The Engstrand 2006 Sojourn in Scotland
(Gary's narrative)
As I mentioned in last year's letter, from January
6 to May 11 I had a professional leave from the University
of Minnesota to work at the University of Edinburgh
in Edinburgh, Scotland. Naturally, I kept notes and wrote emails to a
few friends and relatives; here's an account of our travels and experiences,
more or less in chronological order (although not obsessively so).
We lived in a flat that was good-sized and about a
mile from my office (and from central Edinburgh, which is where my office and
much of the University is). The flat was
on the third floor, and there was no elevator, so we got to walk stairs a good
amount. It was what is called a tenement
flat; the term there doesn’t carry the negative connotation it does in the
U.S., but simply refers to apartments in multi-story buildings. The one we were in is 4 stories, runs the
length of the entire block, and was built in the 1880s. All the ceilings were 12-13 feet high, with
ornate moldings at the corners; the rooms seemed cavernous. Contrary to what we were told, there was heat
in all the rooms (quite modern radiators)—but the heat was only on from 7-10
a.m. and 5-8 p.m. (by our choice—we had an £80 limit on utilities, which was
about $150, and didn't want to spend a lot of money on heat when we were
already paying a lot for rent). That
wasn't too much of a problem, although it got cold a few times during the day
when Pat was alone at the flat. The flat
also had functional interior wood shutters, which we closed every day when the
sun went down because there was significant heat loss through the very large
single-paned-glass windows in every room if we didn’t.
We moved backwards about
50 years in appliances. No dishwasher,
no clothes dryer, a washing machine that took about 2 hours to do a small load,
and a single bathroom with a small shower in the bath. The clothes lines were stretched out on a
frame that is raised and lowered by pulley above the kitchen table. For all of this we had the privilege of
paying about $2500 per month.
Elliott attended school for a semester while we
were there; we looked at his school out our kitchen window, so he didn’t have
far to walk. I thought he would be
rather perplexed about how this would work out, but he took to James
Gillespie’s High School reasonably well and even made a couple of acquaintances
after the first few days. He would get
up and be cheerful in the morning. His
history classes took quite a leap—from the Roman Empire (in Minneapolis) to the
rise of Hitler in Germany (in Edinburgh).
I told him he missed a few centuries of history in there. He LOVED the fact that school was out at noon
on Fridays.
The weather in Edinburgh
was not as cold as predicted. The rose
bushes were blooming, there were green leaves on bushes, and the grass was green,
although the deciduous trees were bare. When the wind blew and it rained, which happened
every once in awhile, it was a little on the chilling side, but it was certainly
no worse than a Minnesota winter. I realized, after re-reading part of The
Rough Guide to Scotland, that we should not have been surprised at the
temperatures there. The average high
temperature for January is 43º, with very similar numbers for February (44º)
and March (47º). By contrast, for
Minneapolis those three months the average highs are 21, 27, and 39 degrees.
Nor was the day all THAT much shorter than in
Minnesota (although we had been warned it would be). When we first arrived, it was fully light in
the morning about 8:30 and dark about 4:30.
As our stay progressed, however, the difference in latitude made itself
known. We were told that at the time of
the summer solstice on June 21 (we were not there then, since we returned in
mid-May), it does not get dark until close to midnight and begins getting light
again between 2:00 and 3:00 in the morning.
Edinburgh, few realize, is on the same latitude as Anchorage,
Alaska—about 750 miles north of Minneapolis.
When we left in May, it was light at perhaps 5:00 in the morning and did
not get dark until 10:00 at night—so when we returned to Minneapolis, we LOST
daylight, because it got light later in the morning and got dark earlier in the
evening!
We walked all over the place, including during the
first week to the grocery store (all 4 of us) about a mile away. Pat and Krystin (when she was in Edinburgh
and not traveling on the continent) walked much more because they had no
commitments during the day. My mile walk
to the office, much of which was through one of the large central parks in
Edinburgh, was an extremely pleasant journey.
I would never think about walking that far in Minneapolis; it never even
dawned on me to drive in Edinburgh.
It was a production to open
a bank account. It was tough because
they (I suppose like banks now all over the civilized world) are worried about
money laundering, either for terrorists or drug dealers. But I wanted a local account because I didn't
want to keep paying exchange charges on our visa or cash withdrawals.
The building I worked in is the oldest on campus,
begun in 1789 and finished in about 1820 (delayed by the Napoleonic Wars). The lobbies and hallways are large, marble,
carpeted, ornate, with chandeliers, and hung with oil paintings of previous
faculty and administrators. The interior
lobby of the building rises to the ceiling and a skylight (3 stories) and a
large staircase encircles it. There was
no heat in the hallways and restrooms, so they were quite cold during the
winter months! The meeting rooms are
hung with heavy navy drapes, also have ornate moldings and paneling, chandeliers,
thick carpeting, and oval oak tables. I
felt every day that I had come into the manor house of a wealthy Scots nobleman
from the 19th Century.
Although I was sure this could be repeated
in any number of European (or even some very old American) universities, I
still want to relate the anecdote. I
went to a seminar on reforming university business practices. The meeting was in St.
Leonard’s Hall, in St. Trinnean’s Room (the names alone one would
never find in a public university in the US). The walls were all inlaid panelling, the
ceiling (again 12 feet) was panelled, gilt and gilded, there were drapes from
floor to ceiling over large windows, there was a fireplace, the carpeting was
thick, and the walls had oil paintings.
The other rooms in the building looked the same. We just don’t have such charming facilities,
at least not at the University
of Minnesota.
Apropos our immediate neighbourhood
in Edinburgh (Marchmont), there was this niggling thought in the back of my
mind that the “tenement flat” buildings we lived in and were surrounded by were
vaguely familiar. I finally realized
while walking to the University one morning what they resemble (which will be
understandable to those who know the U of M Minneapolis campus): Folwell Hall.
Imagine a 500-600-foot version of Folwell running the entire length of
long city blocks, on both sides of the street and around the corners, including
hundreds of chimneys and bay windows. There
are entrances every 30-40 feet, between the bays, and there are neat lawns or
gardens about 10’ deep in front of the buildings, then the sidewalk.
At lunch on our first Friday I ate
the dreaded haggis with a U of E colleague.
Actually, it was very good. It
was prepared at a restaurant that focuses on Scottish food, and my colleague
said it was very well done. But I liked
it, much to my surprise. (I don’t think
it’s very good for you—a real artery-blocker if ever there was one—so I didn't
eat much of it, but at least I could eat it if I found it at social
events.) Pat ate some over the same
weekend as well—“haggis, neeps & tatties” is the menu item—and thought it
was quite good. (That’s haggis, whipped
rutabaga,
and whipped potatoes, in a three-layer cyclindrical mound that appears on your
plate.)
* * *
Our second weekend we did what might
be considered the three “big” tourist attractions in the city: the Edinburgh
Castle, the Holyroodhouse Palace,
and Arthur’s Seat. The latter is the
remains of an extinct volcano, one of a couple of hills that dominate the Edinburgh skyline. (The name is a curiosity, because it has no
known connection to the Arthurian legends.)
It is 823 feet high and provides, as one would guess, spectacular views
of Edinburgh,
the Firth of Forth, and the surrounding countryside. Both Elliott and I managed to take a fall on
our rumps and ended up with dirt spots on our seats. One thing that struck me was how close
farmland is to central Edinburgh—the
view from Arthur’s Seat is not uninterrupted miles of city and suburb.
Holyroodhouse
Palace is one of the royal residences;
Queen Victoria
began the tradition of the monarch visiting in the 1850s, and Queen Elizabeth
stays there for a period every July en route to her summer palace at Balmoral
in the Scottish Highlands. It has a
rather lively and violent history, including the time when Mary, Queen of
Scots’ secretary, David Rizzio, was dragged from dinner with her and others and
stabbed to death by a group that included Lord Darnley, Mary’s husband. Or at least Darnley was implicated. He himself was later strangled and the
building he was killed in blown up (perhaps to try to disguise the fact that he
had been strangled). Mary herself ended
up a prisoner of Queen Elizabeth, after she fled Scotland
after marrying an extremely unpopular man, and Elizabeth reluctantly had her executed for
treason after 19 years of imprisonment in various castles. The palace is set on lovely grounds, right
next to Arthur’s Seat, and across the street from the boondoggle that is the
new Scottish parliament building.
Elliott finally got to see a real
live castle. Edinburgh Castle
was besieged a number of times (last in 1689), damaged, rebuilt, and used as a
redoubt for harried monarchs. It is
clear why the monarchs would rather have lived in the palace than the
castle. The castle is high on
nearly-impregnable ground in the center of Edinburgh (the Royal Mile, almost exactly a
mile, runs between the palace and the castle, and forms the center of the
city), and was no doubt drafty and uncomfortable in the late middle ages. We were perfectly comfortable walking to it;
by the time we were done viewing the batteries of cannon and the various other
sites and rooms, we were freezing because it is very windy up there.
* * *
Even though we had been warned
repeatedly, it was nonetheless a small shock to see how much things cost. Most everyone knows gasoline is much more
expensive in Europe. But grocery prices are also significantly
higher, as they are also for sundries. A
beer in a pub (a pub not on the tourist path and not a specialty beer) is about
$4.50. Lunch out is $20, and that’s when
the drink is tap water. Main entrees on
a dinner menu at a decent (but not high-priced) restaurant are in the £20-25
range; since the £ was about $1.80, those were in the $35-45 range—and one
hasn’t ordered a starter or any wine.
(The costs came into play in our tourist ventures as well; the Castle
was over £10 each; the Palace was £8.50 each, so for the three of us, we were
over $50 just to enter the Castle.
Climbing Arthur’s Seat was free, since it’s in a big open park.) We were not averse to spending money to do
things and to eat out, but activities chewed up money at a pace that was
surprising. (Much to our surprise, we
learned there is a Costco in Edinburgh. We are members, but removed our membership
cards from our wallets, never dreaming there would be a store there. We never did get there to see if our US membership
would work—it was aways from our flat and we didn't regularly have a car to get
there.)
* * *
I attended a meeting of the University of Edinburgh’s central officers. The group is chaired by the Principal (and
Vice Chancellor; the Chancellor, an honorary position, is the Duke of Edinburgh,
a.k.a. Prince Phillip, spouse to Queen Elizabeth II). The Principal is the equivalent to the
President of an American university. The
subjects of discussion were items that have been discussed dozens of times at
the University of
Minnesota in some form or
another; this was not an unfamiliar set of issues. In one way, however, the conduct of the
meeting was different. At Minnesota,
with the President (Robert Bruininks) chairing or attending a meeting with
faculty and other administrative colleagues, those present would refer to each
other by first name—Bob, Tom, Carol, etc.
At Edinburgh,
those present referred to each other by first name, and the Principal spoke to
his colleagues on a first-name basis, but when they spoke to him, they began
their remarks with “Principal, we found . . .” or “Principal, our office
believes. . . ,” and so on. A small
residue of formality that doesn’t exist in any US university of which I am
aware.
* * *
Notes on small cultural differences.
-- The standard office paper is not
8½ x 11 but 8 & 3/16ths x
11 & 11/16ths. So my U papers
didn’t fit neatly in files with things I printed out in Scotland.
-- At
virtually all the pubs and restaurants we went to, the fires in the fireplaces
were real, with real logs, not gas.
-- Pat had a dual errand one week, to get
stamps at the post office and to deliver clothes for dry cleaning. Much to her surprise, she discovered the post
office also does laundry and dry cleaning.
-- The British computer
keyboard is the same as the American—but they have transposed the “ and the @.
So I was forever keying in emails as joe”umn.edu and I had @ around
quotes.
* * *
We covered a fair bit of ground one
weekend in January. We went to Stirling
(about 40 miles northwest of Edinburgh) and
toured the castle, supposed to be the best one in Scotland. A more livable place, in my opinion, than the
Edinburgh
castle. Even better, we ate at a
restaurant just outside the castle that had great atmosphere (200+ years old)
and by far the most reasonable prices we’ve seen thus far for eating out. The woman in the visitor center at the castle
who recommended it told us they had “good pub grub,” and she was right.
We also went to the Wallace monument, a huge Victorian pile high on a
hill (Abbey Craig) just outside Stirling built in memory of William Wallace,
who led the fight for Scottish independence from England in the late 13th
Century (the movie “Braveheart” was about him).
It, like the castle, towers above Stirling. Wallace defeated the forces of English King
Edward I (nicknamed “The Hammer of the Scots” because he kept attacking Scotland) at
the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.
Alas, he was betrayed some years later and executed in London in 1305. (But shortly thereafter, Robert the Bruce
defeated the forces of Edward I at Bannockburn
in 1314 and this time Scotland
remained independent.) Before Elliott
and I climbed the 246 steps to the top of the tower, there was a very animated
and friendly guy giving a demonstration of how medieval weapons were used
(mace, sword, dagger, flail, etc.) which Elliott thought was great. (The guy did do a great job. And he was funny.)
We drove on to Rowardennen, on Loch Lomond,
and stayed in the Rowardennen Lodge. It
is literally at the end of the (very narrow) road that runs up the east side of
the Loch and is in the middle of nowhere. But it was very lively in the big
restaurant/bar, with a bright and warm fire.
I think the village or town of Rowardennen
is the lodge, period. We walked a ways along
Loch Lomond in the morning, on a cloudy and
slightly foggy day, and saw but did not climb Ben (Mt.) Lomond. IMHO, and what is perhaps heresy in the eyes
of those who love northern Italy,
the Scottish countryside is as beautiful in its own way as is the Italian. It was slightly gray, of course, because it
was winter, and it is somewhat more “wild” than Italy, but even so there was
much green, and with the craigs and bluffs and rolling hills, the fields with
sheep grazing, the neat farm fields, the attractive little homes scattered
across the landscape, there were a lot of Kodak moments.
On the way home from this venture, we saw decidedly opposite ends of
the technological spectrum. First we
went to the Falkirk Wheel. Imagine a
ferris wheel with only two cars, opposite each other on the circle, and imagine
that it sits near a large hill. Imagine
also that a walkway extends out from the hill to meet the top of the ferris
wheel, so that when one ferris wheel car is on top, one could get out and walk
away on top of the hill—or walk in and get on.
Imagine finally that when the other is at the bottom, one can get out
and walk away as well. Or get on. And then imagine there is no circular
structure to the ferris wheel, only two arms.
Except that this isn’t for people, it is for boats (barges, passenger
boats, etc.), and it replaced 11 locks that took boats all day to get
through. The canal is extended out over
the landscape so that it meets up with the top cart of the Wheel (the “ferris
wheel” car in this case is a small canal); the gates go down, you drive your
boat on to the Wheel, and then it slowly (4 minutes) rotates you down to the
ground level (or up to the top). This
thing is massive (it lifts/lowers boats 150 feet, and you can imagine how heavy
a barge or passenger boat is, plus all the water to float it on while it is in
the Wheel) and an engineering marvel. We
took a boat ride from the bottom to the top, out into the higher canal, and
then back down again. It was pretty
amazing to be sitting in a passenger boat, with seating for perhaps 60-70
people, and have the boat, water, and people all going up, far above the
ground, apparently suspended in the air.
(One guy on the boat asked the guide if the gate on the end of the “car”
holding in the water and the boat could ever open while the Wheel was in
mid-circle; he assured us it was failsafe and could not. Yeah, right.
It would not be pretty if the wrong end of the gate opened while at the
top—the water and boat with it would go sailing out the end and down 150 feet.)
At the other end of the spectrum, we walked the ruins of the Antonine
Wall, erected by the Romans about 180 A.D.
It was the northernmost point of the Roman Empire, and was built to
barricade and control the flow of the “savages” who lived in Scotland. (A friend here exclaimed with feigned pride
that it was the Scots who finally stopped the expansion of the Roman empire!) Actually,
the wall and Roman fort at this point are nothing more than grass mounds and
ridges, but the outline of the fort, wall, and the ditches are clearly
visible. So we went from sublime 21st
Century engineering to 2nd Century Roman engineering (and the two
are only about a 15-minute walk apart).
I bet the Roman troops who got sent to garrison duty in Scotland were
thrilled with THAT assignment.)
* * *
One thing I came to wonder about was the true extent of Scottish
dislike (detest) for the English. The
bartender at the Rowardennen Lodge chatted briefly with us, and was (mock, but
perhaps only 90% mock) shocked that my Scottish great-grandfather had married
an Englishwoman. He wondered what
possessed the man. He later came over
and asked us who would die first if an English couple jumped off a cliff at the
same time. I hesitated, trying to figure
out what an answer might be, and he just laughed and said “who cares?” and
walked back to the bar. (He also
inquired from which part of the colonies we came; the guy was a
character.) But the admiration for
Wallace and Robert the Bruce suggests there is a long memory of English
oppression running back over 700 years, and that the union of the crowns in
1603, and the formal union of the two countries in 1707, has not completely
erased those collective social memories.
I asked some colleagues and others whether the Scots really hate the
English. I was told that they pretend to
dislike them but they don’t, really—it’s sort of like the rivalry between
Swedes and dumb Norwegians in Minnesota (!)
One of the faculty members with whom I spoke said the Scots would be
unwise to seek full independence because Scotland
receives far more money from the government in London
than it pays in taxes to the central UK government. (The primary argument that was made in the
debates in the Scottish parliament in 1707 in favor of unification was that it
would be to Scotland’s great
economic benefit because they would then have access to the British
empire’s trading economy.
There was also, it would seem, a fair amount of greasing of palms by the
English to help ensure the vote went the right way.)
* * *
Elliott made an interesting if pessimistic observation as we were
walking down the hill in Stirling back toward
town from the castle (as with most castles, it is perched high on a cliff or
craig above the surrounding countryside).
He said he was glad that he did not live during the times when the
castle was active as a residence and military site because life was brutal and
uncomfortable. He added that he figured
we’ve reached the peak of civilization now, because with the environmental
damage we are doing, and other stuff, the world is going to be a worse place to
live in as the years go by.
