Seeing Scotland

For the next couple days of my spring holiday, I decide to branch out on my own and see some famous things in Scotland people are supposed to see when they come here. You know, castles, abbeys, ruins, the usual. On Thursday I take the bus to Stirling, where I get to see one of the most famous castles in Britain. Rumor has it, whoever controlled Stirling castle, controlled Scotland. So, naturally, it's the site of lots of battles. It's also built on a hopefully inactive volcano, so I'd be pretty hard to scale, especially in armour, with swords. Luckily for me, there are some steps leading up to it.

First, though, I get distracted by an old cemetary right next to the castle. I'm a poet, OK? I'm supposed to like things other people think are weird and/or creepy. I do really like cemeteries. I think mostly because they're so quiet. And this one has some headstones that date back to the 15th century, which is pretty cool.

I digress. The castle itself, on top of its volcano, is about as reagal as castles get. The yellow building in the top picture is the color the entire thing would have been painted, more or less, with some blue, green, purple, etc. designs all around it, the tour guide informs us. These kinds
of things were much more colorful than people these days think they were, since all the paint has worn off since then. The second picture is the royal palace, where Mary Queen of Scots hung out for a bit with her grandparents, the king and queen, before she was shipped off to France.

Unfortunately, this building is closed when I'm there, since they're redoing all of it to look like it actually did back in the day. It's actually quite a project, and is taking four years. The people redoing it are doing everything by hand, exactly as it would have been done when the castle was first built. It won't be open until 6 June, but since I'm not leaving until the 10th, I'm thinking about going back to see this, the main part of the castle, which is supposed to end up being pretty spectacular.

Because this building is closed, the tour is a little short and slightly anticlimactic, but very cool nonetheless. We get to see the chapel or tapestry room, pictured above, and the Great Hall, below.
Some weavers employed at the castle are making more tapestries, and I get to watch them weave the tapestries that are going to be hung in the tapestry room eventually. It's amazing to watch. The patterns are so detailed, and the weavers have incredible focus and concentration. They're brilliant, and surprisingly mesmerizing to watch. Not boring at all, despite the seemingly tedious task with all of the small threads.

After the castle tour, I'm sort of accosted by a man at the gate who wants me to check out another tour at 2.00, this one of Archibald Campbell, the Earl of Argyll's house. Rather, his mansion. It's a free tour, so I consent, even though I know I'm going to have to book it back to the bus station to get back to St Andrews on time. For me, old houses are totally worth it. I love them.
I have a little while until the tour starts, so I check out the church next to the castle, called "The Church of the Holy Rude." It's a beautiful church on the outside, at least. It's closed until May, though, so I'm not allowed in, unfortunately. Another addition to my next trip to Stirling in June, I hope. Unsurprisingly, the church had a cemetary right next to it, so I enjoyed that, as well. Don't judge me.

Alas, it was almost time for the Campbell tour, so I made the short trek back to Stirling castle to meet for the tour. For the couple of minutes before the tour actually starts, the tour guide asks people where they're from, like they always do at places like these. I have the lucky privilege of being the only person from the States, and the guide gives me a little grief. "Ah, the colonies," he quips. He also figures out I study at the University of St Andrews, so throughout the tour, every time he mentions the U.S. (infrequently) or St Andrews (frequently, as Archibald Campbell studied there), he gives me meaningful looks and asks me if I know all the specific people he's talking about. I actually do, for the most part.
The part of the house we can actually tour is small, though the tour is a little longer than I had been told it would be. I'm thinking about my bus times, of course. We get to see the kitchens, though, which are always fascinating, and the main rooms. The dining room is the room in the photo at the left; the bedroom is the purple one below. I'm kind of in love with the entirely purple bedroom. Purple, of course, is a sign of royalty since it was the most expensive dye, so the fact that Campbell's bedroom was swathed entirely in purple, wall to wall, floor to ceiling, shows that he was pretty proud of his money.

As soon as the tour is done, I rush out. But I overestimate either my directional ability or the general ease of finding the Stirling bus station, and arrive there about ten minutes after my bus leaves. Timing: fail. I ask several unhelpful people if there's a way to get to St Andrews before 7.30. There's not, they all tell me.

That's what they think. The train station is right next to the bus stop, though, so I run over there, catch a train to Dundee, then a train to Leuchars, then a bus to St Andrews, arriving about an hour and a half before 7.30. Problem-solving: success.

"What's the rush?" you might ask. Well, I couldn't be late for my first live opera, could I? OK, before you scoff, realise that I've loved, really loved, opera since I was eight and saw Madame Butterfly on TV. I imagine my parents were a little weirded out that their 8-year-old literally couldn't tear her eyes away from Madame Butterfly, but my mom loves opera, as well, so I think they were cool about it. In any case, since that fateful day I've actually listened to a fair amount of opera music. I have several full opera soundtracks on my iPod. So when I heard La Bohéme was coming to St Andrews and that tickets were only £10 for students, I couldn't pass it up. I'd never seen opera done live before.

