited outside in our dresses and little shoes for 3 hours. The Prince walked in. We stood up. He made a speech. He made a couple of jokes. I was in the third row, in the centre, so I had a great view. He pulled a chord and the 600th anniversary plaque was unvieled. Everyone clapped. He walked out and shook some people's hands along the way. He then walked down one of the streets in town and shook hands with the public, including me. It was all very exciting. He was polite, of course, and nice, from what I could tell. He asked me how I was doing. Fantastic, of course. I was meeting a prince.

We ended the day with some fried haggis and chips and a pub crawl with lots of dark, bitter, heavy Scottish beers, some foosball, and a football match on TV.

This morning Destiny and I slept in after our pub crawl, grabbed some breakfast at a local bakery I've been wanting to try out, and set out on what ended up being a day-long walk: almost 13 kilometers or about 8 miles. We took the Fife Coastal Path, wet, muddy, often rocky terrain hugging the Scottish coast. Much of it looked like this:

and this:


but a lot of it also looked like this, the spot where we had lunch:

and we could see the town for part of the trek.

It was another beautiful, sunny day, and we saw the sun set orange over the rocks.

One of the many highlights of our adventure was a ruined harbour.


Though we got started a little late, it was worth the walk and our sore, muddy feet. The Scottish countryside is breathtaking.

The sunset is beautiful in Scotland, as well, but rare. Mostly the grey sky just gets darker. Today, though, there was an actual sun to set.


Destiny and I appreciated the invention of the wheel on our bus ride back into town. What had taken us 5 or 6 hours to walk (including, of course, getting lost a couple of embarrasing times at the beginning of the trip, taking a long lunch of bread, cheese, apples and Irish cider, stopping often to take pictures, and having to brush ourselves off after taking a spill in the mud - my demise, of course) took our bus an easy 20 minutes to clear.

Upon our return home we did exciting things like laundry, cleaning the mud off our shoes, and hitting the sack early.

St Andrews Societies

Societies, or clubs, make up the bulk of St Andrews social life, as far as I can tell. And St Andrews, I'm learning, is known in the UK for its student life. Most of the societies have meetings once a week, and after the meeting or on a different night (or both) have pub nights and/or bar crawls and/or jump in the North Sea, just for kicks.

Societies I might actually join:

1) Inklight (creative writing) Society

2) Literary Society

3) Breakaway (hill walking) Society (hill walking, better known in the United States as hiking, in different areas around Scotland, including the Isle of Skye - beautiful)

4) Music Centre

5) Swimming?

Real, live societies I want to join just to say I did:

1) Tea Society

2) Real Ale Society

3) Rave Society

4) Mostly Harmless Society

5) Harry Potter and Gin Society

6) Fine Chocolate Society

7) Fabulous Society

8) Tunnocks Caramel Wafer Appreciation Society

9) Fine Food and Dining Society

10) Teddy Bear Hospital Society

11) Wine and Cheese Society

12) Brigade for Recreating and Appreciating Steampunk Society

Haggis, Blood Sausage and Everything Else

So you wouldn't expect much culture shock travelling from the US to the UK - English-speaking to English-speaking (barring terminoligy - more of it than I had anticipated). And the shock here isn't too much to absorb; I've gotten used to much of it already, more or less. But there are definitely some things that are much different here, worth mentioning.

1) Eco-friendliness: The heat's not actually on all day; it turns off at specific times. There are many more hybrid and fuel-efficient cars than in the US - many of the busses, even, are fuel-efficient. Toilets use half the water to flush. Corridor lights turn off in my hall as soon as the sun sets (still early). Lots of little things like this that no doubt add up.

2) Space-savers: So the UK is much smaller than the US. Space-saving techniques, obviously, are more in demand, and it seems everything here is smaller. The bar for hangers in my closet goes back into the closet, rather than running across it. Beds, sinks, toilets, showers, streets, roads, sidewalks, cars are smaller. Everything is closer together.