When
we were in Stirling, Pat and I wandered into a
Marks and Spenser while walking around the town. I thought it was a grocery store; Pat thought
it was a clothing store. It turns out we were both right--you can buy
groceries, pick up a new suit or blouse, and get a bottle of wine or scotch in
one stop. Pretty amazing. I guess at the SuperTargets (and Walmart,
although I have never set foot in one and never will) you can get clothes and
groceries, but not liquor (yet).
* * *
Three of us—Pat, Elliott, me—went
for a “Ghosts and Ghouls” tour in Edinburgh
one evening. We learned that two men in
1652 were punished at the town center, next to St. Giles Cathedral, the center
of Scottish Presbyterianism. They were
both whipped 39 times with the cat o’nine tails, where the tails have glass and
metal sewn in so they rip and tear the skin; in addition, one was nailed by his
ear to the wall and then pulled away, leaving his ear, while the other had his
tongue bound so that blood accumulated in it and it burst. He was left dumb; the other guy had his other
ear cut off as well, leaving him deaf.
Their crime? One stood up in a
nearby tavern and spoke a toast to the King.
The other raised his glass. If
you remember your English history, however, you will recall that there was no
King in 1652. This was during the era of
the Commonwealth, when Oliver Cromwell ruled.
The Puritans, which he headed, had, after civil war during the 1640s,
deposed the King and executed him in 1649.
During the Protectorate of Cromwell, it was high treason to toast the
King (whose son was in France).
(After awhile, however, the English apparently tired of Puritanism—“Cromwell
shut many inns and the theatres were all closed down. Most sports were banned.
Boys caught playing football on a Sunday could be whipped as a punishment. Swearing was punished by a fine, though those
who kept swearing could be sent to prison. [On] Sunday . . . most forms of work were
banned. Women caught doing unnecessary
work on the Holy Day could be put in the stocks. Simply going for a Sunday walk (unless it was
to church) could lead to a hefty fine,” and so on. Cromwell died in 1658 and was succeeded by
his son, Richard. He, however, was no
Oliver; the army forced him out and its leaders concluded that political
stability could only be restored if Charles II, the son of the executed Charles
I, were placed on the throne. So they
invited him back, he was coronated in 1660, and one of his first acts was to
have Cromwell’s body dug up from Westminster Abbey and hung in public after a
mock trial for treason.)
* * *
Differences in language acquisition skills are interesting. Elliott told us that when he was in school
during the day, he found himself slipping into an accent like his Scottish
schoolmates, and using the same words—but that as soon as he walked in the door
of our flat and heard his mother, he said the accent vanished. I don’t believe I picked up any accent
whatever, although I did started using a few Scottish terms in place of the
equivalent American term, just for ease of communication. As far as the people with whom I worked
daily, I didn’t even hear the accent after a couple of days—the only time I
noticed it was when I was simply unable to understand someone (usually in
shops, never at the University). I think
neither Pat nor Krystin picked up anything at all. The rest of the family does tease me,
however, because I kept saying “Edinboro” when the correct pronunciation is
“Edinbra” with a very fast “u” slipped in between the “b” and the “r”—and the
"r" slightly rolled. Heaven
only knows how much we slaughtered the pronunciation of such towns as Kirkcaldy
and Dunfermline. (I think we got St.
Andrews right, although I have concluded the correct way to say it
is “SainTandrews.”)
We were talking at one point with our friends Hugh and Margaret about
Scots English versus Midwest American English.
(Hugh Grant is the brother of our friend of 30 years at the University of Iowa, Christine Grant. Margaret is his friend. Both lost their spouses. Hugh and Margaret became fast friends of ours
even though we had never met them before arriving in Scotland.) I mentioned my thought that Scots do funny
things with their mouths, compared to what we are used to, so that we have a
difficult time reproducing Scots English.
Our friend Margaret burst out laughing.
I think she interpreted my “do funny things with their mouths” in a way
I had not intended. . . . Elliott has
pointed out that one of the ways Scots English is different from Minnesota
English, and what makes it difficult for us, is that the Scots drop “t”s all
over the place. But it’s not that “got”
just becomes “gaw,” there is also a sound emitted from the back of the throat
indicating there was supposed to be a “t” at the end of the word. I can labor mightily to reproduce the accent,
and fail.
We also concluded, after being there for awhile, that the range of
accents in Scots English is much greater than the range in US English. Apart from the deep south, I doubt most Scots
would have trouble understanding anyone from anywhere else in the US. In Scotland, however, there are
different depths of accent that are difficult, in varying degrees, even for
other Scots to understand, much less for those of us with poorly-trained
American ears.
* * *
We headed off to the northeast one weekend to visit the Kingdom of Fife
(that’s what the signs say), which lies on the north side of the Firth of
Forth, above Edinburgh. We stopped at a wonderful small art museum in
Kirkcaldy
(it had about 8 rooms, each perhaps about 20’ x 30’), that specialized in
wonderful collections of “the Scottish colorists,” Scottish artists who painted
in the late 1800s and early 1900s and were significantly influenced by, and
part of, the impressionist period. They
also had a gallery of paintings by local artists, for sale; Pat bought one for
the woman from her office who house-sat our cats. We couldn’t take it with us, because it was
part of the show. It turns out that the
woman who worked in the museum gift shop also worked in Edinburgh 3 days per week, so Elspeth told
Pat she’d just bring it to her work after the show was over later in February
and Pat could pick it up. I mostly told
that story because I think it’s wonderful that there really are live people
named Elspeth.
From Kirkcaldy we made our way to our B&B, located in the
countryside midway between the two tiny towns of Cupar and Pitscottie. We seem to have fallen into a pattern of
staying in hunting lodges, first in Italy
last October and now in semi-rural Scotland. This one was originally built in the 14th
Century and supposedly used by the King when travelling between castles. It was expanded during the Victorian era, and
is now a mini-castle-looking place set in rolling fields and surrounded by tall
beech hedges, large beech trees, and evergreens. Our bedroom was in the tower of the castle. The owners were a delightful couple. We had dinner in a Scots-Mex place in St. Andrews. (Yes,
Scots-Mex, although they didn't call it that, but the foods used in cooking
were mostly Scottish. I had a Scottish
lamb stew that was Mexican.)
We returned to St. Andrews to explore
the castle and the cathedral, both of which are now ruins but both of which
played important roles in Scottish history. (St. Andrews is on the east coast of Scotland, across from Norway.) It was drizzly and overcast, and the wind off
the North Sea was brisk. We then ventured along the coast of the
Firth, the East Neuk, which is a series of small mostly fishing villages
running from the easternmost point of land, facing the North
Sea, west along the coastline of the Firth. The sky cleared and it was a wonderful
day. We had reputedly the best, or among
the best, fish and chips in Scotland in Anstruther, visited a wonderful
family-owned-and-run pottery manufacturer in Crail,
and ambled through the other small towns just nosing around—St. Monans,
Pittenweem, Elie and Earlsferry. We have
found that unlike the churches on Prince
Edward Island, here they keep all their cathedrals
and kirks locked up tight if they are not being used for services.
On the way back to Edinburgh
I told Elliott he would have the thrill of seeing two abbeys and a palace;
unfortunately, the palace was closed so all he got was two abbeys (more
accurately, the ruins of two abbeys).
Pat and Elliott are good sports about my dragging them to these remote
historical places. Arbroath Abbey played
a signal role in Scottish history. Even
though Robert the Bruce beat the crap out of the much-larger English forces of
Edward I in 1314, the war for Scottish independence dragged on for about 14-15
more years. The pope had excommunicated
Bruce because he’d been involved in killing a rival leader and the pontiff
refused to recognize Bruce as King of Scotland, independent of England. In 1320, at the behest of Bruce and a large
number of the Scottish nobles, the Abbot of Arbroath drafted the “Declaration
of Arbroath,” addressed to the pope, seeking recognition of Bruce and the
independence of Scotland. The most often-cited language of the
Declaration, which is seen by some as parallel to the US Declaration of
Independence, reads as follows:
As long as but a hundred of us remain alive,
never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth
not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for
that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.
So I wanted to see
where this was written. (The appeal to
the pope was successful, eventually.)
Even the ruins of the Abbey are impressive. I think Historic Scotland, which is the
quasi-government agency responsible for many of these sites around the country,
should restore them—certainly the Abbot and the monks would be appalled by the
condition of their abbey. Sure, it would
take a crew of artisans 100 years to get many of them rebuilt, but they’d be so
impressive when finished. I understand
there is some talk about rebuilding the cathedral at St.
Andrews.
Since I have two dogs in this fight,
so to speak, with a Scottish great-grandfather and an English
great-grandmother, I’m not quite sure what I thought—think—about it. It does seem that the English were not
respectful of the Scots, to put it mildly.
Dunfermline Abbey is the burial
place of Robert the Bruce, except that one cannot see the grave marker because
it’s inside the parish church, built in the 1880s on the ruins of the original
church in which he was buried. But even
so, the Abbey complex, with guest quarters, refectory, cloisters, and so on,
was impressive. Part of the original
church was open, although only barren stone walls and floors inside, and it’s a
miracle that the stained glass windows from 500 years ago survive. (It had again gone from gray and drizzly in
the morning to clear and sunny in the afternoon, so the windows were blinding
in the glorious and colorful brilliance of the late-afternoon sunlight shining
through them.)
It has seemed a little odd to us to
reserve a place to stay overnight that is only 30-50 miles from where we live
in Edinburgh,
but driving up and back each day of the weekend would have been tiresome,
tiring, and time-consuming. As anyone
who has driven in Europe knows, one does not
drive that 30-50 miles quickly. So Pat,
who did all the driving (because she went through the monkey business of going
to the car rental place and picking up the vehicle), got us around from place
to place. I was impressed with (1) how
narrow the roads are, and how close to the road the buildings are in towns, and
(2) how pretty the Scottish countryside is.
* * *
Pat and I toured the new Scottish
parliament building. (Government control
over local matters—education, transport, etc.) was devolved from the Parliament
in London to a
new Scottish parliament in 1999. Once
devolution had been approved, there was a move to build a new parliament
building, which the Queen dedicated last year.)
The outside, to all appearances, is rather odd looking. It makes more sense after one takes the tour,
when one learns that the exterior wood “poles” mounted on the
stainless-steel-framed windows and granite walls are the architect’s
interpretation of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Tree of Life. The interior of the building is
modern—concrete, stainless steel, oak, and sycamore--but also attractive and
airy. The interesting question about
these buildings, in my opinion, is whether they will survive the test of time,
not physically but aesthetically. The
works of Christopher Wren in London, the
Georgian architecture scattered throughout the UK, and so on, still look good
hundreds of years later. Will these
buildings?
This building raised a major public brouhaha at the time it was
built: the first First Minister had
cited a figure of £50 million (as the cost of land acquisition and preparation;
the site is on the Royal Mile, in the center of the city). The final cost of construction was £431
million, and media had a heyday with this.
The First Minister who spearheaded the project, and the Barcelona architect
selected for the project, both died within a few months of the start of
construction, so neither was around to take the “blame” for the “overrun.” We were told, however, that no one lost their
job and that no one ever thought the total cost would be in the £50 million
range. Apparently, however, there had to
be a lot of explaining.
* * *
As with Minnesota
in the winter, when the sky is clear in Edinburgh
the temperature goes down. One Monday
morning, as I walked through The Meadows, the large park just south of the
central city that I crossed each way to and from my office, the grass looked
pure white. (Think Loring Park times
about 50, but with trees only around the perimeter and along the walks that go
through it—not quite the size of Central Park in New York City, but a large
grassy park.) I had to look twice,
because there was no snow anywhere else that I could see. It turns out that the deep frost turned the
grass white; it reminded me of the white on the trees and bushes along the west
river road in Minneapolis.
It
struck me at one point, after we had been in Scotland
for a couple of weeks, that there are no skyscrapers anywhere in Edinburgh. One would not expect to find them in the
center, where the old city is preserved, but they really don’t seem to exist
anywhere outside the city, either.
* * *
The streets and sidewalks of Edinburgh made me into one of the clumsiest people in the UK. I found myself tripping about twice a
day. At first I thought it was my
walking shoes, but I did it no matter what I was wearing on my feet. It seems that I just didn't lift my feet
enough to accommodate the unevenness of the brick and cobblestone streets that
predominate in central Edinburgh. At least I never actually fell down, I just
lurched across town.
* * *
I emailed a University of Minnesota
colleague on a minor piece of business and added the observation that it had
been an overcast, drizzly, and cold day.
She wrote back and said that “ah, but it was an overcast and drizzly day
IN SCOTLAND,” rather than
just a dull winter day of normal life in Minnesota. Oddly enough, I found that was not really
true; yes, it was novel being in Scotland, but on the other hand I
did get up each morning and go into my office, work all day, and walk home and
have dinner. Routines, when one is
employed, do get established.
* * *
The last day of January our good
friends Hugh and Margaret took us on a day-long “mystery tour” into areas north
and east of Edinburgh. We covered a lot of ground. It was probably the coldest day we’d
experienced in Scotland, one result of which was that we saw the most amazing
“frost sculptures” on the plants and grass—far thicker and much more elaborate
than anything I’ve seen in Minnesota. On
every shrub, bush, and tree. They were
just beautiful. This scene of
frost-covered plants recurred through much of our day, even in the afternoon on
the north sides of hills and craigs, where the sun did not shine at that time
of year.
We stopped for coffee at the Caithness Glass visitor center in Perth, just up the road from Edinburgh.
Of course I had to buy some of their glassware, some of which I think is
stunning. We saw a marvelous old
cathedral on the River Tay, part of which remains the local parish church (and
the interior of which is the same temperature as the outdoors—I don’t know if
they turn on the heat in the church for services). We went high up to a place called Queen’s
View (perhaps because Victoria visited there, although the general view is that
it is so named because the Queen of Robert the Bruce came there in the 1300s),
overlooking two of three interconnected lochs.
We visited and shopped in the quaint little town of Pitlochry, which I spent about half an hour
trying to learn how to say correctly before we arrived. Without success. We went part way up Ben Lawers and looked
over the countryside of the Trossachs, the hills north of Edinburgh
that ultimately fade into the Highlands. We ended up at dinner in Culross (pronounced
COO-ross), across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh,
at a wonderful old inn. It was an
11-hour day of traveling, but we managed to see an enormous amount of the
surrounding area, accompanied by great (and frequently humorous) narratives
from our local friends, which always makes such traveling more interesting.
* * *
We took Elliott to the “Dynamic Earth” exhibition Edinburgh built in connection with the
millennium. It’s an odd architectural
juxtaposition in the area, at the very foot of the Royal Mile. There is Holyroodhouse Palace, home to the
Scottish monarchs, which dates back several hundred years, there is the brand
new modernistic Scottish parliament across the street from it—and there is the
Dynamic Earth building right by both of them, a huge white tent-like dome with
sticks poking out the top and surrounded by what appears to be a medieval
castle wall. The exhibit itself is
well-enough done, relating visually the history of the earth from the Big Bang
to the present. We didn’t really learn
much that we didn’t know before, but it was interesting to have the
perspectives presented from the viewpoint of Scotland
rather than the US (which,
of course, one would expect, since we were in Scotland!). We did learn that there are more varieties of
snail than there are all mammals and reptiles together, and Elliott was
surprised (as was I) that humans (as well as all mammals and current reptile
species) evolved from a lizard. As
Elliott commented, at some point some lizard must have grown fur.
* * *
Krystin and her friend Mike, from the University of Minnesota,
Morris campus, began plotting their prospective travels on the continent soon
after we arrived. (They ended up being
gone for about 5 weeks and visited (not in order), Florence,
Pisa, Barcelona, Madrid, Montpelier, Nice, Geneva, and Paris.) We wished we could have gone along, although
we would not have wanted to stay in youth hostels! For their last night in Edinburgh before they
left, we took Krystin, Elliott, and her friend Mike out to dinner—and since
everyone had their heart set on a Chinese buffet (except me), we walked about 2
miles across town to a place Pat and Krystin had found in their travels. (I, of course, tripped a couple of times en
route.) As we were walking back to the
flat, I asked Krystin if, once we were home and she had something she wanted to
get in Highland—a
local shopping area about a mile from our house—she would walk over. She said “no.” Why was I not surprised? It was amusing, however, that the kids did
not gripe at all about having to walk everywhere; they knew there was no
choice, since we decided to rent a car only on weekends. (And once we were back, Krystin did NOT drive
to Highland. Neither did I
L )
Even though I was getting practiced at walking, my legs did protest a
little after walking to the Dynamic Earth exhibit and back, about 4 miles (and
around the exhibit while there), and then (that same day) to the Chinese
restaurant and back, another 4 or so miles.
It’s not all flat terrain, either.
I was a little stiff in the morning.
* * *
Elliott developed a fascination with medieval weaponry (hence his great
interest in the demonstration we saw at the Wallace
Monument in Stirling). When Pat and I were in Italy, we
bought him a small crossbow and a dagger.
Here he has gotten a sgian dubh (pronounced—it is Gaelic—ski-an doo), a
Highland dagger a clansman would show his host at a social/family gathering and
then keep tucked inside the top of his knee-high sock below his kilt—he would
leave axes, swords, etc., at the door, and carrying the sgian dubh in the sock
would be the least armed he would ever be.
Elliott also got a set of three katanas, ancient Japanese samurai
swords. Unfortunately, one of them was
so long it didn't fit in any of our suitcases, and since they were all made out
of stainless steel—they are real—Pat had to ship it home. It cost as much to ship the one sword as it
cost to buy all three of them.
* * *
Most people who take vacations in
winter, especially those who live in colder climates and who are not skiers,
tend to go places that are warm and sunny.
Not us. No, we go from Edinburgh, which was a very pleasant sunny day on Friday
the 10th of February, in the low 40s, to Stockholm, which was about 25 degrees, windy,
and covered by a foot or more of snow.
Elliott had a school break the second week of February so we decided to
travel to Sweden and Norway
(although it wasn't our first choice at this time of year, our first choice
wasn't available, as you will learn shortly).
