Thursday, October 16, 2008

Return to Civilization

Glasgow

The next morning I woke up absurdly early, found myself once again on the school bus, spent an hour in a coffee shop in portree eating a breakfast scone, and then boarded the 7 hour bus back to Glasgow. Part of the trip followed the way, and it was a bit depressing to drive a bit that had taken me a day to walk in half an hour. And a guy sat down next to me, and it took me a few minutes to recognize him as someone who had stayed in my hostel in Fort William. It's a very small world.

Back in Glasgow, I met up with Daniel, the guy from Tenessee that I had met on the walk. He had returned a few hours earlier from Inverness. I got a real shower with a real towel and real shampoo and it was amazing. We had the rest of my cheese and salsa, and then Daniel's roommates showed up - Graeme and Sandra. Graeme is from Scotland and is studying audio visual engineering at Glasgow Uni. Sandra is from Germany and is an architect. Later some of their friends showed up and it turned into a party. I spent the night on my first couch since the end of the festival - very comfy, in a lovely red nook behind the table in the kitchen. It was a bit on the short side though.

I hung out there all the next day, enjoying being inside and having electricity. That evening I walked accross Kelvingrove park to stay with Karen, whom I know through the festival. It was the end of freshers week at Glasgow, and so Stag (Student Theatre at Glasgow) was putting on a showcase to entice first year students. A note on this freshers week thing - in the UK, when people go to uni, at least 95% of them are 18 or over, meaning that they can legally drink. And so there is a week before classes begin where first years (freshers) move into the halls and then have lots of university sponsored orientation events, and get horribly drunk. Something we US freshman completely missed out on due to stupid alcohol rules.

Anyways, the showcase was fantastic and I got to see more people from the festival and got invited to the party they were having the next night. And people tried to talk me into staying to perform in the first show of the season.

Saturday, I visited the Kelvingrove museum in the morning. The building is amazing - it looks like a cathedral - but apparently was built for an event like the worlds fair. I focused mainly on the exhibits relating to scotland. The most interesting was about Charles Rene Mackintosh, who designed a huge number of buildings in Glasgow, specializing in tea rooms. I think he is most remembered for his distinctive chairs. Then I met up with Karen and I walked to Byers road - one of the shopping streets of the west end. I continued a wander into town while she returned home to do work. The party that night was great - with a theme of 1999 and lots of decorations to match. Theatre parties everywhere seem to be fairly similar. Perhaps a bit drunk, I discovered the wonder that is chips and korma sauce.

Discovering once again that a lot of cheap wine isn't good for one's head I was a bit slow in the morning, then walked into town and to the cathedral. The cathedral was nothing spectacular, but the cathedral museum, St. Mungo's had an absolutely fantastic photography exhibition on of iraqui refugees in Syria and then in Glasgow. I stood there at the end in tears, and really wished they had a catologue of the exhibition.

Having heard about the huge cemetary called the necropolis, I walked up to the gate as a large group of people were standing there. A woman asked me if I wanted a tour and so I said yes. 2 hours later I had walked all over the cemetary, and knew more about the people burried there and the symbolism of different head stones than I would have thought possible. The guides, with their very dry glaswegian humor, were great.

I returned to Karen's and then crossed Kelvingrove park again to stay with Graeme. Both Daniel and Sandra had gone to Germany. We visited an amazing tea shop just behind their flat and then wandered the west end. And I concluded that I really like Glasgow.

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