3) Tipping: People laugh at Americans who think they have to tip bartenders. People don't do that here. And tipping for meals is different - a good tip is only about 10%. I'm assuming bartenders and waiters have a bigger salary than they do in the States, then. Taxing, too, is usually already included in the price you see in the store. I always prepare to pay extra and never have to. The Brits do, however, have heavy taxes on things like petrol (gas) - possibly for environmental reasons, which is easier here, as everything is closer together and therefore it's easier to get from one place to another (public transportation probably doesn't hurt matters, either) and, for some reason, postage stamps and mailing.

4) Dressing up: In a word, fancier. Everywhere. All the time. People do not wear sweatpants to class. People do not wear jeans to parties. People wear high heels all. the. time. I've heard a rumor this might be accentuated at posh St Andrews, but people all over the UK definitely wear nicer clothes than we do in the US. Most people here are very stylish. And then there's me.

5) Going out nights: At home it's Friday and Saturday nights, hands down. Ask people here what the most popular nights to go out are, you'll get mixed reviews - sometimes Friday is included, while Saturday usually is not. By my observations, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are pretty hot party nights. At home, only hard-core partiers (and seniors) party Tuesday or Wednesday nights.

6) Drinking: There's definitely not more drinking here than there is in the States, but people are definitely more open about it, and not just because of the drinking age. There's something about the culture in the US that is very wary of this kind of activity, that probably does more damage than good, as far as I can tell.

7) Food: Yes, I did try haggis. No, I did not hate it. Though the FDA has found it, literally, "unfit for human consumption," the biggest compaint I had was that it was too salty. Black pudding (A.K.A. blood sausage - a more accurate name since it is actually a sausage shaped into a paddy, and made with some blood in it) was a different story. It tasted simultaneously burnt, bitter and heavy. Not my cup of tea. You can stomach these types of Scottish foods fairly well if you don't think about what they're actually made of, which, to be fair, can be said about just as much American food (McDonald's, anyone?).

8) The best part about Scotland? Reading books with characters named Bailie Macwheeble and Belmawhapple.

Academic Translations

Days 8-10

Of course, every University's education system is different, but here in Scotland, the language used to describe it is more different than the system itself. If someone asks you, "What do you read?" it means, "What's your major?" A course is called a module (pronnounced "MODule") here, and a subject is called a course. So, while in the States I major in English and take courses in that subject, in Scotland I read English and take modules in that course.

While I'm here, I'm taking two honours English modules: Scottish Fiction, and Culture and Society in Modern Scotland. This is actually a normal credit load; for each module I recieve 30 credits. The lucky part is, I'm in class for a total of four hours a week. Yes, four. For Scottish Fiction, I have an hour-long lecture on Monday and an hour-long tutorial (or discussion) on Wednesday. For Culture and Society, I have a two hour session on Mondays. These four-day weekends, every weekend, will be particularly condusive to traveling. Nice.

On top of this, the English buildings (the picture in this post - the building on the left, "Castle House" or "Poetry House," is where I take my classes) are literally next door to my hall. I have already reaped the benefits of this, as the walk I had to take to my classroom on the first day, during the pouring rain, took all of three minutes. I barely had time to get wet.

All the while, though, I thought I'd be taking courses in English, that is, a language I can actually understand. Sadly, I'm not. Here's a bit of dialogue from the short story I just finished reading for class: "The Cunning Speech of Drumtochty," by Ian MacLaren:

"'An' as sure as deith a' didna ken whaur tae luick, for it was a puckle aits."

That's some phoenetic rural Scottish dialect, and definitely not English. Needless to say, the story took me about as long to read as a chapter of Le Petit Prince, in French, did in my AP French class in high school.

However, my courses are interesting so far, and luckily my professors, though both Scottish, are far easier to understand than the stuff they're making us read. So far I've been introduced, broadly, to every major movement in modern Scottish literature, its defining writers, and a history of the evolution from one literary movement to the other. While I know many, many people for whom all this would be far from interesting, I'm enjoying it.