It was overcast all but one day of the trip and it snowed lightly but
steadily the entire time we were in Oslo. We went out to dinner in Oslo
with Gunnar, the cousin of a long-time Minneapolis
friend; he told us this is the most snow that Oslo had had since 1969. (He’s a local TV reporter, so alert to both
local and national news and trends.) One
of the strongest impressions we had of the two Nordic cities is that no one who
lives there owns a shovel and the two cities each own one plow—and they use the
plow only intermittently. There were
piles of snow everywhere and the sidewalks were a treat to navigate, covered
with irregular patterns of ice and compacted snow. The temperatures, however, were mostly
moderate for the winter time, in the high 20s and low 30s, so for those of us
from Minnesota,
it was not unpleasant.
The hotels in both cities were
reasonable, given that Oslo, we were told twice while we were there, is the
most expensive city in the world (other data I have seen since we returned to
the US do not corroborate what we were told).
Both hotels were decorated in a rather spartan, austere Scandinavian
modern style, with plain lines, beiges and tans, and light wood. As anyone who knows our
faux-Victorian/cluttered “style,” with plants, knick-knacks, and pictures
everywhere would understand, it seemed plain to us. But remarkably enough, the beds were
excellent. Hotel pillows are uniformly
bad the world over, I have decided.
It was only the first day of the trip, in Stockholm, that it was a crisp, bright,
clear, and cold day. It was also quite
windy, so after watching the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace,
located in the old town (Gamla Stan), we ducked into the largest church in the
central city, the Storkyrkan. The
changing of the guard is quite the ritual, with drummers and soldiers and so
on. The Storkyrkan, which is where the
current King and Queen were married, is red brick rather than the stone or
marble of British and continental cathedrals.
It seemed different—I almost wrote “odd” but it wasn’t odd—to see these
soaring Gothic arches made of red brick.
And while appointed with some gold-leaf and carvings in stone and wood,
an enormous sculpture of St. George and the Dragon (patron saint of Sweden), an
even larger painting on one wall of the Annunciation, and some rather
interesting chandeliers (I think they were what passed for baroque or rococo in
Sweden—a toned-down version), it was far less elaborate and ornate than its
counterparts elsewhere in Europe. As it
turned out, we walked into the cathedral about half an hour before a choral and
organ concert (all Swedish composers), and since we were freezing from walking
around Gamla Stan, we stayed for the concert.
It was delightful. Elliott took a
nap.
To finish the church theme, we also stuck our heads in two large
churches in Olso. Again, they were much
simpler than similar-sized churches elsewhere in Europe
that we have seen. In one of them, there
were perhaps 20-30 people sitting in two semi-circles in the area right in
front of the altar. They would sing for
a bit, someone would talk, and a few were waving flags (not Norwegian
flags—some colored rectangles, the meaning of which we did not know). I think we stumbled on what passes in Norway for a
revival meeting—sort of the restrained Scandinavian version of the American
event that lacked the hooting and hollering and carrying on.
The centers of both cities were
beautiful in the snow. Both have long
parks (which would be green in the summer) right in the center; at that time of
year, they had skating rinks and played music, so it was a charming site to
behold. That was especially true in
Oslo, with the large flakes of snow drifting down.
The difference in the subway systems
between the two cities was noticeable.
The stations in Stockholm appeared to have been blasted out of rock and
the surfaces then covered with some kind of stucco or sprayed concrete. Those, in turn were painted dark blues,
greens, and purples, but the platforms and tunnels are quite wide, well-lit,
and clean, so the dark colors were not oppressive. They also had interesting pieces of sculpture
standing about. The trains were quite
new. Even in the rush hour it wasn’t all
that crowded, compared to other metro areas.
Oslo, however, had rather closed-in, somewhat dirty stations, most of
the trains were clearly quite old, and the whole atmosphere was more
reminiscent of New York or London than of Stockholm. In both cases, however, the trains were
frequent and prompt.
I suppose it would have been better
(certainly more comfortable walking) had we been there in the summer, but in a
way it was appropriate to see Sweden and Norway in winter, because they are
cold northern countries. One advantage
to being there when we were is that there seemed to be few tourists
around—nobody’s dumb enough to come that far north in February. One disadvantage, however, was that some
things were not open at this time of the year and other establishments have
abbreviated hours in winter. The result
was that we tended to be back in our hotel by 7:30 or 8:00, after eating
somewhere.
One can only read so much, so we
spent a fair amount of time watching the Olympics. The first night we were in Stockholm we
turned on the TV and saw that the Olympics were on. Our first choice of travel for this week had
been northern Italy, and as soon as I saw the telecast, I realized why I'd had
such trouble finding airline reservations and hotels in Italy—they were sold
out because of the Olympics. Anyway,
watching the games in Sweden and Norway was an interesting experience, since
the only telecasts were in Swedish and Norwegian. We didn’t have a clue what they were talking
about, but we could see who was winning just because they always flash the
scores for all events. One sport we did
not understand, but which they telecast endlessly in both countries, was
curling. There must be a big audience
for that sport in Scandinavia. (I wondered
if US stations telecast as much curling during those same hours.) It was only after Pat looked up curling rules
on the web, Gunnar explained them further, and we could watch English-language
telecasts once we were back in Edinburgh that we finally understood both the
scoring and the strategy.
I believe we can say we have seen
major works by two of Norway’s greatest visual artists, Edvard Munch and Gustav
Vigeland. Munch, by the way, is
pronounced Munk in Swedish, for those of you who didn’t know that (we didn’t). As you may know, one of the versions of
Munch’s most famous painting, “The Scream,” was stolen (for the second time) a
number of years ago from one of the museums. Munch painted 3-4 versions, however, and one
of them still hangs in the National Gallery in Oslo. We went to the Munch Museum, expecting to see
a large number of his paintings, but learned that they do not have a permanent
exhibition. What they have is rotating
themed exhibitions, and the one we ran into was focused on “vitalism” or
something like that. What it meant in
painting was a lot of nude men on beaches, in gyms, etc. Fortunately, it was free, so we didn’t feel
so bad about the adventure. We went then
to the National Gallery, which had several of Munch’s most famous paintings,
including “The Scream,” “Madonna,” and others.
As a general proposition, I like Munch.
(The National Museum in Oslo is one of those galleries that I find
satisfying—it has a reasonable collection, it is reasonably sized and well
displayed, and one leaves after spending a couple of hours in it without
feeling that one has only skimmed the surface.
It wasn’t enough time, but we did get to devote attention to the museum
highlights.)
We also went to the vast Vigeland
Park, just outside the center of Oslo.
It was striking in the winter, with all the clean, white snow on the ground,
bushes, and trees, and the snow drifting down; it must be spectacular in the
summer when it is green. The park’s two
main intersecting walkways, which go over a lake and around a large fountain,
contain over 200 brass and stone sculptures by Gustav Vigeland. He spent his life in Oslo, and the city gave
him a studio to live and work in the last 15 years of his life—and he, in turn,
donated all his sculptures to the city, on display in the park. They are all statues of men, women, and
especially children, in various poses, and all in a decidedly art deco
style. We weren’t really able to get the
full effect of the sculptures, since they all had 8-10 inches of snow on them,
but even so they were impressive.
Adjoining the park is the Vigeland Museum, which has the models for many
of the sculptures, so we could see quite a number of them without the addition
of the snow.
We picked one odd site to visit in Stockholm, the Armémuseum,
the museum of the Swedish Army. This
would not usually have been high on my list of places to go, but the very
helpful small guidebook we had for the city—written by a woman who loves
Stockholm—raved about it and reported that it was considered for some kind of
European “museum of the year” award in 2001.
It was worth the trip. As she
wrote, after you get past the first display item, four chimpanzees fighting,
you realize this is not going to be an ordinary military history museum. It wasn’t.
In addition to the displays of military paraphernalia used by the
Swedish military over the decades, it also had a number of displays about the
horrors of war. Sweden only had one
period of military greatness, in the late 1600s under Charles XII when it
dominated the Baltic area, but then got defeated in the Great Northern War,
1700-1721, and despite several attempts during the 1700s to regain its lost
glory, it never did. The museum would
have been a great deal more interesting, I am sure, had all the displays had
narratives in English as well as Swedish, but it was still worth the visit.
(More or less on that same theme),
we took a train from Stockholm to Oslo.
It was a beautiful ride, through the hills (not really mountains in that
part of the two countries) and the entire landscape, with thousands of tall
pines, was blanketed in deep snow. I
kept having visions of Norwegian Resistance fighters in the early 1940s
slipping out from between the pines, in the still of a dark winter night, to
blow up the railroad tracks so the Germans couldn’t move troops or supplies
around occupied Norway. Maybe I watched
too many WWII movies when I was younger.
Anyone who has done it knows this,
but I could not help musing once again that traveling by train is so much more
pleasant than traveling by air. Subway
to the train station, walk onto the platform, get on the train. No security hassles. The seats are bigger, often there is a table
between the 2x2 seats, and we got to look at the winter scenery (which,
incidentally, is exactly as one imagines the countryside of Scandinavia to look
in winter).
Elliott and I visited the Riksdag,
the Swedish parliament building, while Pat went to a different museum. We had a tour and got great views of the lake
that flows into the North Sea, the Prime Minister’s residence, the city hall
(Stadhuset), and the city itself. Half
of the building that now houses the parliament was the Bank of Sweden at one
point, with the actual chamber built on the roof of the old bank, a modernistic
addition on top of an early-1900s building (not, in my opinion, an attractive
result in almost any case). The other
half of the building was the original capitol and contained the two legislative
chambers when Sweden had two legislative bodies—so the two parties with the
largest number of seats in the Riksdag now have quite grandiose meeting
rooms. The entry foyer for the Riksdag
is the old bank lobby. (I also wanted to
visit the Stortinget, the
Norwegian parliament building, but the only tours were offered the morning we
were leaving to return to Edinburgh.
Rats.)
Silly me, knowing that many
Scandinavians learn English as well as their native tongue (Gunnar told us it
mandatory starting at age 9 or 10), I thought I might hear English spoken once
in awhile. Nope. What a surprise—everyone spoke Swedish or
Norwegian. I heard very little English
spoken, and while most of the people we dealt with spoke in English when we
used it first, none use it daily. We
talked with Gunnar about languages over dinner the last night we were in Oslo. I observed that even though Swedish, Norwegian,
Dutch, and German (and Danish, although I haven’t heard that spoken) are all
Germanic languages, two of them (Dutch and German) evolved into (or remained, I
don’t know which) guttural languages that are not particularly pleasant to
listen to. Swedish and Norwegian, on the
other hand, are more melodic and lack the throaty sounds of German and
Dutch. Gunnar told us that most
Norwegians think of Swedish as more melodious.
(He also said that as far as Norwegians are concerned—whose modern
language is very close to Danish because Denmark ruled Norway for about four
hundred years—the Danes now sound as though they are speaking with a potato in
their mouth.)
I concluded that while I believe I
could learn to speak passable Swedish or Norwegian, if I were to spend a few
years there, I could not speak English with a Scottish accent no matter how
long I lived there. The Scots do things
with the inside of their mouths that one must learn while growing up. Elliott agreed. I cannot, without a lot of work and even then
not altogether successfully, make some of the sounds that the Scots do, but I
can mimic Swedish or Norwegian without much strain. (This, of course, is no criticism of the
Scots; it’s just the way they speak. No
doubt there are large numbers of languages around the globe that I would be
unable to learn to speak even passably well.)
We also visited the Stadhuset, the
city hall, in Stockholm, mostly because it’s the site of the dinner for the
Nobel laureates held every December. The
building was built 1911-1923, so is newer than the Minneapolis city hall, but
is much grander on the inside. One huge
hall (maybe 50’ by 150’ with a 30-foot ceiling) is entirely mosaics, with
something like 8 million little tiles, most of them gold. The city council chamber (they have 103
representatives on the city council in a city smaller than Minneapolis!) is as
large and elegant as some national legislatures. (Minneapolis has 13 members on its city
council.)
One of the more laborious acts of
rescue and restoration in the world has to be that of the Vasa, Gustavus
Adolphus’s warship that sank about 1200 meters after launched on its maiden
voyage from Stockholm in 1628. It was
raised 333 years later and now sits in a large museum of its own. We watched a movie about the project to raise
it, about 40+ years ago, and the thousands of hours of labor that have been
spent to restore it are mind-boggling to think about. It was well-preserved, however, because the
water in which it sank was fresh, and the worms that usually destroy the wood
in sunken ships live in salt water. (It
was too top-heavy, which is easy to see, so it tipped over in the harbor. No one was found guilty at the inquiry,
although the shipbuilder had died before the inquiry was finished, and new research,
according to our guide, suggests that there was room for more ballast, which
would have meant it was the captain’s fault.
He did not go down with the ship, although not many did—they think about
30—because the harbor is not all that deep and there were boats around to
rescue people.) This was to be one of
Gustavus Adolphus’s most feared battleships in his war against Poland, so one
suspects he may not have been happy that the ship sank immediately.
I can report with a groan that as a
last resort one night we ate at a T.G.I.Friday’s American bar and restaurant,
on the park in central Stockholm. We had
tried twice to eat at a highly-recommended restaurant in the Stockholm Opera
House, but the first time it didn’t open until 2 hours after we arrived and the
second night it wasn’t open at all.
There are darn few restaurants in downtown Stockholm that looked very
inviting, and as it turned out Friday’s was a pleasant place to sit, looking
out at the snow falling and the skaters in the park. Inasmuch as the chain was started (I think)
by one of the Carlson companies, and since Curt Carlson was such a devoted
Swede, perhaps it was OK.
Unfortunately, while bending over to
get something from my suitcase in the hotel room (only waist height, not down
to the floor!) the evening we arrived in Oslo, I must have pinched a nerve or
something, because I had spasm of pain that nearly knocked me over and brought
tears to my eyes. (I didn't really KNOW
what had happened, of course; I was only speculating. I went to the ER at the main Oslo hospital
the next day, but I think they lost my name once I had signed in. After an hour or so, I just left.) For the remaining three days of the trip, I
had a painfully difficult time getting up and down or bending over. Whatever happened, thank heavens, did loosen
up some over the next few days. I could
walk without much pain, however, so we did get around Oslo, but I didn’t have
my usual tourist ambitions, and I tired out earlier in the day than I would
normally. Even several days later it
remained a major and painful effort to get from a sitting to a standing
position. (You can imagine the challenge
of taking a shower when one cannot bend at the waist. . . .) Fortunately, the problem largely fixed
itself, eventually. I went to the
student health service at the U of Edinburgh; the doctor poked and prodded a
bit, announced that I was correct that I had a pinched nerve (and not, thank
heavens, a slipped disk), that all my walking in Oslo had exacerbated the pain,
and that I should take a pill she would prescribe. I cut down the walking, took the pills, and
felt much better.
One sometimes learns the oddest things in the course of traveling. The last night we were in Oslo, our friend’s
cousin Gunnar took us to an 1800s lodge far up in the hills overlooking
Olso. It was a foggy and overcast night,
so we couldn’t see a lot of the city, but the clouds lifted a little while we
having dinner and the view was spectacular.
(It reminded me, in atmosphere, of our experience at Naniboujou Lodge on
the North Shore of Lake Superior: a log
lodge, nestled in deep snow, apparently in the middle of nowhere. The comparison ends quickly, of course,
because the view from the Oslo lodge was quite different from Naniboujou and
the interior was more rustic, not the elaborately-decorated main dining room at
Naniboujou.)
Immediately adjacent to the lodge is
a ski jump, used in the 1952 Olympics.
Gunnar told us that while it is still used for world competition, they
will have to tear it down and rebuild it because in the last 50 years, (the odd
“fact” we learned) skiers have learned to stay aloft longer, so the landing
area at the bottom of the jump is not long enough. (I only put "fact" in quotes
because I am repeating what Gunnar told us; I have not independently verified
that skiers can stay aloft longer than they could 50 years ago.) I must say that even though I have watched my
share of Olympic ski jumping, the TV screen does not do justice to the enormity
and height of these Olympic-caliber jumps.
We all looked up to the top and then down to the bottom and nearly
gasped at the length and height. I would
be dead, truly and really dead, if I went down one of those jumps.
We found it amusing that we had more
trouble getting back into Scotland coming from Norway than we did when we
originally arrived from the US. We were
the only ones in the line for the non-EU travelers. The customs agent wanted to know what my job
was, why we were there until May, where Elliott was going to school, etc. I thought for a minute she was going to balk
at letting us in, but she didn’t. (In
contrast, the customs agent as we were exiting Norway looked at our passports
and said “Minnesota, eh? Here we call
that Little Norway because there are so many Norwegians there.” A nice guy.)
One thing that never dawned on me
before is that snow muffles sound. (I
didn't know this for sure, so I emailed a faculty friend at Minnesota who knows
the physics of sound as well as anyone in the country. He told me that my assumption was
correct: all other things being equal, a
blanket of snow would indeed deaden sounds in a city.) It struck me immediately when we walked
through Edinburgh on the way home from the train station how noisy it was
compared to Stockholm and Oslo. There
was no difference in traffic levels, and the buildings are roughly the same,
about four stories and constructed mostly of stone, so I could only conclude
that the blanket of snow made things quieter.
We had some trouble with the word
“home” while in Scandinavia. It was not clear, when Pat, Elliott, and I
were chatting, and referred to “home,” where we meant. We finally adopted a convention: “home E” meant Edinburgh; “home TC” meant Twin Cities. But it did seem like we were getting “home”
when we arrived back in Edinburgh. And “home” in Edinburgh
seemed balmy compared to Scandinavia—mid-40s
and no snow! We used the home E and home
TC convention the rest of our stay.
A few odds and ends on Sweden
and Norway.
-- I looked at people’s eyes on the
subway. It is true that there is in
both countries a significantly higher percentage of people with blue eyes than
in the U.S.