So I wasted several quid on the train, but in the end La Bohéme was totally worth it. I've been into this opera since I got the album for my birthday this past year, and it was even better live, of course. These things always are. But since the opera's in Italian and I didn't really know the storyline until I got to this performance, where there were some very helpful English translations, I never realised it was such a rip off of Rent. OK, I'm kidding, I swear. Since the opera was composed about 100 years before the "rock opera," as Rent likes to be called, it's pretty easy to tell which story is based off the other. Rent is really La Boheme plus AIDS and gay people.

Anyway, the opera was beautiful, and I was impressed with the small Scottish company that performed it. They've gotten a lot of good reviews, and their singing was really beautiful.

The next day, I head to Melrose, Scotland, which is near Sir Walter Scott's home. I have to take a bus to Edinburgh first, then to Galashiels (pronn. GaLAshiels), finally to Melrose, and then walk for an hour to Scott's house, called Abbotsford. Leave it to writers to live out in the middle of nowhere. It's about a five hour trip for those of us without cars, but as soon as I step into Scott's study (pictured left and below), it's immediately worth it. The walls are, literally, lined with books. Old books. Thousands of old, old books. At this point, I'm pretty sure I just walked into Heaven.

It's good that I'm here alone and not with other people who actually want to get out of the house in a timely manner, because I'm pretty sure I spend at least 20 minutes each in the study and the library (pictured below), an even bigger room, also lined totally with books. I'm super jealous of Scott's digs. The library is even better than Heaven: it's like Beauty and the Beast. Though these two rooms are about a quarter of the parts of the house available to the public, I spend more than half my time in them, looking through the titles of all the books, and, OK, you caught me, smelling them. Please try not to judge.

From seeing Scott's house and its location, it's pretty easy to see where his novels came from (I've just read Waverly in my Scottish Fiction class). The area around his house it very Scottish. Rural, dramatic, romantic, very Waverly. Very Scottish. He has all kinds of books, though - not only ones similar to those he likes to write. He read a surprising amount of philosophy. I guess its to be expected of writers. Still, Scott doesn't seem like the type to me, but what do I know?

There really are rooms other than the study and library in his house, though those were the only two I bought postcards of that I selfishly kept for myself. Pictured below is the drawing room, with some cool Chinese prints as wallpaper. Below that is Scott's pink dining room, again, pretty uncharacteristic from what I'd imagined, and just off the dining room, probably making up for the pink, the very manly red entry hall with hall sorts of weapons hung on the walls (pictured below the dining room). Scott, however, chose to die in the pink, so take that as you will.

The picture below the entryway is of the house itself, which Scott called his "Conundrum Castle," a fairly apt description of the house, as far as I can tell. If only my poems could eventually earn enough money to be able to afford a house like this. Of course, then I'd probably have to be a novelist, something I'm not sure I'm up for.

In any case, Scott has given me some proof that some poets really can make it: retaliation against my dad for the next time he offers to save the box from the next new refigerator he and my mom buy.

Reluctantly, I leave Abbotsford. Though I don't have as tight a time limit this time as I did yesterday, I have an hour walk and a 4 hour bus ride back to St Andrews, and I still want to see Melrose Abbey.

It turns out, the abbey is also worth it (it's the last two pictures at the bottom). It's in more ruins than a lot of other abbeys its age (c. 1100) because it was attacked numerous times. But even ruins are always pretty neat to see, and this abbey is especially cool, since the audio guide shows me around to see the structures of the places where the monks there meditated, were trained, ate, slept, etc. It's also the supposed burial ground of Robert the Bruce's (here just called "The Bruce") heart. Creepy, but awesome.

Eventually, it's time to head home, and this time I actually do make the bus, a good thing, since I'm taking the second to last one back home.

Here in Scotland, I'm learning, the farther away from a city you get, the less often people recognize accents that aren't British or Irish. And if they can't tell where you're from by the way you speak, they'll ask. "Where are you from?" my bus driver asks. When I tell him the States, he unabashedly says, "Really? You don't sound very American. I thought your accent was Northern European." Either this guy is clueless, or my voice has changed more than I thought since crossing the Atlantic.

The bus rides I've been taking have actually been nice. I've been able to see a good chuck of Scotland just from riding back and forth. And it really is a beautiful country. A family I speak with briefly at Abbotsford and meet again at Melrose Abbey, Americans who live in England, comment to me on the almost immediate change of landscape when driving across the border from England into Scotland. Suddenly, hills become cliffs, and it's like everything here is an exaggerated version of its English counterpart. Especially the nationalism.