And while I'll be the first to admit to the cushiness of my weekly schedule, it's not all fun and no class here in St Andrews. I have to read Waverly by Sir Walter Scott, in its entirety, by Monday. 500 pages in 4 days: bring it on.

In other, non-academic news, the European club scene, I have discovered, is an entirely different one from that of the U.S. A tiny bar with an even tinier dance floor, instrumental techno music, and a sign above the bar reading "8 shots for £12": a bit different than the frat party night life.

Superbowl?

Night 7

Before yesterday, I had never had to explain to anyone what the Superbowl is. Usually I'm the one to whom people have to explain sports games. But when someone asks you if the Superbowl is a bowling tournament, it's hard not to realize you're in an entirely different country. Still, I was surprised by how many people came out to watch the game (though the fact that it was the last stop of a pub crawl probably contributed enormously, but there were a fair number of non-students there, as well). I made friends with some old British guys, one of them wearing a Packers tee-shirt, the other a Wisconsin Badgers sweatshirt. It was close enough, I guess. They seemed to think it was pretty neat that I was actually from Wisconsin.

The Superbowl, contrary to popular belief, is not the same everywhere. Watching the game from a Scottish golf pub where people are downing pint after pint of real, dark beer is a bit different from the typical American scene - Miller Lite and a whole lot of potato chips. And though the announcers during the game were the regular American Fox 6 football announcers, it was certainly a strange experience to have guys with British accents analyze the game between quarters, and to have British commercials between snippets of American football. The Brits seemed to enjoy the game just as well as the Americans, so it was all good fun.

Older Scotland

Days 4-6

Scotland is pretty old, especially to an American. In my part of the world, people think New England is old because there are still buildings there from the 1700s. Here, that's new. So far, I'm getting the history here is a bigger deal than it is in the States. Not only is there more of it, but there's more of an effort to preserve it. I've read that this is particularly the case in Scotland, because of its history with England; that is, the Scots want to preserve as much of their original culture as possible. So there are obviously a lot of old traditions, as well as buildings, here - one of them being dancing.

The Ceilidh (pronn. "Kaelie") is a traditional Scottish dance in large groups of people, including traditional music and kilts (though only a few of these appeared at the one I attended the night of day 5). The closest equivalent we have in the States is a barn dance or hoe down, but the music and the dances themselves are quite different at Ceilidhs. The bottom picture is one of the Ceilidh I attended.

I dance for 3 1/2 hours and it's a good cardiovascular workout. The band (consisting of a guitar, something like a ukulele, and a drum - unfortunately, no bagpipes) calls out the steps as we go along, teaching us along the way, and we do each of the dances several times so we can get the hang of them. Halfway through, we break for stovies, corned beef and onions mixed with mashed potatoes, which is actually quite good, as far as Scottish fare goes. Several people tell me there are more of these throughout the semester, several of them put on by the Celtic Society. Apparently they're fairly popular, which makes sense, I suppose. For those of us who aren't dancers, not only is it a welcome change to see other people not knowing what to do either, but it's also nice to have specific directions on how to move.

Speaking of directions, two people ask for them on day 5, so I must look like I know what I'm doing to at least some people. I actually did know how to get where they were each headed (the music centre and library, respectively), but had just finished wandering around for a little while myself, after taking a wrong turn. I think they only asked me because I was walking on the British side of the pavement (the word "sidewalk" doesn't exist here). They both seemed surprised when I started speaking.

Saturday, day 6, a couple of friends and I visit St Andrews cathedral (the top three pictures). It's gray and rainy, so all my pictures are dark and probably hard to see, but the cathedral itself is pretty majestic, and only about two streets away from the building where I live. It was built a little while after 700 A.D., and later its stones were taken to build the town of St Andrews itself, I read. Another thing I like about the history here is that no one pretends it's more glamorous than it actually is. In the States we recreate things, reenact them, and set up rooms to look like they had when people lived there. While that's useful, there's something to be said for the cathedral that's bare except for its stones. The only things on this site have been there for thousands of years.