-- The Swedish language combines words in
the same way that German does, so one ends up with tremendously long words. I didn’t see the same thing in Norway.
-- There must be cell phone transmitters
or transponders or whatever they are in the subway stations in Stockholm, because people were chattering
away on their cell phones regularly in the stations and trains—far underground. My cell won’t work in the LRT station at the
airport, which is a lot closer to the surface.
-- The ease of financial transactions in
Europe with the advent of the Euro doesn’t apply in Sweden
and Norway,
because both countries have elected to retain their own currency. So we were forever changing coins and trying
to figure out what things cost. The
Swedish and Norwegian kronor, of course, are not valued the same against the
American dollar, although they were close.
I finally gave up and concluded that if I divided the kronor total by 6
or 7, I’d be close to the US dollar price.
And what difference did it make, anyway?
If we wanted to eat in a restaurant or buy a gift, we were going to pay
what they were asking.
* * *
I noticed in late February that the
trees and bushes in the garden in back of our building had buds on them (the
ones, that is, that didn’t stay green all winter). I was told that this was about the right time
for plants to begin blooming. Rather in
advance of buds coming out in Minnesota. At the same time, however, that week was the
coldest since we arrived. We had adjusted
quite nicely to the moderate Scottish winter, so suddenly it seemed very cold
(when it would, by normal Minnesota
winter standards, have seemed nearly balmy at that time of year). At the same time I was noting the cold, the
north and west of Scotland
were being battered by a major blizzard, more snow than the area had seen in
quite some time.
We finally found someplace in the
world where people talk about the weather as much as they do in Minnesota. There is good reason for those conversations
in Scotland: as we were told on several occasions, there
they can have all four seasons in one day (and we just about saw that happen,
although there was a sore lack of “summer” in any of the days until very late
in our stay). It is possible to have all
four seasons in one day, Pat commented, because the total range of temperatures
in Edinburgh is
from about 25° to 75°. I was told by one
of the locals in late March that at that time last year it was about 70 degrees
(well, he actually said 20°—Celsius—but that’s about 70° F). I don’t think we’d seen 50° yet by the end of
March. It would have taken most of my
fingers AND my toes to tally up the number of people (locals) who complained
about the weather the last half of March.
We heard repeated comments like “this is the coldest spring I can
remember” and “it’s never this cold this late in the year.” Finally, however, one Saturday late in the
month it felt like spring breezes—the winds were temperate rather than blowing
from Siberia—and the temperatures were clearly higher. It mostly stayed that way, so the long cold Edinburgh spring came to
an end.
* * *
I had an interesting experience at
the University of
Edinburgh at one
point. The governing bodies for the four
“ancient” Scottish universities (that’s what they’re labeled; Edinburgh,
St. Andrews, Aberdeen, Dundee)
are called the Court (each institution has its own Court). The Court has several categories of members;
it also has something with no parallel in any American university that I know
of: the Rector. The Rector is the convenor (chair) of the
Court and is elected by the students of the University. The Rector is NOT a student, and is often a well-known
person (for example, Winston Churchill was at one
time the Rector). The current Rector was
Tam Dalyell, Sir Thomas Dalyell of the
Binns, 11th Baronet, a British politician and Labour member
of the House of
Commons from 1962 to 2005. According to Wikipedia,
Dalyell was outspoken in Parliament
and true to his own views. His stance ensured his isolation from significant
committees and jobs. His early career was promising . . . but he annoyed a
number of ministers and was heavily censured by the privileges committee
for a leak about the biological weapons research establishment Porton Down to the newspapers (though he claimed
that he thought the minutes were in the public domain). . . . He was opposed to Scottish devolution and .
. . continued to argue his own causes:
in 1978 to 1979
he voted against his own government over 100 times. Dalyell is vocal in his disapproval of imperialism,'
. . . saying, “I will resist a war with every sinew in my body.” When invited
by a television journalist to rank Tony Blair among the eight Prime Ministers he
had observed as a parliamentarian, he cited policy over Kosovo and Iraq as reasons
for placing his party leader at the bottom of the list. In sharp contrast to many members of the
Campaign Group, he is pro-Europe. He has
a keen scientific interest and has been a columnist for the New Scientist magazine since 1967.
A Conservative critic once said that Dalyell must be the only member of the
Campaign Group to have a peacock collection at his country house.
On the day of the Court meeting I
was invited to join the lunch that precedes the meeting (linen tablecloths,
silver, served meal, etc.). I was
talking with some of the people at my table when this low voice boomed from
behind me “the University
of Minnesota, eh?” I turned and began talking with the man,
portly, leaning on a cane, perhaps in his mid-70s, and it took me a few minutes
to figure out that it was Tam Dalyell, the Rector. He told me that he had a very fond view of Minnesota. He had never been to Minnesota,
but at a meeting in Washington,
DC, many years ago, the two
people who were most gracious and helpful for him were Hubert Humphrey and John
Blatnik.
We adjourned from lunch to the Court
meeting. At one point, during a
discussion of a complicated matter of British higher education and its impact
on the University of Edinburgh, the Rector announced that “when he makes
his report, I would like to know the views of the University of Minnesota
on this issue.” Huh. I wasn’t expecting to comment on that particular
issue, but fortunately I did know something about it. I didn't comment on the issue in my report,
but I did send the (now former) Rector a note after we returned to the US to express
my views.
Because this was this Rector’s last Court meeting, there was a
photography session after the meeting and then a reception. The photographer took about 25 pictures, in
different groupings, and then the Rector declared that “the University of Minnesota
should be in this last set of pictures,” so there I was having my picture taken
with the Court and its outgoing Rector. The
University later sent me two 8x10 prints of the pictures that were taken.
* * *
We had cocktails with another
American couple one night. He was
visiting from the U of California-Santa Barbara, a geographer, on leave here
with his wife and son. We discovered
that we agreed on one point immediately (among others): the Scots are among the friendliest and most
helpful people we have ever encountered.
Whatever the stereotype of the “dour Scotsman,” we certainly did not
find it to be true. Nearly everyone was
warm and gracious. Fortunately, no one
has smeared us by association with the Bush administration, although we did not
encounter anyone (that is not an exaggeration) who had anything good to say
about Washington. It was not a problem being an American,
however, for which we were thankful.
(That was true wherever we went in Europe: a total dislike and distaste for the US and its
policies but no dislike for Americans.)
* * *
Our newly-good friends Hugh and
Margaret had us out one weekend for an overnight to Hugh’s home in Bo’ness, a
small town west of Edinburgh. Bo’ness at one point in its history was a
major port for Scotland,
and there was a lot of coal mined in the area, but in recent decades it has not
been as economically successful as it perhaps wished. Now, however, it is undergoing
regentrification (especially since it is or has become a bedroom community for Edinburgh), so its future
looks pretty good. The setting, on the
Firth of Forth, is beautiful.
They took us to more of the places
on our endless list of places to visit. We saw the ruins of Linlithgow Palace,
birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Blackness Castle,
the military port in the area. We also
saw Kinneil House, hereditary home of the Dukes of Hamilton (given by King
Robert the Bruce to his bodyguard, Gilbert Hamilton, for Hamilton’s critical
role in the Battle of Kinneil Muir, part of the 1314 Battle of Bannockburn,
which established Scotland’s independence).
Kinneil House is the site where James Watt did some of his most
significant work in development of the steam engine (in a small out-of-the-way
cottage on the property in order to avoid detection and possible infringement
on his discoveries by competitors). We
also walked the streets of Culross, which has Dutch architecture because it was
a major trading port with the Netherlands
in the 18th Century.
* * *
Krystin returned from her travels the first Friday in March. Elliott the next night went to stay overnight
at the home of a school friend, something we were glad about—he finally got to
spend some time away from us. He was a trooper,
spending all his time outside school with us and visiting a number of places
that he really wasn't very interested in.
So I contributed to some of the expense of his purchase of medieval
swords and weapons, a collection he took up with gusto since seeing many of
them in the various castles and palaces we have visited.
With Elliott gone overnight, the three of us went to one of the major
theaters in Edinburgh
to see “The Hollow,” a new play based on a murder mystery by Agatha
Christie. The play was performed at The
King’s Theater, an old theater with the ornate interior decoration and boxes
like the ones Lincoln
sat in at Ford’s Theater. “The Hollow”
was not one of Christie's better murder mysteries, but it was one of her usual
little set pieces, on an English country estate, guests hosted for the weekend
by Lord and Lady Angkelton (or something like that), with all the usual
servants, and in a time and place where one dresses for dinner.)
* * *
We
went touring around again one weekend, courtesy of newly-found friends once
again. We went for lunch in Musselburgh,
a small community east of Edinburgh
that is, or is becoming, a bedroom community for the larger city. From there we went east along the coast and
then a bit inland, seeing some towns here and there as well as the countryside.
In
the course of our tour, we stopped in a charming little town, Haddington, that
had a wonderful glass and art gallery.
I, of course, had to buy a couple of pieces from the local artists. We also stopped in another town with a
gallery, but it only had works by two artists.
I thought the work looked repetitive:
one did nothing but mildly abstract wild sea and shore scenes; the other
did metal fish on metal water. I don’t
care that much for metal work, so I wasn’t interested in them, but I did sort
of like the seascapes. Then we
discovered where the artists came from:
one from the Shetlands and one from the Orkneys—where they see a lot of
fish and a lot of sea and storms. (I
didn’t want to spend over $1000 on pictures that were going to be trouble
getting home, so we passed.)
I
was amazed at all the stone walls in the fields and the small towns (and in Edinburgh). Some are just stones stacked from the fields;
others consist of a lot of stones held together with cement or mortar. The latter tend to be smooth-faced, so
somebody either cut a lot of stone or arranged them very judiciously. The walls are ubiquitous; sometimes they are
only a couple of feet high while in other cases they may be 6-8 feet high. They must be horrendously expensive to
maintain—and most of them are in very good shape. We use fences and barbed wire for fields;
here they use stone walls.
I
was struck by how seriously people in Scotland—or at least the ones we
hung out with—take the laws against drinking and driving. I have known in the abstract that Europeans
are more serious about this; I didn’t realize how much so. In one case, we had dinner with someone and
he declined any alcohol at all—not even a glass of wine—even though he would
have a large dinner with/after the wine.
In another case, we had dinner at the home of a couple who picked us up
from and brought us back to our flat; at dinner, one of them had a glass of
wine before dinner, and even two hours later the other one drove us home
because one had a glass of wine.
* * *
It
was sufficiently cool and damp that most nights we built fires in our coal
“stove”/fireplace. Elliott was the
firemeister (an incipient pyromaniac, I think!) and usually got them going when
he came home from school. As I
mentioned, since we only had the heat on twice a day, it got cool by mid-afternoon. If Pat was there, she wrapped up in a duvet
or blanket and read, between laundry loads and errands. So she welcomed Elliott’s fire. The coal was smokeless (I presume by city
ordinance). It was an interesting way to
keep warm, given what we are used to in the US.
(I surmised that when we had a fire, the upper parts of these rooms,
with the 12-foot ceilings, were warmer than the level at which we walked and sat. The fire made the living room toasty warm
while the kitchen and bedrooms remained quite cool. Pat thought they were downright cold.)
* * *
We
had a wonderful tour of several of the oldest buildings at the University by a
retired medical school faculty member who has become the University’s informal
architectural historian. He has written
a book, The Building of Old College, the building I worked in. We saw a number of grand spaces and
interesting nooks and crannies. One of
the more fascinating was the old zoology lab.
Some of you may have heard the story about Messrs. Burke and Hare;
here’s an abbreviated excerpt from a website relating the history.
As the Study of
Anatomy surged forward in Edinburgh in the early
1800’s, it was apparent that the allowed allocation of one executed criminal
per year to each Anatomy
School was insufficient
for the growing amount of students. Dr Robert Knox’s school of anatomy near
Surgeons Hall is said to have attracted as many as 500 people to the anatomy
classes there. So arose the sinister trade of the Body Snatcher and so good
were they at their gory trade they also earned the nickname of the
“resurrectionists.”
So rife was the
Body Snatching in Edinburgh
that certain graveyards had large walls, railings and watchtowers erected. Some graves had added protection against the
exhumation of their occupants by having their own walls and railings. With the growing demand of the anatomy
schools and the growing difficulty in obtaining freshly interred cadavers enter
Burke and Hare, who devise their own and even more sinister methods of
supplying the needs of the medical students.
William Burke
and William Hare, two Irish immigrants from Ulster, [gave] the appearance of
two hard working men by day, [but] at night they had taken up their more
sinister and profitable trade of grave robbing and then of serial murder. Their
victims of murder were the waifs and strays of the streets of Edinburgh’s
Old Town, people no one would otherwise
necessarily miss. By hanging out in Inns such as the White Hart in the Grassmarket
they would try and spot their potential victims and lure them to their death by
their own form of strangulation (in order not to damage the corpse). The
victims of the gruesome crime were said to have been sold to anatomist Dr Knox
‘no questions asked’ to be dissected on the tables within the school.
It is believed
that William Burke and William Hare are responsible for the deaths of between
13 –30 people but Burke was the only one prosecuted. William Hare turned King’s evidence against
him. Burke was hanged on the 28th January 1829 before a large crowd, which was
said to be chanting “Burke him, Burke him.” No charges were ever brought
against the Surgeon Dr Knox as being the recipient of the bodies for
dissection.
In an ironic end
to the story Burke’s body was donated to the medical school for what they
called "useful dissection". His skeleton is still on display at the University Medical School.
A pocket book was also made of his skin and this is on display at the Police Museum
on the Royal Mile.
We can attest to the part about the
skeleton: it is indeed still there and
we saw it, in a glass case. We didn’t
see the pocket book.
The
University also has a cavernous hall (with a very large pipe organ) that is
magnificently decorated on the inside, McEwan Hall. It was built with money
from a local brewer (Mr. McEwan, of course) in the late 19th Century, and plays
a role similar to Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota. This one, however, is a semicircular dome
with a cupola and has huge murals and tile work on the interior. Alas, like Northrop, it is in need of
attention, and neither university believes it can justify using scarce capital
funds for an auditorium rather than for academic program needs. So both are looking for private funds to
renovate their buildings. (We liked
McEwan beer, which is still being brewed.)
* * *
We
tried to have a “Charles Rennie Mackintosh weekend” in Glasgow in mid-March. We were only partly successful. On that Friday Elliott and I took the train
from Edinburgh to Glasgow,
about a 50-minute ride, to meet Pat and Krystin, who were coming back from 3
days in Dublin.
Pat and I sat in
on the introductory Art History survey course last spring, and got to know the
professor, Karal Ann Marling; we would sit in the back of the class, before it
began and during breaks, and chat with her.
Towards the end of the semester, when she knew we were coming to
Edinburgh, and she was talking about the late 19th-Century and the
decorative arts, in her lecture she threw in the comment—and looked directly at
us and laughed—that anyone who happened to be going to Scotland should visit
the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow to see the work of Charles Rennie
Mackintosh.
Mackintosh was a
renaissance man in terms of his talents:
he was architect, painter, and master of the decorative arts (e.g.,
interiors, furniture). I think that one
can see in his work a foreshadowing of Frank Lloyd Wright as well as the Art
Deco style. We visited the Glasgow
School of Art, a building and interior designed entirely by Mackintosh (and
which is, we are told, the most prestigious art school in Scotland). Apparently Mackintosh (who, unlike a number
of artists, appears to have led a rather placid personal life with a long and
happy marriage) was difficult to work with:
if you hired him to do your house, he insisted on doing EVERYTHING in
your house, not only the structure but also all the interior design and the
furniture. In the case of the Art
school, he went way over budget, and when it came to finishing the backside of
the building, since he couldn’t use the same stone as he had on the front, he
was upset so got the cheapest and ugliest finish he could find (an ugly gray
stucco-like finish). We also toured the
Mackintosh House at the Hunterian Gallery at the University of Glasgow,
the townhouse that he and his wife lived in for 8 years (that was moved from
its original site and faithfully reproduced when the original building had to
be demolished).
The School
itself is in kind of a dumpy part of town, and one has to view it as a whole,
by itself, as well as the Mackintosh-ish details. (It, like virtually all the thousands of
graceful and otherwise attractive buildings in Edinburgh and Glasgow, badly needs
a light sand-blasting to get rid of the accumulated grime and soot.)
One of the more
interesting elements of our Art
School tour was our
guide. She was a first-year student,
slender, very pale-complected, very light blonde (from a bottle, I think)—and
who also had a set of very full lips that were PERFECTLY covered with bright
red lipstick. Few women I know as
friends or colleagues wear much lipstick but it’s not as if I’ve never seen it
before—but I have never seen it so absolutely flawlessly applied to such
prominent lips and so strikingly vivid against the pale skin and hair. She gave us a good tour, but I had the weird
feeling sometimes that we were trailing along behind a pair of disembodied
large red lips talking about the building and about Mackintosh. (Style in color combinations has apparently
changed since I developed my taste in clothes and appearance: she also had fingernails with bright pink
polish and dark pink shoes to go with her white dress with small black polka
dots and her nearly-florescent red lips.
The predominantly white dress served to further offset her lips.) Apologies to anyone who thinks this is
sexist, but I like to think I would have had the same kind of observation if
there had been some attention-grabbing feature of a young male tour guide.
Of course, given
the challenge laid down in our Art History class, we visited the Willow Tea
Rooms, which Mackintosh designed for the leading tea-room owner at the turn of
the 20th century (tea rooms were quite popular at that time). It’s actually a very good little restaurant—the
food was delicious—but one has to walk through a jewellery store to get to
it.
I decided that I
like some of Mackintosh’s work, but not all of it. His furniture looks to be extremely
uncomfortable. (The benches for the
Willow Tea Rooms were purposely designed to be uncomfortable—Miss Cranston did
not want her waitresses to be comfortable sitting down during their breaks, so
the back of the bench cuts right into one’s back.) But I like his paintings and some of his
interior designs. I wouldn’t want an
entire world full of Mackintosh buildings, but a few of them here and there add
a distinctively different architecture to a setting.
