Week 3: Towns and cities

There are words in my head and stories in my hands:

The week has been as I guess it will be from now on. Modules on Tuesday, Bodyattack on Wednesday resulting in a broken body all through Thursday, Friday, Saturday and today. Thursday I had more modules and I could barely walk down stairs. Friday I did school work for a presentation on Tuesday and had dinner with a couple of girls. Yesterday I relaxed, and today, in honor of my three weeks in Glasgow I went on a tour to St. Andrews and Dundee.
It's Valentine's Weekend (yes, there is such a thing). I'm not going to dwell too much on Valentine's because it'll simply make me angry; instead I chose to go on a tour and have fun and be happy.
I ordered the trip as an impromptu decision Thursday - what else would I have done today? Honestly, I have no idea.

It was a day of tales, myths, a lot of walking, sunshine and beautiful, cute towns.

St. Andrews

 





The trip started out at 0745 today, very early. We were supposed to sleep on the bus, but we ended up talking instead, and I don't really remember how long the trip to St. Andrews was, but we finally got there and got dropped off at the beach. Beautiful is probably the best word for this. And bloody cold. I was shivering profusely for 10 minutes before I slowly felt my fingers and toes go numb. Gary, our guide, spoke and took us around town. The first thing we did after he "let us go" was finding a coffee shop where we could warm up and wake up.
Gary had spoken of witches and the wisdom of listening to one's girlfriend/wife and of Mary Stuart, also known as Mary Queen of Scots. I already knew that story from before, but it was nice to hear about it as a spoken tale rather than reading it in a book.

Parts of the broken castle

Hot chocolate at Costa

The broken cathedral

After the coffee shop we decided to go exploring and ended up following a couple of men in kilts for 5 minutes before we ended up asking ourselves what on Earth we were actually doing and decided to go for the graveyard instead. After the graveyard we went to the harbor, then the along the coastline, down in a little alcove of a sanctuary beach were we could see the waves crashing against the rocks and look up upon the broken castle.

 

 

Seher and I

  

When we got tired of that we went back to the beach where we had been dropped off. Seher and I played around on the beach and got nice pictures.

A wee 30 minutes from St. Andrews is Dundee. Of the two towns I like St. Andrews better. It was so idyllic and actually plain cute.
Here Gary took us for another walk, talking about faeries, unicorns, lions, queens, cities, towns and poets. He took us around the city rather quickly as we didn't have that much time and it seemed pertinent to him to let us explore on our own.

  

We saw a dragon, a unicorn, a monkey, penguins, cartoon characters and a statue of Queen Victoria and Robert Burns.
The national animal in Scotland is a unicorn. Yes, it is. And yes, it is a mythical creature, but you have the vikings to thank for this. The vikings traveled far about, and once they got to Scotland they told the kings that they had seen unicorns and these animals we were stoic, beautiful, friendly and peaceful, but cornered they would also defend themselves with their horn. And they vikings brought the horns for show.


So whenever the king would feel maybe a little sick he would cut off some of the horn and mix it with his wine or beer and drink it. The horn was rumored to hold magical powers and the king of course got better immediately. This myth is not unlike the superstition today about rhino horn having the same abilities.
The real kicker here, though: the horns were in fact just horns from narwhals.




Normally, when talking about towns I would use the word city, because we don't really distinguish between towns and cities in Denmark, but in Scotland it is important as there are only 7 cities. In order to become a city you have to be granted the upgrade from town to city, and this has to be done by the queen/monarch.  The cities of Scotland are:

- Glasgow
- Edinburgh
- Aberdeen
- Dundee
- Inverness
- Perth
- Stirling




Perth was once a city and got downgraded to a town. Perth was pretty pissed about this, and then changed the name to "The town of the city of Perth". The whole name of the city then had to be changed, and the authorities was not happy about this. In the end the Queen Elizabeth just granted Perth another upgrade and it is today known as a city rather than a town.
Before Gary ended the tour of Dundee he decided to do a little poetry reading of Robert Burns. Robert Burns is a famous poet from Scotland celebrating 250 year anniversary this year. I'm tempted to say as with anything Scottish I didn't understand a word.

Gary our awesome guide

       

However, that is not true. I say Scottish here because sometimes it's not English I hear. I have never been in an English speaking country where I have had such difficulties understanding what is sometimes said, and it's not because I don't get English. I think Glaswegians are aware that they are sometimes difficult to understand, and sometimes they just mumble and speak so fast I'm just left somewhere trying to know what they said, in the end giving up on even trying.

  

There are definitely variations of Scottish, and the best versions of Scottish are almost English, borderline understandable.
Few things here are pronounced as I think, like Sauchie Hall. I would say [saushie hall] but actually it's [saukie hall]. This took me a bit by surprise and I think from now on I'll maybe just refrain from trying to pronounce words of Scottish origin.

** On a side note: These trips with Gary as your awesome guide is highly recommendable. The dude knows what he's talking about, and he has a way of making it interesting although you might already have known what he was talking about, maybe wasn't interested at all or just knew nothing about it.

            

                                 

                                  Selfie with our awesome guide 

The men with the kilts in the background