There's plenty here in Scotland that I wish we had in the U.S.: castles, runes, old churches, green grass, and lots of old traditions that are well kept up. So far, the only things I miss from home are fruits, vegetables, skim milk, and not having to think too hard before crossing the street.

Weather Update

By the time I finished uploading these posts, it was raining pretty heavily. Don't like the weather - wait five minutes. It'll be worse.

The View From Sallies

Here are some pictures taken out my window. The large body of water in the background is the North Sea. The old, partially demolished building just behind the trees is St Andrews Castle.

Famous Sallies

Days 2 and 3

This is St Salvators Hall (more commonly known as Sallies), the building where I live. At breakfast on day 2 (porridge) I learn it's pretty famous. Some people who have lived in this building in the past include Prince William and Kate Middleton (it's where they met), which is why, I hear, one of the bathrooms is bomb-proof. Sallies is also the token residence hall of St Andrews - when people think St Andrews dorm life, they think Sallies. Many people I've talked to think it's the best dorm to live in. Reasons for this, I've gathered, include a strong sense of community, a busy social life, a good formal ball in March, I believe, and possibly the bomb-proof bathroom. Sallies is also conveniently located just off North Street, one of the three main streets in town, and near most of the University's academic department buildings and the library. Personally, I was happy to learn of its proximity to the two English department buildings, which are both right next door. Handy during rainstorms.

Speaking of rainstorms, the weather here is crazy (or batty, as they like to say). Now, I'm from the Midwest. In Wisconsin and Illinois, where I live and go to school, respectively, they're getting about 20 inches of snow, I think. Work has been cancelled, school has been cancelled, classes have been cancelled. And we never cancel things because of the snow. Our joke is, "Don't like the weather? Wait five minutes." I know bad weather. For the Midwest, the above quote is a bit of an exaggeration, though not as much of one as some non-Midwesterners might think. Here, it is not. On my walking tour of part of the town this morning, which lasted an hour, it was first sunny and raining, then gray and windy, then gray, windy and raining, then gray and windy, and finally slightly less gray, slightly less windy, and not raining. It is now, only about two hours later, decently sunny, and fairly dry, and I'm sure there were many intermittent stages in between, while I wasn't looking.

An American girl complains to me, "That's it. I'm bringing a hairbrush with me in my purse at all times." I'm thinking of going the opposite direction and not even attempting to brush my hair in the first place. The brush's weight and space was a waste in my suitcase. And because of the dampness and rain, I'm already used to having curly, frizzy hair.

The walking tour I take around town on day 3 is a good way of getting myself oriented. St Andrews is small - as I mentioned earlier, there are only three main streets, and there are also some narrow alleys between buildings the people here like to call streets - but has several cafés, pubs, shops, and a fair number of people for its size, many of them students. The best part is the architecture (excluding the University library, which was built in the 60's). The second best part is that one of the University bookstores is called BESS (really, all capitals). I feel right at home.

After the tour, I go to the University travel office along with a couple of other JSAs. There, we can sort through and pick up brochures for trips all over the UK and Ireland, as well as pamphlets of bus times to Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, etc. The office also offers deals and student discounts. I wish they had these offices at home, though they would probably only be able to get students to Chicago and Peoria, not nearly as exciting as some of the destinations advertised here - London, Dublin, Loch Ness, the highlands, etc. Everything here is so close to everything else.

Unfortunately, this also includes toilets, showers, and other necessities, which are a little cramped, though I suppose I'll get used to it, practically having to keep my elbows tucked into my sides to fit in the shower stall. The beds are smaller, too, than what I'm used to (and I sleep on a pretty small bed by American standards). Last night I rolled over and literally felt the bed tipping towards me. It's a country in which it's difficult to be six feet tall, but I figure if the burly Scotsmen can handle it, so can I.