On Saturday
night, after we ate, the kids plunked themselves in their room in front of the
TV (we didn’t object, because they had watched virtually no television the
entire time we were there). Pat and I
decided to go out and have a nightcap, so we wandered a block or so to a
pleasant little pub we had noticed earlier in the day. I went up to the bar and asked the bartender
for a shot of Talisker for Pat and a shot of Dalwhinnie for me, scotches we learned
to like. I also asked for a glass of
water, because we both like to sip on a cocktail, and sipping on straight
scotch makes it disappear too fast (and has effects we are not looking
for). The bartender refused to give me a
glass of water! He asked if I was going
to use it with the scotch; I said yes (that was my mistake). He said that’s not the way to drink
single-malt scotch and they won’t serve water with it. He did bring over a small pitcher and said I
could pour a little water into the scotch if I wanted to—but he was reluctant
even to let me do that. I was so
dumbfounded I was speechless for a few seconds.
I finally told him I was thirsty and wanted a glass of ice water. He resignedly got me a glass of ice water
(which Pat and I took to our table and used to water down our scotch, which
purists abhor but which we do anyway).
But I couldn’t believe it—the guy wasn’t going to give me my water!
I emailed to a
few friends about the episode in the bar.
I know one shouldn’t mix good single-malt Scotch with water and two of
my correspondents were quick to reply.
One wrote back and told me “I am completely sympathetic to the bartender
in Glasgow. You were polluting some fine whiskey! It should be consumed straight.” Another wrote “the bartender was right. Even on da Range we don't put water into a
GOOD SCOTCH drink.”
A bit later in
the pub, we had a chat with the guy who I suppose was the “bouncer,” although
he was a very nice young man wearing a coat and tie. He would wander around cleaning up tables
when he wasn’t sitting by the front door.
(We’re finally at the point in life when we don’t get carded any
more—unfortunately.) He was asking where
we had been and what we were going to see in Scotland. At least we were pretty sure that’s what he
was asking, because we only understood perhaps 40% of what he was saying and we
had to strain mightily to be able to follow his comments. When we said we were planning at some point
on going out to the west coast and north to some of the islands, he laughed and
said we’d likely have a difficult time understanding the locals because their
“accent” is much thicker there than in the east. He related that he has a hard time
understanding people in the west and north.
We’re sitting there thinking to ourselves “this guy doesn’t think HE has
an accent, and he’s telling us HE can’t understand them? Heavens, what will happen to US?” He had no reason to believe that we thought
he had an accent, of course, because we listened intently and acted like his
speech rang clear as day in our ears, which it decidedly did not.
When we were
going to bed that night, it started to snow.
When we got up Sunday morning, there was about 6 or more inches of wet,
slushy snow everywhere—and it was still snowing. We weren’t dressed for a winter storm nor did
we have boots, and didn’t want to slop through all this wet stuff, so we
decided to heck with it. We walked the
3-4 blocks to the train station and went home to Edinburgh.
I understand that the Twin Cities also got dumped on that same
Sunday-Monday, with schools closed and traffic a mess. It also snowed in Edinburgh, but the snow was gone by Monday
night.
* * *
I found that I
drank more coffee in Scotland. I almost never drink coffee after a couple of
cups in the morning at home (in Minneapolis),
before I leave for work, because my doctor told me years ago that caffeine
stays in the system about 12 hours. I
don’t sleep that well anyway, so having caffeine later during the day has never
seemed wise. Another reason I don’t
drink coffee during the day at work is that the coffee generally available is
execrable. In Scotland, however, the University had
the gracious practice of providing coffee & tea, and cookies, before and at
meetings—and inviting attendees to arrive 10 minutes early to chat over
coffee. I did so, of course, to be
sociable and because they provided very good coffee. I also took to drinking all my coffee with cream—“white
coffee,” as they say there. Oddly
enough, this drinking coffee mid-afternoon seemed to have had no effect
whatever on my ability to sleep at night.
Maybe it’s the cream.
* * *
Pat and I one night
joined our new Scottish friends Rod and Morag at the theatre to see a
production of “The Grand Duke” by Gilbert and Sullivan. We have been going annually to the GSVLOC
(Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company) productions in the Twin
Cities, once alerted to it by friends who are involved in it, Fred and
Charlotte Morrison. Since we were going
to miss our Minneapolis G&S fix this year, we took advantage of the
opportunity there. Both are amateur
companies; the one in Scotland
was probably slightly more professional, although not by a lot. It was great fun, as G&S operettas always
are, but I was reminded again of the lesson I learn every year and then
promptly forget: I need to read the damn
librettos before I go to a performance because I simply cannot understand the
words of some of the songs. (I think Pat
and I and Rod and Morag lowered the average age of the audience by about 10
years when we walked into the theatre; some number of those present for the
performance were, I have no doubt, also present at the opening performance of
“The Grand Duke” when it premiered in 1911.)
* * *
The next week we went with Hugh and
Margaret to see the Bo’ness Amateur Opera Company production of My Fair
Lady. It was great fun. I’ve always thought that that musical has
such an interesting collection of issues:
a variation of misogyny, linguistic class distinction, and social class
distinction and socio-economic disparities.
(That it does so, of course, is because it is drawn, almost word for
word, from Pygmalion, by one of the great British playwrights of the 20th
Century, George Bernard Shaw.) Professor
Higgins is an ass through most of it, but I am personally sympathetic to his
declaration at the beginning of the musical.
HIGGINS
It's "ow" and "garn" that keep her in her place,
Not her wretched clothes and dirty face.
Why can't the English teach their children how to speak?
This verbal class distinction, by now, should be antique.
If you spoke as she does, sir, instead of the way you do,
Why you might be selling flowers too.
PICKERING
I beg your pardon.
HIGGINS
An Englishman's way of speaking absolutely classifies him.
That “verbal class
distinction,” with people classified by their speech, remains alive and well
today. And it would be nice if the
English, and the Americans, taught their children how to speak. At the least, it would be nice if they could
be taught to avoid using the word “like” about 5 times in every sentence.
I regaled a few colleagues at the University of Edinburgh
with our linguistic adventures and the Glasgow
bar bouncer story. One of them wrote
back to me as follows, speaking of verbal class distinctions (with a little
nationalism thrown in for good measure):
“My wife and I live SW of here in a village which is much more aligned
with Glasgow and the West and I found it very hard at first as the locals had
accents which sounded so very ‘coarse’ to me.
This immediately reveals my upbringing to have been at a time when
so-called ‘regional’ accents were deemed undesirable and an indication of poor
breeding. ‘Received’ BBC English was the
gold standard to which we were all expected to strive—but never achieved.
“I now greatly
value the variation in sounds between Edinburgh
and home—as it is a constant source of amusement and confusion! Although my accent caused much hilarity when
we lived in England—it
was the speed with which I spoke that caused the greatest problems (and still
does). It took me a long time to become
patient enough to wait for English speakers to finish their ponderous
sentences.”
* * *
After our Friday night entertainment
in Bo'ness, we drove down to the “Scottish Riviera,” the southwest coast of Scotland, and
stayed overnight in Kirkcudbright.
(Before we left, I was trying to tell Margaret where we were going and
kept getting quizzical looks in response.
I finally spelled Kirkcudbright, and she laughed and said “oh, you’re
going to Kir COO bree!” Of course.) Kirkcudbright is a very pleasant coastal town
that reminded me of Oak Bluff on Martha’s Vineyard: the fronts of all the residences and shops in
Kirkcudbright are brightly painted in various pastels, similar to the homes in
Oak Bluff. En route we stopped at Dumfries, a larger town with a pedestrian-friendly center
square that runs for several blocks.
Since we made the kids get up
“early” Saturday to get on the road, they had to take a nap in the hotel room
once we arrived in Kirkcudbright. Pat
and I wandered around the town, admiring the paint jobs and sticking our heads
into a couple of galleries and shops. As
is true for virtually all of the small towns we have been in, there was in a
prominent place near the center of town and harbor a memorial to the soldiers
whose lives were lost in WWI, with the WWII deaths added later. (Glasgow has a very large such memorial in
George Square—the center of town—directly in front of city hall, that was in
part roped off with a request that visitors respect the memory of the dead.)
On
Sunday we drove back through the Scottish countryside, from Kirkcudbright to
the small towns of Newton Stewart to New Galloway to Moffat to Peebles. We were on narrow roads and driving up and
down and around curves and saw more sheep than there are people in Scotland. At one point we were driving in a valley,
with a flat bottom perhaps a half-mile wide (with fields and sheep grazing) and
then hills (small mountains) suddenly going up at about a 60-degree angle on
both sides. At the tops, many were still
covered with snow. (We were told by the hotel
owner in Kirkcudbright that they had had snow the previous weekend, the first
time in 9 years.)
* * *
One
Saturday, unusually for us, we had nothing planned, so also unusually for us we
walked to the train station and got on a train to Berwick-upon-Tweed—so we had tip-toed
across the border into England. (We
quickly learned, when we were describing our trip, that it’s pronounced
“Berrick,” not the way one would think from the spelling. We were not surprised.) We had no idea what was there nor had we
read anything about it—it was just a convenient train ride in a direction we
had not gone before. If you plan to
return to England,
or visit it for the first time, I can assure you that you will not miss
anything if you skip Berwick. It’s a
perfectly pleasant little town, where the Tweed
River empties into the North Sea, but there’s nothing there to attract
anyone. There is an enormous stone
railroad bridge across the Tweed, constructed
in the mid-1800s, that is still in use; we walked under it as we ambled along
the side of the river. But we had an
enjoyable lunch and stroll around, and the train ride down and back hugs the
coast, so the views were satisfying.
* * *
Pat
and I walked to Calton Hill one Sunday.
The entire countryside, including in Edinburgh itself, is hilly from
much-worn-down volcanic extrusions from millions of years ago. Calton Hill is on the east side of the center
city and provides spectacular views. (Of
course, there are spectacular views of the city, the Firth of Forth, and the
surrounding countryside from the top of all these hills, so it is possible to
get views almost no matter where one goes.)
Calton Hill, however, has been the site a number of painters have used
for pictures of the city. It also has
the oddest collection of structures: a
several-story tower that is a monument to Admiral Nelson, the city observatory,
one wall and two corners of a replica of the Parthenon (it was supposed to be a full-scale replica, a memorial to those who had
died in the Napoleonic Wars, but the grandiose plans fell afoul of a
shortage of money), and a small monument to Dugald Stewart, a now-little-read
professor of moral philosophy at the University of Edinburgh in the late 1700s
and early 1800s (think of the Jefferson Memorial in DC, only reduce it by
90%--and instead of a statue of Stewart under the rotunda, there is a stone
trophy cup).
No
matter how much walking one does on flat land, it does not really prepare one
for walks up a 30-degree incline. But we
trudged up to the top of Calton Hill, wandered around looking at this odd
collection of buildings and admiring the views.
Meantime, as is usual for Edinburgh weather, part of the time there was
bright sunshine and part of the time it was drizzling (smirr—Scots term for a
fine rain, that, in Ian Rankin’s novels, gets you soaked before you realize
it).
* * *
Pat
and I also took a day and walked for about 7 hours around parts of Edinburgh we hadn’t seen
before. Saw a lot more of the
neighborhoods, all of which have the 3- or 4-story stone tenement complexes
mixed in with shops and gardens or small parks.
We stuck to the good areas of the city, but any of them would be great
places to live so long as one didn’t want a lawn or garden of any size. We ended up back in New Town, originally
built for the wealthy in the late 1700s but now in part a shopping and
commercial area. We climbed the Scott Monument,
which stands on the main shopping thoroughfare, Princes Street, and overlooks the central
train station. The Scott Monument
(which is described as the largest monument to a writer anywhere in the world)
is another of those Victorian piles constructed in the middle of the 19th
Century. I loved what look to be the
miniature flying buttresses about half way up (and they may indeed perform a
supporting function)—this kind of Victorian “monument architecture” appears in
a number of places across Scotland (and, I would guess, England as well). We climbed all 287 steps and got more
spectacular views. The site says it has
a “narrow spiral staircase”—they got that right. It gets narrower the higher one goes, and by
the time we got to the top level we had to almost squeeze through the opening
onto the landing. I wonder if anyone
reads Scott poems and novels any more (e.g., Waverley,
Ivanhoe, Lady of the Lake).
Across
Princes Street
from the Scott Monument is the large department store,
Jenner’s. Although now owned by a chain,
it is Edinburgh’s original old department store,
akin to Dayton’s in Minneapolis.
I also went into Debenham’s, which, although it began in London, appeared to be Glasgow’s equivalent. The interiors of these stores remind me of
what Dayton’s downtown interior looked like about 40-50 years ago: a lot of polished wood balconies and
railings, wrought iron here and there, tiny elevators, and so on. The same was true of NK in Stockholm. The merchandise, of course, is entirely
modern, but the atmosphere is not. (On
the other hand, when Pat and I walked down from Calton Hill, we wandered into
this quite new covered shopping mall in downtown Edinburgh.
I went into the anchor department store there, John Lewis, just to nose
around; it is as modern in design and layout as any store at the Mall of
America. What I found fascinating about
that store was that there was nothing, anywhere, marked “sale” or “clearance.” I have never been in a Dayton’s or Macy’s—or
Debenham’s or Jenner’s—where there were not all kinds of clothes racks and
display shelves with items marked 20% or 40% off, or whatever.) Illum in Copenhagen
was more like John Lewis—except that unlike almost every department store in
the US,
it had large windows on its exterior walls so it seemed bright and airy. (When was the last time you saw windows in Dayton's or Macy's or
Bloomingdale's?)
Even
though it was getting late in the afternoon of the day of our seven-hour walk,
we wandered into the National Gallery of Scotland. It’s a wonderful gallery—it’s only paintings
(with a few sculptures thrown in here and there)—that has a wonderful
collection for a relatively small museum.
What’s nice about it is that it is a “doable” museum, like the National Museum
in Oslo. We spent about an hour or so on the main
floor and on another one that was devoted to Scottish colorists. We didn’t get to the two upper floors with
the Raphaels and Titians and so on—and unfortunately we didn't get back to see
them. On our next visit.
* * *
Conversations
in Edinburgh
about the role of the University were interesting (and depressing). The Scottish economy is not in particularly
good shape and no one foresees any significant improvement—or any way FOR it to
improve. Right now Scotland relies
heavily on tourism and whisky, but that’s not a very diverse economic
base. There have been heavy
industries—shipping, coal—but those are gone.
There was a flash of technology, with plants here to build various parts
of high-tech equipment, but those all folded in the dot.com implosion. I had several people tell me that one reason
the Scottish Executive pays close attention to Scotland’s
universities is because the political leaders see the universities as the last
hope for reviving Scotland’s
economy. The hope is probably not
completely without justification, because Scottish universities are very, very
good. It does, however, put the
universities in a difficult spot—and Edinburgh
in particular because it’s at the top of the heap in the prestige and
productivity hierarchy of Scottish universities. On the one hand, they want to continue to do
the things that universities have done for centuries, preserve and transmit
knowledge and culture and instruct students as well as (more in the past 125
years or so) advance the frontiers of knowledge; on the other, they face strong
political and social expectations that they will spin off companies, develop
new intellectual property that business can use, and so on. This puts great pressure on the faculty,
especially in engineering and the sciences, to develop usable (or near-market)
products and intellectual property, a pressure which can sometimes lead to
de-emphasis of basic research and teaching.
While the University
of Minnesota is certainly
one of the, if not the, major economic engine of the state, it is by no means
the only one. The U of M would, I am
sure, feel itself in a tight spot if the Governor and legislature were looking
almost exclusively to the University as the source of new economic growth in
the state. (One major problem Scotland has is business investment in research
and development: the UK is below the European Union average for
investment in research and development, and Scotland
is below the UK
average.)
* * *
One
trivial cultural difference I noticed:
there are never teaspoons to be had at a meal. We didn’t have any in our flat. They were never been part of a table setting
either in restaurants or at the homes of friends. We had the oversized version of a teaspoon
(which often passes as a soup spoon in the US), and we have soup spoons (with
the round rather than oblong spoon), but the only time a teaspoon is seen is
with coffee or tea. (Imagine that.) But I was not used to eating cereal or
pudding or fruit pieces with those larger spoons and they don’t fit as
comfortably in the mouth as a teaspoon—and they also carry more than a polite
mouthful of food! So go the differences.
* * *
The buildings of Edinburgh are almost all stone, 4-5 stories
high. As with Glasgow, most of them are darkened with what
appears to be soot and grime—I presume from the days when the primary fuel for
heating and cooking was coal—so they can appear somewhat forbidding. Elliott and I had never looked upon them with
such fondness, however, as we did Sunday, April 9, when we arrived in Edinburgh on the train from London.
To start with the end of the story,
we went to Paris
on March 31. Krystin, who had been
travelling with her friend Mike again by bus and staying in youth hostels in Brussels, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Warsaw,
was to join us on Tuesday afternoon, April 4.
We were to meet her at the entrance to the glass pyramid in front of the
Louvre about 1:00. We were there at the
appointed time but she never showed up.
We figured her bus from Warsaw
was probably just late and that she’d find her way to the apartment where we
were staying—we had of course given her the address.
So that Tuesday afternoon Pat and I
noodled around a bit in Paris
and later went back to the flat to join Elliott. We found taped to the mailbox a note (in
French) to the family of Mlle. Engstrand asking that we call Hopital Tenon and
giving us the number. We didn’t really
understand the entire message, but we could figure out Hopital Tenon and
familie de Mlle. Engstrand. The
apartment had a telephone but we could not figure out to make it work. We also couldn’t figure out where the
hospital was because it was off every map of Paris we had, so Pat and I walked over to the
front of the Louvre and caught a cab that was driving by.
It seems that Krystin and Mike had
really gotten in one another’s hair and were barely speaking to each
other. Krystin quit taking her
insulin. Mike told Pat in an email he
thought the two were related. In any
event, she was getting sick, but got on the bus from Warsaw to Paris anyway, a
24-hour ride, and by the time she got to Paris she was nearly unconscious, so
she was taken by ambulance to the ER of the Hopital Tenon (which, as we
learned, was only about 5 minutes drive from the bus station). It’s somewhat of a miracle that the hospital
found us at all. Krystin only had an
address, and the apartment is in a building that is otherwise small private
businesses. (It was a wonderful
location, however, just a block from the Louvre.) It turns out that the doctor on duty when
Krystin was brought in had a colleague in a clinic or office quite close to the
address. She called her colleague, who
either called the building management or walked over there herself; in any
event, someone posted the note for us.
When we got to the hospital, Krystin
was barely conscious and hooked up to a number of IVs and monitors. The doctors told us her condition was
life-threatening but that she appeared to be doing OK. This was the second time she had put herself
into a diabetic near-coma; she did this in November, 2004, as well, as some of
you may recall. When Pat and I went back
to our apartment, we agreed that we were (1) extremely relieved that she was
OK, and (2) extremely angry with her for doing this again.
The next few days were sort of
mayhem for us. Not only were we running
to the hospital to stay with Krystin, we also had to juggle all our travel
plans. Pat had spent quite a lot of time
reserving bed and breakfasts and making car and train arrangements for us to go
to the Scottish highlands and islands starting Friday, April 7; that trip was
knocked into a cocked hat, of course, because there was no way the hospital was
going to release Krystin by Thursday morning April 6. So I went round and round trying to change
our flights back to Edinburgh, which proved
impossible (despite assistance from the travel agent for the Principal of the University of Edinburgh)
because this was the Easter holiday period and it seemed that everyone in Europe was traveling.
(The Principal’s travel agent finally got them to agree to honor our
tickets on a different flight, assuming seats were available in our ticket
price range—which they were not for a week.
We could fly sooner if we were willing to pay $500+ each one-way, so for
$2000 or so we could have gotten back to Edinburgh,
once we knew when Krystin would be released.
For that price, I decided to look at other ways to travel.) The Eurostar train people said there were no
seats available on trains for a week,
So Pat and I went to the bus
station. Over the next day or so, with
the hospital refusing to indicate when Krystin might be released except that it
would in all likelihood be Monday (April 10), we finally agreed that Elliott
and I would return to Edinburgh
on Sunday and they would follow on Monday.
By the time we made this decision, and I went to get bus tickets for
Elliott and me, Sunday seats were gone, so I had to take the 10:00 Saturday
night bus, scheduled to arrive in London
at 6:00 a.m. Sunday. Pat, after getting
a fairly firm release time for Krystin, went to buy tickets for Monday (and had
to also buy the 10:00 p.m. tickets, getting to London at 6:00 a.m. Tuesday, because all the
other seats were gone.) And why, you
might ask, would Elliott and I abandon Pat and Krystin in Paris?
Because we had airline and hotel reservations for Wednesday to go to Copenhagen and someone
needed to get home to do laundry so we had clothes to wear. Since it seemed pretty certain that Krystin
would be released, it didn’t seem that a day apart would be a family trauma.
I called the hospital the next morning from our flat in Edinburgh and asked—after
some negotiation with the hospital operator who did not speak any English—to be
connected with their patient Krystin Engstrand.
She finally got someone else on the line, who told me that the patient
had checked out. This came as a relief,
because earlier in the day I had an email from Pat sent the previous night—her
last access to a computer—saying that Krystin had developed an infection and
was on antibiotics, so she—Pat—again was uncertain if the hospital would
release her. (They were not going to do
so if Krystin developed a temperature.
In the course of her treatment, Krystin was on a catheter. It got stuck, so they had to puncture her
bladder with a needle to break the bubble of water used to hold the catheter
in. The site of the puncture apparently
got infected.) So I assumed they were on
their way home.
You would think, of course, that Pat could have been in touch by email
if she needed; Internet cafes are as ubiquitous as McDonalds in major
cities. Not in that part of far
northeast Paris. Because our apartment was close to the
Louvre, a very long way from the hospital, we got from one of Krystin’s doctors
the name of a hotel within a block of the hospital and moved on Thursday from
the apartment to the hotel. I was really
wary when we went in, because it was only a two-star hotel, but it turned out
to be a delightful and clean little place with a very friendly staff. It did not, unfortunately, have a wireless
(or wired) Internet connection for hotel guests, so as a few of you know, we
used their very old hotel laptop with a French keyboard that had many of the
letters and commands in different places.
(The last copyright date on their Microsoft package was 1999. It took me about 20 minutes to compose a
12-sentence message.) I went into a shop
at one point to ask about an Internet café, because I was so frustrated trying
to use the hotel laptop, and the young guy told me that there were no Internet
cafes in the area that he knew of.
Great. Even for us to make a
telephone call was a challenge. While we
found the French generally to be quite helpful and perfectly friendly, and a
number of them even had fun with us when we were trying to communicate (usually
about food on a menu), the part of Paris the hospital was in is off the beaten
path and there were far fewer English speakers in that part of town than in the
city center. It was increasingly
frustrating to be in a place where we could not communicate clearly with
people, especially on the rather complicated medical circumstances we were
dealing with. So it wasn’t easy for Pat
and me to be in touch once we were separated.
I told Elliott, when we were walking
the block from the subway to the bus station in Paris, hauling our suitcases and computer,
that we’d accustomed him to air travel and quite pleasant train travel; now he
was going to see how the other half traveled.
Bus stations are, in my little experience, not the classiest of places,
and this one was no different. It wasn’t
dirty and there wasn’t anything wrong with it, but it was run-down and the
lighting was the usual bare florescent fixtures.
Getting back: When Elliott and I
left Paris on Sunday night, we had no idea if we’d be able to get from London
to Edinburgh, given all the difficulties we’d had with travel arrangements
(although I was pretty sure that since there are regular trains between the two
cities, we could go to the King’s Cross station—the station where all the
trains from Edinburgh to London go when they depart Edinburgh—and find SOME
train to get home). In the bus terminal
in Paris, we struck up a conversation with an
Australian couple, perhaps in their late 50s; they were living in London for a year (he is some kind of consulting engineer
and she’s a teacher) and taking a vacation in Paris, and had decided to take the bus to see
the countryside en route. This was also
their first experience traveling by bus.
They were a delightful couple, so we spent awhile chatting while waiting
for the bus. (Except for the Australians
and me, I would guess that the mean age of the bus passengers was somewhere
between 22 and 28. They were all quiet
and, as Krystin had predicted, they honored the unspoken “lights out” protocol
of late-night bus rides.)
At 1:00 a.m., after riding for 3 hours, we reached British customs and
immigration in Calais (I assume France and Great Britain must have made some
kind of deal so that they have customs & immigration in each other’s
country at the ferry crossing points).
We had to get out of the bus to get our passports stamped and fill out
the usual forms. Then we drove over to
wait for the ferry, so we got out of the bus again and talked with our
new-found Australian friends on the tarmac.
We finally get on the ferry, about 3:00 a.m., and we all get out of the
bus and go up to the huge bar and restaurant, well lit and with lively
music—just what I felt like doing at that time of the morning. So at that wee hour we rejoined our
Australians and the three adults have a glass of wine and talk during the
90-minute ferry ride to England. Elliott was sociable as well with his Diet
Pepsi. I haven’t been “partying” at 4:00
in the morning for decades. By the time
we got to England
(it is now 4:00 local time because we gained an hour), we’re starting to get
pretty tired, but neither of us sleeps very well. Buses in motion are much jerkier than
airplanes, what a surprise. We rolled
into London at
5:30 Sunday morning.
Even in the large international city
of London,
there is not much open nor many people about at 5:30 Sunday morning. The Underground (subway) doesn’t open until
6:30 a.m. on Sundays, so Elliott and I killed an hour by eating a quick
breakfast (in the freezing Victoria Station, which is about a block from the
bus station, but we had to collar some guy to give us directions to it because
we had no idea where we were). We
finally got the subway to King’s Cross and learned (to our joy) that getting a
ticket to Edinburgh
was no problem but (to our mild annoyance) there is no train on Sunday mornings
until about 9:00. So we cooled our heels
(and the rest of us) in the equally-cold King’s Cross station until we finally
got on the train. Even then it seemed
our troubles were not over: we were in
our seats and the train didn’t leave when it was supposed to (which they ALWAYS
did). Very shortly there came a voice
over the train intercom announcing that “this train isn’t going anywhere soon”
and that travelers going to Peterborough and
other points in England
should get off and take the next train.
Those of us bound for Berwick upon Tweed and Edinburgh were to stay put for further
instructions. Elliott and I just shook
our heads. To our great relief (I use the
word “relief” frequently in these notes, because “relief” is what we were
constantly feeling, after trials that popped up constantly), within a few
minutes the voice came back on, apologized for the mix-up, and said that the
train would be leaving immediately for points north in England and to
Edinburgh. I am now back where I began
this narrative: Elliott and I were
profoundly glad to see the buildings of Edinburgh
as the train pulled into Waverley Station, although disappointed that Pat and
Krystin were not with us. Since we had
managed to doze a reasonable amount on the train, we were able to take a cab to
our flat and just putter around.
(Usually we walked from the train station, but in this case I said
"to hell with it" and spent the money on a cab.) I, of course, started doing laundry in this
salad spinner they call a washing machine.
Elliott concluded that we had had
two trips to Paris. One, to Paris,
during which we did some walking and sight-seeing and had an interesting
time. The second he said was to Gambeta
(the name of the subway station closest to the hospital and the name of one of
the streets that runs by the hospital), which was consumed by dealing with
problems related to Krystin’s hospitalization.
The trip to Gambeta was not an unmitigated disaster; the three of us (Gary,
Pat, Elliott) had fun dinners together at small restaurants in the area
(Elliott, given that he is 15 years old, is nonetheless a decent raconteur at
dinner). He was the worst off in this
venture because he’d finished reading his book, his gameboy battery had died,
and all the TV stations were in French.
He was so bored he was reduced to spending time creating the most marvelous
and clever renditions of his initials with the Paintbrush program in Microsoft
while Pat and I were at the hospital. I
told him to save them because I wanted to print them out once we got home.
Pat, Elliott, and I took the subway to the hospital on Wednesday
morning, the day after Krystin was admitted, because we decided that €40 for
round-trip cab fares was a bit much—the subway was €1.40 each and also faster,
given Paris traffic. (At the time we
were in France,
it was about $1.20 to the Euro, so our €40 cab fare was about $50.) When we first went to the subway station and
thought we had to indicate where we were going—we weren’t sure that the Gambeta
station was in the central city zones—we said the name and the woman gave us a
puzzled look and exclaimed something in French (probably something like, “you
dumb tourists, don’t you know where you’re going?”). I started looking around for a subway map;
she finally pulled one out and I pointed to the stop. We had said (knowing it was wrong, but not
trying to guess) Gambeta, as any good Minnesotan would pronounce it: Gam BET ah.
In French it is Gome beh TAH.
Elliott decided thus that we were traveling to Gambeta.)
Despite the travails of Paris—a
city we shall return to someday, although not soon—we did do and notice a few
things.
-- British Airways has more comfortable
seats than Northwest; they’re bigger and better padded. The rail trip would have been more fun than
flying, and since the total travel time flying was 10 hours, the train wouldn’t
have taken that much longer. But I was
told the train would be much more expensive.
As it turned out, of course, it would have been much better to have had
train tickets, since we forfeited our return airline seats. And given what it cost Elliott and me to go
from London to Edinburgh, I’m now not so sure it would have
been much more expensive. I should have
checked this option myself.
-- The only disagreeable portion of the
trip over was the Paris
station we arrived at from the airport.
The Les Halles Chatelet station is a Byzantine maze. Every time we went down a tunnel to another
sortie (an exit) and up a flight of steps, we ended up at another subway
station, not an exit. This happened
about four times. I was reduced to
muttering “how do we get out of this #$%&^% station?” and Pat was getting
surly. Elliott had the good sense to
point out that as long as we kept going up, sooner or later we’d have to get to
the street. He was right, if course, but
our demeanor was not helped by the fact that it was Friday at 6:00 p.m. and the
station was mobbed with people going every direction. We were lucky we held on to the very small
tickets we obtained at the airport to get on the train because we had to use
them two more times to get out of the damn subway station.
-- The station travail aside, we found
our apartment. We had more trouble
figuring out how to use the keys in the locks on the building entrance and
apartment doors than we did finding the building in the first place. Once we got in, however, we discovered that
for once the lodging looked just like the pictures on the web: it was a very pleasant one-bedroom
apartment. Elliott sacked out on the
sofa and watched cartoons in French; Pat and I went to a café and had a
beer. We went to a little grocery store
and got a few breakfast items and Diet Coke for Elliott, retrieved him from the
apartment, and found another café. We
had a very good meal sitting outside (it was mostly sunny and reasonably warm,
after leaving overcast, drizzly, and cold Edinburgh
that morning). We then went for a short
walk along the Seine and around the Louvre—and
went into the glass pyramid at night. We
watched the Eiffel
Tower with its sparkling
lights. So after an irritating start in
the subway system, we ended our first night on an enjoyable note.
-- Over the course of Saturday to Tuesday
we managed to see some of the sights. In
retrospect we might have seen the portents (yeah, right): it rained only twice when we were in Paris, once when we were up in the Eiffel Tower (so we had
to scurry into the middle on the observation deck) and once while we were
standing in line to get in to see Versailles. We took one of the day-long
hop-off-and-hop-on bus trips that one can take so we cold get oriented to the
city and see things we might want to return to.
The trip itself wasn’t all that great—they had taped narratives with
headsets and sometimes the tape was talking about something we were not seeing
yet. But it got us around different
parts of Paris, including to the Eiffel Tower. Oddly, when we walking down the steps from
the observation deck at the Eiffel Tower, it seemed like there were a lot more
steps going down than there were going up—and we had to tread gingerly on the
way down because the steps were wet and slippery from the rain. (We didn’t go all the way to the top because
it was an hour-long wait for the elevator to the second observation deck, about
30-40% of the way up, and then another hour-plus wait for the elevator to the
top. As it was, we had to wait an hour
just to walk up to the second observation deck.) One of our friends, in response to a query
from me about advice for Paris, said that one thing to do is just sit around
and enjoy the fact that we were in Paris—so we sat down after our bus tour and
Eiffel Tower climb and had a beer at an outdoor cafe in the Tuileries and then
walked to another pleasant little café and enjoyed the just-warm-enough evening
eating outdoors.
-- One day we went to Versailles
and Chartres. I’m glad to have seen Versailles, given its history, but standing
in the rain for the hour we were in line wasn’t a good start. Fortunately, it wasn’t a heavy rain. We took one of the audio tours and then
walked around the enormous gardens for an hour or so. We did a second leg of the audio tours, and
could have taken another, but at that point, after about 4 hours, I said I had
had enough. Elliott was quick to say he
was glad; he said that all the rooms looked the same after awhile. Except for the fact that some of them had
beds and others didn’t, he was right. I
think I like seeing the architecture and the buildings themselves more than all
of the rooms and furniture. We
concluded, in our walk from the Versailles
train station to the palace and back, that the town itself is sort of a dump.
We then took the train for another 45 minutes to Chartres to see the cathedral. It does stick up in the landscape, towering
above the small town and everything else.
But we ran into our second revival meeting in a church; half the kids in
France
under the age of 15 must have been there, going in and coming out in groups,
and with all kinds of electronic amplification equipment and singing in the
cathedral itself. We still got to see
it, and it is enormously impressive, but it sure was noisy. It definitely would have been better with a
guided tour. Elliott does NOT like going
to cathedrals, so he sat outside while Pat and I went in. While he wasn’t excited about this venture,
he was a pretty good kid about it, so I bought him a small plaster gargoyle
holding its head in its hands and sticking out its tongue—I told him he could
keep that as a memento of his reaction to his father dragging him to
cathedrals.
These were not the two greatest touristing days we’ve ever had. Pat suggested the open-top off-on bus tour,
which cost €75, which I agreed to and it wasn’t great. I suggested the trip to Versailles
and Chartres,
which cost €75 in train fares, to which Pat agreed, and it wasn’t so great,
either. I told her we were about even on
the two days. We made it up somewhat by
taking two Paris Walks walking tours, both of which were excellent and great
fun.
-- One afternoon we got in a tour of the
highlights of the Louvre, with the thought that we would return later and spend
some time in at least one or two of the galleries—a plan, of course, that we
could not follow up on.. The young woman
guide did a very nice job on the 6-7 pieces she showed (including, of course,
the Mona Lisa) and in explaining the Louvre holdings, and we saw hundreds of
other pieces en passant. Just walking around
the place gives one a sense of its enormity.
Even late in the afternoon (our tour was 3:45 – 5:30), it was somewhat
crowded, although probably less so than if we had been there earlier in the
day. We wandered out a little later and
found a corner brasserie/café and had a bottle of wine, good food, and I made
Elliott have a crepe (banana and chocolate) for dessert. Once in awhile there is a reward in life for
going where your parents drag you.
-- The demonstrations against the new
labor law in France
affected us at the margins. (You may
recall that French 20-somethings were demonstrating against a change in the law
so employers could fire someone within the first two years of employment,
because otherwise under French law apparently one has a job for life once
hired. The idea was to reduce the
extremely high unemployment rate among French in their 20s—by making employers
more willing to hire—but the proposed change in the law was withdrawn in the
face of the opposition.) We never saw
the demonstrations, except for one small group of students gathering and
“practicing” at one of the metro stops.
(We found it amusing that the demonstrations have an appointed time and
place and that people practice for them.)
The strikes, however, did shut down some of the museums. I really wanted to see the Musee d’Orsay,
reputed to be one of the best in Paris and in the world, and the two times we
went there it was closed by the general strike.
The Orangerie, another one I wanted to see, was sealed up like a coffin,
undergoing extensive renovation.
-- The hospital Krystin was in is interesting.
It's labelled "Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris." I know, from
trying to find the place in the phone book when we were trying to get there,
that there are a lot of "Assistance Publique" hospitals in Paris. So it was probably not the same as an elite
private hospital. The building is late 19th or early 20th Century, it's very
large, and it's a little frayed at the edges. The interiors are a combination
of the 1950s and the 1990s, with lineoleum floors. The medical equipment,
however, seemed to be first-rate—Krystin’s multitude of IVs and monitoring
machines appeared to match in sophistication any we have seen in American
hospitals. They obviously, short of
money, put their resources into equipment, not the building. The doctors and
nurses all seemed to be very competent, from what I could tell. So we didn’t have any great concerns about the
level of care. Even when she had been
released from ICR, they put her in a private room.
-- I think I annoyed one of the doctors when I
kept asking when they were going to release Krystin. I know that the US health care system has a
reputation for kicking people out of hospitals too quickly, although we have
never had that experience. (If anything,
our experience is the reverse—the hospitals want to keep us longer than we want
to stay.) I didn’t want to endanger
Krystin’s health, to be sure, but when she did this in November, 2004, she was
in ICU at Fairview University for 3 days and then under observation for a day
in a regular room. She seemed to be fine
and we had no concern that she was being released too early. The Hopital Tenon kept her in ICU four days
and then wanted her under observation for two more days. She seemed to be perfectly fine,
however—certainly in as good a shape as when she was released in November,
2004—but they would not release her. I
know that she could simply have walked out, since the last time I checked hospitals
are not prisons, but we weren’t ready to do that. I was frustrated, however, because we could
not make airline, train, or bus arrangements with an uncertain date of release,
and all of the trip dealings were going on simultaneously with her recuperation. I know that my primary concern had to be her
health, and I’m not a medic, but it nonetheless seemed to me that they were
being excessively cautious, based on our previous experience. Perhaps that is what comes of having a health
care system that is not market-driven.
-- We were a little worried about the hospital
bill, and of course we provided them with our health insurance information, but
one of the doctors who spoke a modicum of English assured Pat that they were
not all that concerned about payment and implied that what our health insurance
would pay would be fine. They did send a
bill, for about €7000, and our health insurance issued a check for over $9000
and we paid them. (The comparable bill
when Krystin was in the hospital in Minnesota—for
two fewer days—was about $75,000.)
-- We owed our travel agent big time. She spent half a day arguing with British
Airways and Travelocity about changing our tickets. It was not BA's fault, really—I didn't use her
for those tickets, which was dumb, and they didn’t want to give out information
to her because she wasn't the one who made the reservations and they didn’t
have any idea who she is. She also told
me in an email, after finally giving up, that they were also rude to her. I thought perhaps we could get some help from
the American Embassy, so we went there and got referred to the American
Consulate, a few blocks away. I went in,
and after going through the usual search and metal-detection equipment,
discovered myself in a room with several hundred people standing in a
bewildering variety of lines leading up to windows for who knows what. I decided this was not going to be any help
whatever, so I left.
-- We sat in our Paris
apartment having some wine and cheese and crackers after returning from the
hospital the second night, assured that Krystin was doing OK, and Elliott was
chatting with us. We were indulging in
funereal humor. One of Pat’s colleagues
got in a good line in an email to Pat.
She said she hoped Krystin got well so Pat could kill her. One of our relatives wrote that she wanted to
give her a slap on the face. Elliott
commented that she could get in line.
-- I told Elliott—to his great joy, ha ha—that I
would make him see four museums in the next couple of days since we would now
have a lot more time in Paris
than we had planned. In reality,
however, we had little spirit to go out and see the sights any more. The last day we were there I did drag him to
the Cluny Museum of the middle ages, which I
thought was interesting but he didn’t.
So despite being in Paris
for seven full days, we didn’t do as much as one might have expected.
-- As a general rule, and as folks who
have traveled in Europe know, “pharmacies” in Europe
are not equivalent to American drugstores.
They are apothecaries that carry prescription and over-the-counter drugs
and related items, but not cards and gifts and whatnot. While in Paris, I needed to buy deodorant. I wandered cautiously into a pharmacy near
the hospital Krystin was in and began by apologizing for not speaking
French. The pharmacist said that was OK,
he spoke English. I asked if he had
deodorant. He did, and walked me to the
shelf that had it. I think I owned among
the world’s most expensive deodorant (the cost was equivalent to about $9 for a
small stick)—and I think I got exactly what I asked for. I meant anti-perspirant and got deodorant.
The Monday morning after Elliott and I got back to Edinburgh, with Pat and
Krystin not yet back, I walked in to my office at the University to do a little
work and use my computer there (easier than the laptop in the flat). To my surprise, the building was locked up
tight. I asked a security guy what was
going on; he said the University was closed for the Easter holiday. I spoke later on the phone to one of the
people I worked with; she said she herself did not understand the University
holidays, but it closed the Friday and Monday of the weekend BEFORE
Easter. I confess that when I was
walking back to the flat, it was the first time during our visit that I wished
I were back home in Minnesota. (I had
not yet spoken to the hospital so wasn't sure Krystin had been released.) My wife and daughter were gone and heaven
knew when they’d get back, our trips were messed up, we’d had trouble with the
language barrier in France, and now I had made a pointless walk, defeated by an
inexplicable holiday schedule in Scotland.
I trusted, however, that when we were all four back
together and could get away to Copenhagen for a few days, we could simply relax
and poke around and recover our equanimity and enjoy the rest of our stay. I asked Elliott that night to Google the
weather in Denmark; the extended outlook for the period we were to be there was
temperatures in the low 40s and showers every day. That was about right for the way things had
recently gone.
As it turned out, Pat and Krystin arrived back from Paris half a day
earlier than expected. So we got
together and got ourselves to Copenhagen—although travelling, at that point,
was the LAST thing we wanted to do, given the events in Paris. Since we had airline tickets and a hotel reservation,
and since we could hardly sit around and mope in the flat, we went.
* * *
Perhaps I have written this before, but I am always glad when the
wheels of the plane are down on the runway and the airplane is braking. Even though I roughly understand the physics
of how airplanes fly, I will go to my grave being amazed that so many tons of
steel and people and luggage can get into the air. I will be similarly amazed all my life that
we have been clever enough to develop the steel in the landing gear that can
take what must be incredible pressure when the wheels hit the runway—and
especially when a Captain Kangaroo bounces the plane down. As usual, however, our planes did fly and
land both ways to and from Copenhagen and we arrived safely back in Edinburgh. (I did not look at our adopted city with
quite the same sense of relief this time that I did the Sunday before Easter.)
I am not keen on staying in American chain hotels when visiting other
countries. We did stay in a Marriott in
Copenhagen, however, because the price was so much better than any of our
alternatives. I do have to say that even
though I’d rather stay in a local hotel, or even local chain, American chains
do provide the amenities that Americans are used to. And I’ll give the Marriott credit: even though it is quite new, they made an
attempt to make it appear more than the slapdash construction typical of many
buildings. There were molded cornices
and mopboards in the rooms, three layers of drapes, and even passable (for
hotels) artwork on the walls. They also
did not run out of hot water, something we have encountered a couple of times in
other hotel stays while in Europe.
My advice for travelers is that visiting a Scandinavian country during
Holy Week is not the greatest idea.
Those officially-Lutheran countries take their religious holidays
seriously. We arrived on Wednesday
afternoon; Maundy Thursday and Good Friday are official holidays, so much was
not open the two days after we came to town.
Of course Easter is also a holiday, so it was only Wednesday evening
(when little except bars and restaurants are open) and Saturday (when
everything was open) that we had unrestricted choices in what we could do. Fortunately, some of the museums and gardens
were open despite the holidays, so we could see a fair amount. (Elliott asserted that Hallmark is an ancient
organization that has existed before the advent of Christianity and they
grabbed an opportunity when they saw one, so now there are all these holidays
around, including Easter, that require greeting cards.)
One aspect of the officially-sanctioned religious holiday that puzzled
me a bit was that all the national flags were flying at half-staff on
Friday. I wondered aloud to Pat about
this because there had been nothing on TV indicating someone of importance had
died. She pointed out that it was
because the day commemorated the crucifixion of Jesus. That plus the holidays constitute a mix of
church and state that I found interesting but that would make me uncomfortable
were it adopted in the U.S. (I know,
Christmas is a holiday.)
The tables were now turned in terms of temperatures: The Twin Cities were a great deal warmer than
any place we had been. According to
several comments we heard on CNN and BBC News, northern Europe was in the grip
of a long, cold spring. As I noted, the
Scots had been complaining about their weather for the last several weeks. The Danes were complaining about how cold it
had been in Copenhagen. And we clearly
lost ground when we went from Scotland to Denmark; Copenhagen was all brown and
colder than Edinburgh.
Copenhagen (København in Danish, which means “merchants’ harbor”) is a
very pleasant city to spend time in even though it has none of the stellar
attractions (cultural, architectural, political, historical) that draw one to
some of the other major cities of Europe.
To tell the truth, Danish (and thus Copenhagen) history is sort of like
U of Minnesota football: its “greatness”
was so long ago that nobody remembers and nobody cares. Except for certain recent cartoons, I can’t
recall a time when Denmark made big headlines in international news.
Even at its peak, Denmark was at best no more than a regional power
(even if you count the Vikings, who began in Denmark). For perhaps 200+ years
it fought off and on against Sweden, for and against Britain and Germany, for
dominance in the Baltic area (Norway, of course, never mattered, always
controlled either by Sweden or Denmark), but never had anything near the global
influence that the British did and that the French like to think they did and
the Germans wanted. But one can toddle
around Copenhagen and surrounds and see a few palaces and castles of the bygone
halcyon days of the Danish monarchy. My
impression, however, is that the Danish monarch at this point has much less
influence on Danish politics and society than the British royal family does on
Britain. (Who among you even knows who
the Danish monarch is? I couldn’t have
named her before going to Denmark.)
Krystin commented that Copenhagen
reminded her of Amsterdam and there is validity to the observation. Copenhagen, like Amsterdam, is as flat as a
Kansas cornfield; it also, like Amsterdam, has a number of canals because it is
in part a city of islands. The buildings
along the canals are vaguely reminiscent of the Dutch row houses that line the
Amsterdam canals. The Copenhagen canals
vary in width; some are as wide as the Mississippi as it flows through
Minneapolis while others are no wider than twice the size of Minnehaha Creek. Our hotel sat on one of the wide canals. It was lined on both sides with a mix of
older and relatively new buildings, all of them either commercial or what
appeared to be condos, and all 5-6 stories high (none particularly ugly but
none particularly eye-catching, either).
As we walked along the promenade, we noticed in addition to the rather
nondescript architecture that there was nary a tree or blade of grass in sight
anywhere.
A few of you who have known me a
very long time will be greatly amused to know that the first night Pat and I
went out to eat (the kids stayed in the hotel and watched “King Kong”), I
ordered frikadeller! (That is the
plural; the singular is frikadelle.)
Frikadeller are a cross between meatballs and hamburgers—they are large
meatballs, squashed somewhat flat, that resemble very stubby fat pancakes with
about a 3-inch diameter. My grandmother
and my great-aunt (my grandmother’s younger sister, in whose house we now live)
were both full-blooded Danes and both used to make frikadeller when I was
growing up. They were taught to make
them by their mother, who emigrated from Denmark to Minnesota in 1880 to join
her boyfriend. (They married shortly
after she arrived—and their first child was born 8 months to the day after the
wedding in Atwater, Minnesota. When I
was looking at dates in the family bible and pointed this out to my great aunt,
she laughed uproariously. My grandmother
was less amused.) Anyway, they passed
the frikadeller recipe to me and I have made them from time to time. Remarkably enough, the real Danish version as
served in restaurants (I had them twice) tasted similar to the ones I make.
Tivoli Gardens were open, religious holidays or no. I think the best way to describe Tivoli is as
a smaller and more charming version of Valleyfair with much better restaurants
and a few additional entertainments beyond amusement park rides. (We stopped for a bit to listen to a group
playing big band music. Krystin and
Elliott sat down as well, without dissent, because they both had cotton candy
to munch on. Some things never
change.) Wednesday, Thursday, and
Friday were all overcast, drizzly, and cold (low 40s), with only the occasional
patch of sunlight, and since we were at Tivoli on Thursday evening, Pat and I
got a little chilly. Because we had
purchased unlimited ride bracelets for Elliott and Krystin, they wanted to
stay, so they rode rides in the off-again, on-again drizzle while Pat and I
walked back to the hotel. (Both the kids
commented that they could barely recall the last time they went on amusement
park rides, and certainly could not recall a time when it was just the two of
them together. I don’t do rides any
more—they make me sick—and we wanted to go have a beer anyway. It was good to see the two of them have fun
together.)
When we were all back in the hotel after the kids came back from
Tivoli, and shortly after we had all gone to bed, we were all startled by
sudden flashes of light and booms. We
went to the window to see what the heck was going on—and got to watch the
closing fireworks from Tivoli! Our hotel
was only about 3 blocks from Tivoli and our room faced its direction, so we had
a great vantage point. (It was the only
night they did fireworks while we were there.)
Even though I don’t think Copenhagen
has the attention-grabbing sites that some other cities do, we did visit a few
places of note.
-- We walked up the Rundetaarn, the Round
Tower, that was originally built as an observatory in the early 1600s. Its most interesting aspect is the
climb: it claims to be the only building
in Europe where one walks up what is essentially a brick sidewalk, enclosed by
white walls (with windows) and a white ceiling, that circles up and up and up
and up until one emerges at the top.
-- We visited the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek,
one of the major art museums in the city; here is the Wikipedia entry, which
describes it as well as I can:
The collection is built around the personal
collection of Carlsberg Beer
founder, Carl Jacobsen
(1842-1914). The museum houses an
eclectic mix of antique sculptures, Impressionist paintings, Danish art,
and various other styles. The Etruscan
collection is one of the most extensive outside Italy. Works by impressionists such as Monet,
Pissarro, Renoir, Degas,
Cézanne are found in the museum, as well as
those by Post-impressionists
such as van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard. The museum's collection of Rodin
sculptures are considered the most important collection of Rodin's sculptures
outside France. The
museum's collection also includes all the bronze sculptures of Degas, including
the series of dancers. The building
housing the collections is often praised in its own right for its elegance,
including a sub-tropical winter garden at its centre.
We saw only small parts of these collections because, as seems to be
typical of our trips, the Glyptotek was undergoing a significant renovation so
most of the collection was not available for viewing. It was nice, however, to get into the winter
garden and out of the cold drizzle—and to see some green plants.
-- The Rosenborg Slot
(castle), in one of the major parks in the city, was originally the summer home
for one of the monarchs. Since the
mid-1800s, however, it has become a museum to the monarchs (in a country where
the monarch hardly matters at all, however—it is a mausoleum to the monarchy
sans bodies). It is a fairy-tale kind of
building from the outside; the rooms inside are reminiscent of every other
palace and castle we have seen, with all the gold leaf, elaborately painted
ceilings, etc. The Danish crown jewels
are also on display, along with the accumulated collections of each of the
monarchs for the past 400 or more years.
Perhaps more attractive was the large field of white, lavender, and
purple crocuses planted in a pattern outside the castle.
I sporadically collect salad-plate sized plates
(not the tacky tourist ones—real china patterns from museums or palaces). They had some Royal Copenhagen plates in the
museum shop at the castle, but they were used, which I thought odd. I asked one of the staff; she told me that it
was china that had been commissioned upon the rebuilding of another of the
monarchy’s palaces after it had burned down, in 1857. That palace is now also a museum and it
didn’t need the china, so the pieces are being sold off piecemeal. So I (presumably—she seemed to be honest and
to know what she was talking about) have a real piece of royal chinaware!
-- As we were walking through
another of the city’s parks, to its Palm House, we stopped to feed the ducks
and birds. (We always carried any extra
bread from restaurants because the kids love to feed the birds—mostly
pigeons—and ducks.) I was tossing a few
pieces to a duck when a small yellow and black bird, perhaps a finch, flew up
and landed on my hand. I was so startled
I jerked my hand, and the bird flew away.
But then I held out my hand, palm up, with small chunks of bread on it,
and sure enough the birds came, one by one, perched on my fingers, and picked
up pieces of bread. I guess I don’t go
out and feed the birds that much in Minneapolis, so I have no idea if that
would happen at home, but I was astonished at the number of the birds who
fluttered down on my hand without fear.
The kids and Pat did the same, and they soon had the birds feeding out
of their hands as well.
-- Of course we saw The Little Mermaid,
which is not very big. It’s an odd
symbol for a city. We got to it only
after a very long walk—even I was ready to sit down and eat something by the
time we got there, but the route there was through a rather unattractive
commercial section of the city and there were no cafes or restaurants to be
found. We took the usual pictures.
-- We climbed all 400 steps to the top of
the 1696 Vor Frelsers Kirk (Our Savior’s Church), one of many in
Copenhagen. What was noteworthy about
this climb is that the top 150 steps are outside, circling around the steeple
as they go up. As someone who’s not fond
of unguarded heights (my stomach starts to act up), this was a challenge; the
high railing helped somewhat, but I didn’t lean over the edge to look down. Climbing up the inside portion of the steeple
was like clambering around in someone’s attic—there were a lot of enormous
dusty wood beams going every which way.
The steps followed an irregular pattern up to the top rather than a neat
circular or rectangular ascent, first going left, then right, then at an angle,
some very steep and narrow, some wider, and so on. We commented later that it looked like a
major fire hazard; one hopes they’ve treated the timbers to at least be
fire-resistant.
-- Probably among the most unusual
“attractions” we saw in any city was Christiania, a
“hippie”/commune-like/”alternative life style” community set up not far from
central Copenhagen. It has some kind of
organization and has declared itself the free city of Christiania (when one
leaves, there is a wooden sign—two poles with a cross-piece at the top—that
proclaims “You are now entering the EU”).
One walks on mostly-dirt/gravel paths through the area; there are
various restaurants and buildings in various states of what seem to be
disrepair that I suppose constitute residences.
The powers that be in Copenhagen have been debating since Christiania
began, in the 1960s, whether to tolerate it; thus far, they have, although the
police make regular visits to keep an eye out for drugs. It survives in part by sales of stuff made by
locals and a few shops; Elliott got a t-shirt there. To my neat middle-class view of life, I guess
it was OK, but I wouldn’t want to live there.
It seemed sort of dirty, and I’m not that keen on communal living and
decision-making—I am not a hippie at heart, which no doubt comes as a surprise
to many of you ( J )—but were I an authority in Copenhagen I’d probably
leave it alone. (I suspect that most of
the debate about it is economic rather than social; Christiania occupies some
rather prime real estate in Copenhagen.)
Easter Sunday we were not sure what
to do, since just about everything was closed.
(Not Tivoli, but we had already been there.) So Krystin, Pat, and I took the train to
Malmo, Sweden, to ride across the enormously long bridge that was built a few
years ago and to wander around the city.
(Elliott couldn’t see the point of a train ride to someplace where
nothing would be open, so he stayed behind and played his Gameboy and watched
movies. Sometimes kids need downtime, so
that was OK.) There were a surprising
number of people out and about on the pedestrian malls and many of the
restaurants were open and had tables out in the plazas. Some of the stores were even open. We had a very pleasant walk around, fed a few
more ducks and pigeons, and listened to the difference between Danish and
Swedish as we sat in one of the plazas and had a beer.
When we got back to Copenhagen, we
went out for Easter dinner at a Chinese restaurant. It had a buffet which was among the better
such buffets I have seen, probably because this was a reasonably nice
restaurant. There was, however, a
Scandinavian (or perhaps Easter) touch:
in addition to the shrimp and curried chicken and rice varieties, and so
on, there was also baked ham and au gratin potatoes as well as salmon poached
in some kind of cream sauce. I’ve never
been to a Chinese buffet that included those items. So we all had an unusual mixture of food at
that meal. Oh yes—they served ice cream
topped by whipped cream and strawberry sauce for dessert. I don’t picture that as a Chinese menu item,
either. Perhaps I am mistaken.
I’m glad to have seen Copenhagen, in
part because some of my ancestors hail from Denmark, and it was a pleasant
stay, but I can’t say I have any strong urge to return. There is more that we could see, but that is
true of any large city or area one visits, and our list of places to visit
before we die is too long anyway. We
purposely made this visit slower-paced, after the events in Paris, so there was
nothing rushed or hurried. But we
accomplished enough to get a decent flavor of the city.
* * *
More
amusing minor cultural differences between the US and Scotland. One, “Mrs.” is still used as a title in Scotland (I saw it both in emails and in the
University of Edinburgh’s web-based directory).
I don’t think I’ve seen “Mrs.” used in the US in business or
professional matters for at least a decade or more. Two, as anyone who has read Eats, Shoots, and
Leaves is aware, the Brits put their periods and commas outside “quotation
marks”, while Americans put them inside—always.
I have drilled this into our kids.
I personally think these periods and commas floating outside single or
double quotation marks look strange, but a Minnesota colleague (who has
immeasurably improved my writing by example and by suggestion over the last
fifteen years or more) assures me that I’m just being a chauvinist and that the
British way actually makes more sense—the periods and commas go where they make
most sense in the structure of the sentence.
* * *
We
spent a long weekend in Vienna over May 1 with my brother Tracy and his wife
Joan (and, of course, ran into the Labor Day holiday, celebrated on May 1 all
over Europe). We watched the weather in
Vienna the two weeks before we arrived; it was in the high 60s and 70s and
sunny. We arrived late in the evening on
Thursday, when it was rainy; on Friday the temperature took a dive into the 50s
and it was overcast and drizzly. Each day
we were in Vienna, prior to the last, it got colder and wetter; I think when we
walked around on Sunday it was only in the 40s.
So the cold, wet spring of northern Europe followed us south to Vienna.
The
city map of Vienna (Wien) is easy to envision.
Draw a line across the top of a sheet of paper. Now draw a large U, with the tops of the U
connected to the line. There you have
it. The line across the top is the Donau
(Danube), which runs along the north edge of central Vienna; the “U” is the
Ringstrasse, the broad, tree-lined boulevard that encircles what was the
medieval city of Vienna and that replaced the city walls. It was probably less than a mile between the
two sides of the “U.” Much of the city
has grown up outside the Ringstrasse, and much had already grown up there
before it was built (the threats from the Ottoman Empire disappeared long
before the Ringstrasse was actually built.)
More on this later.
We
stayed in the Best Western Parkring, which is on the Ringstrasse. I was wary about a BW, because my impression
of them in the US is that they can be second-rate dumps. Our travel agent and I finally concluded,
after about 10 emails back and forth over two days, that there must have been
an international convention of some kind in the city, because virtually every
hotel we tried was booked solid. As it
turned out, however, this was a very pleasant (and in fact rather expensive)
hotel—expensive, I imagine, because it was on the Ringstrasse, so very central
to everything. If you look at the “U”
again, on the upper right leg, there is a large part, the Stadtpark (city park)
bordering the Ringstrasse on the outside.
Our hotel was across the street from and looked out on the Stadtpark;
our room, however, was in the back of the hotel, on the 12th floor, overlooking
the central city.
Pat made the
observation that Europe is under construction, which reflects our
experience. From our hotel room I
counted 10 very large construction cranes within a few blocks. It seems that cathedrals, palaces, and
gardens, like airports, are constantly being renovated. Within about four blocks of the hotel, in the
center of the view out our window, stood the Stephansdom, the enormous
cathedral in the middle of long-and strongly-Catholic Habsburg Vienna—and the
spire was shrouded in mesh and scaffolding.
We visited the Karlskirche, the largest baroque cathedral in Vienna;
most of the interior was covered in scaffolding. The central gardens in the Belvedere Palace
were being redone. Parts of Versailles
were covered in scaffolding. When we were in Paris,
the Orangerie was closed; when we were in Berlin, the Brandenburg Gate was
completely covered in plastic, when we were in Copenhagen the Glyptotek was
being renovated. So
it goes.
There was a
small benefit to the scaffolding in the Karlskirche, however; it is set up with
an elevator that goes up about 100 feet that is used to bring the public far up
into the dome, where one can see close up the huge frescoes by Johann Michael
Rottmayer. One can also then walk up an
additional 10-12 flights of stairs into the small cupola atop the dome for a
spectacular view of Vienna. It is
probably more stunning on a sunny day, compared to one when the gray clouds are
hanging low in the sky. The fresco
covers 1256 square meters on the interior of the dome, and 275 years after they
were completed, they are being restored (hence the scaffolding, for the experts
actually doing the restoration work). It
is not as renowned as the Sistine Chapel ceiling by Michelangelo, of course,
and the faces don’t have the drama that Michelangelo achieved, but this fresco
is just about as awe-inspiring—and this one we got to see up close, unlike the
Sistine Chapel.
This trip up to
the top of the dome, like the climb to the top of Vor Frelsers Kirk in
Copenhagen, left my stomach somewhat queasy because I don’t do well with
unenclosed heights and glass elevators.
My sense of security was also undermined by the fact that this
scaffolding had signs all over saying there were to be no more than 10 people
climbing up to the cupola—but there were a lot more than 10—and the fact that
whole structure swayed a little as people walked around viewing the
fresco. I could just see the newspaper
headline: “23 tourists in Vienna killed
as cathedral scaffolding collapses.” I
did peer cautiously over the top of the mesh fence surrounding the steps and
platforms and looked down sickly at the marble floor of cathedral nave, about
150 feet below. I also kept my eye on,
and stayed close to when I could, the 2-foot-wide ledge that ran around the
interior of the dome—so I could vault over the mesh fence and stand on the
ledge if the whole rickety structure started to buckle. I, of course, was the only one who appeared
to be bothered by the height and movement; Pat roved around taking pictures
without a hint of concern.
Notwithstanding my incipient alarm at the height, I managed to study
pieces of the fresco and be impressed.
Despite the
meteorological malaise of most of our visit and the construction work, the trip
was worth the effort. Vienna is a
beautiful city. I mentioned the
Ringstrasse, the boulevard that runs in a horseshoe from the Danube on the
north edge of the old city. It was
originally the fortification wall for the medieval city (about 30 feet high and
wide enough to build houses on top of it), but after the threats from the
Ottoman Empire had receded (in the late 1600s), Emperor Franz Josef I finally
had the wall demolished in the mid-1800s and replaced with the
Ringstrasse. In nice weather it clearly
would be pleasant to walk along (even though there is also a lot of traffic on
the street). Sigmund Freud walked it
every day. Most of the buildings along
the Ringstrasse—which were built up in about 40 years—reflect the “historical”
style, which is a collection of just about everything that came before: baroque, Greek, renaissance, rococo,
etc. So bundled up in several layers of
clothes, we walked around quite a bit.
As tourists, my
brother and sister-in-law and I had to see the Hofburg, the hodgepodge palace
where the Habsburgs ruled Austria and other surrounding areas, in various
pieces at various times, for about 700 years.
(Pat and kids were palaced-out.)
It was hodge-podge because it was expanded off and on by the monarchs
over centuries so it ends up a disjointed place. We also went to see Schönbrunn, the Habsburg
summer palace that is now well within the metropolitan limits. Fortunately, we had a marvelous tour guide at
Schönbrunn, a retired engineer (who had visited Minneapolis while working on
something with Control Data); a palace without good narrative to tell the
stories and put the building and its occupants in context is just another
palace. Schönbrunn was originally
purchased as a Habsburg hunting lodge in 1569, was badly damaged during the
Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683, partially rebuilt in the decades following,
then expanded to its present size and decorated by Maria Theresia, the
brilliant Habsburg Empress (reigned 1740-1780) who managed to fend off
depredations by Prussia and Russia and other European powers who wanted to take
advantage of the apparent weakness of a country with a woman on the
throne. Big mistake; she wasn’t. The focus of the tour was on Maria Theresia,
who essentially built and used Schönbrunn, and on Franz Josef I, the
penultimate Habsburg emperor, who ruled from the age of 18 until his death in
1916 at age 86. (His successor, Karl I,
reigned for only two years, at which point, at the end of World War I, the Austro-Hungarian
empire dissolved and the 700-year-old Habsburg monarchy came to an end.) Schönbrunn’s exterior is sort of a sickly
yellow but the interior is as palatial as one would expect of one of the most
powerful monarchies in Europe.
We could not get
a guided tour of the Hofburg, so had to use the audio guides, which are never
as good as a live human being. The focus
of the tour was the china and silver collection, the Sisi Apartments, and the
Royal Apartments. There were about a
dozen rooms full of china, silverware, and other tableware; we gave up on this
portion of the audioguide tour after about 4 rooms because there is only so
much one wants to know about china and silver.
What impressed us, however, was simply the sheer volume of silver and
china and other items—there was one entire room as large as the main floor of
our house with floor-to-ceiling glass cabinets full of gold candelabra. There was a mirror-and-gilt table centerpiece
that could be expanded to 30 meters for a state dinner.
Probably the
more intriguing part of the Hofburg was the story of Empress Elizabeth (Sisi),
who married Franz Josef at age 15 and was brought from Bavaria to court life in
Vienna. She came to hate it and spent
many of her later years traveling around Europe for months at a time to avoid
being entrapped in the Habsburg court—and her husband was extremely
conservative so court protocol was rigid (and dreadful). It seems that she and her husband still loved
each other, however, and he was devastated by her assassination in 1898 (she
was stabbed to death by an anarchist during one of her travels). My guess is that were she alive today, she
would diagnosed as clinically depressed—she wrote black poetry and bemoaned
imperial life. She had the problem of a
dominating mother-in-law who insisted on raising the children. She was also a health fanatic who
exercised—something one never did in that age—never cut her hair after age 18
or so (it hung to her ankles by middle age and was washed every 2-3 weeks in
eggs and cognac), and would not allow herself to be painted or photographed
after she was about 40 because she wanted to be remembered young. Quite a number of myths and legends grew up
around Sisi after her death, and my sister-in-law pointed out there are certain
parallels with the late Princess Diana that come to mind.
Even
though it was drizzly and cold, we took a tram-and-walking tour of central
Vienna with an elderly chap who knew an enormous amount about his city. The only drawback—a risk one takes with
walking tours in non-English-speaking countries—is that his English was rather
heavily-accented with German. I didn’t
have too much trouble understanding him, but the tour was a waste for Krystin
(Elliott could understand much of what he said). It is always helpful for me to learn some of
the history of buildings, and our guide also took us into some that we never
would have entered on our own. In Vienna
there is just one ornate stone building after another. Unlike the stone buildings of Edinburgh,
these all have faux or real pillars, sculptures, domes, elaborate window frames
and peaks, and so on.
Pat
and I also visited the Belvedere, the complex of three art museums originally
built as two palaces that made up the summer residence of Prince Eugene of
Savoy, one of the military heroes of the Habsburg empire who served under three
different emperors from the 1680s to about 1720 (and who helped defend Vienna
against the Ottomans in 1683). Although
he was a patron of the arts, and a collector, he died without immediate heir;
his niece inherited and sold off his collection. Maria Theresia later acquired Belvedere; it
held part of the Habsburg art collection.
After the fall of the monarchy, the palaces were turned into art
museums, which they remain today; the buildings, however, reflect the Prince’s
style in residence (as only slightly remodeled and updated by the heir to the
Habsburg throne, Franz Ferdinand, who lived here until he was assassinated in
1914, the event that launched World War I).
Another day, another palace and another audioguide—but unlike many, the
audioguides for the Belvedere art were actually quite good.
My
main goal, in the realm of art history, was to learn a little about the
architecture of Vienna and about the work of Gustav Klimt. We accomplished both. Klimt led a revolution in art around the turn
of the 20th Century, against a rather stolid and conservative artist
establishment; a number of his works are on display at the Belvedere. One of the members of the Secession—the name
given to the artists and architects who participated in this “revolt”—was Otto
Wagner, who designed one of the most elaborate subway stations one is likely to
find anywhere. Another was a Danish-born
architect who designed the main post office at one end of the Ringstrasse; the
conservative Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne assassinated in
1914, didn’t like it at all, so ensured that the architect chosen to build the
war ministry was someone who designed in the prevailing historical style. The two buildings, both completed in 1908,
face off against each other across the Ringstrasse and are certainly an
interesting contrast in styles. (One
thing I noticed about Vienna, in surveying the skyline from our hotel room, is
that it seems to have a lot more domes than other cities we have visited, and
several of them are the squashed-onion-like domes of eastern and Greek orthodox
churches. But even some of the
non-religious buildings have domes.
Vienna has a few skyscrapers on the fringes of the central city, but
none anywhere the Stephansdom.)
I
have to confess that after about two hours in a museum, both my back and my
attention span start to give out. Thus
it was with the Belvedere.
My
brother and sister-in-law, Krystin, Pat, and I went to a Strauss and Mozart
concert one night, at the Kurazon, a music hall in the Stadtpark across the
street from our hotel. It opened the
same year as the park, in the early 1860s, and was built to have concerts of
light Viennese music. (There is, very
near it, in the park, a large and rather gaudy statue commemorating Johann
Strauss the Elder.) It was a fun
concert, with a small chamber orchestra; they played the favorites one would
expect—The Blue Danube, the Radetzky March, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, etc., along
with some excerpts from the Mozart operas.
I suppose it was a touristy event, but I did notice that most of the
audience spoke German. My sister-in-law
Joan joked before the concert that the orchestra was probably composed of
people who couldn’t make it into the Vienna Philharmonic, although we later
speculated seriously that Vienna Philharmonic musicians may in fact moonlight
for this little group: several times I
closed my eyes and listened carefully to the music; I don’t have the greatest
ear in the world, heaven knows, but I could not hear a missed beat or
note. They sounded darn good to me. The concert ended (the encore) with The
Radetzky March, with the audience clapping along.
The
last night we were there, after our boat trip (see below), Joan, Pat, and I
went to a “real” concert in the Musikverein, home to the Vienna Philharmonic
and one of the two most famous music halls in Vienna (the other is the
Staatsoper (the Vienna Opera House). The
Musikverein Golden Hall is indeed golden; it is high Baroque, with large
crystal chandeliers and gold leaf everywhere, including the female statues
serving as pillars holding up the balcony that runs around hall. Where it wasn’t gold, it was marble or
painted. This concert was performed by
the Wiener (Viennese) Mozart Orchestra, a 25-or-so member chamber orchestra
whose members wear period clothes and wigs from Mozart’s time. Again, one can imagine this to be sort of
hokey, but this little orchestra travels all over the world, and since it holds
its events in the Musikverein, I assumed it would be a high-quality group. They play only Mozart (well, mostly) and
performed selections from a violin concerto, arias from the operas (the
vocalists dress in costume appropriate to the opera), symphony movements,
etc.—a somewhat more serious collection than the night before. This group was clearly having fun; two of the
women violinists were laughing and chatting in between pieces, and they
sometimes had devilish grins on their faces even while playing. (We were in the 4th row, so we could see them
very clearly.) The conductor was smiling
through most of the concert. For the
second encore, they performed The Blue Danube, and for the third encore the
conductor came back on stage wearing a big white drum and led the orchestra—and
the audience—in The Radetzky March. (He
did a better job of leading the audience that the chap at the Kurazon; he cut
us off, signaled when to clap pianissimo, and when to clap fortissimo. It ended up all being good fun tossed in with
some very good music.)
Our last day in
Vienna was devoted to a boat ride up the Danube. We were on a Greyhound-like bus for about a
90-minute trip northwest of the city and then rode further up the river on a
large tour boat for a couple of hours.
The guide on the bus gave us a continuing narrative as we drove out of
the city and into the foothills of the Alps; some of it was an amusing if
potted nationalist history of Austria.
He was, for example, disappointed that the world paid no attention to
the forced dislocation or killing of many Germans in the late 1940s; I didn’t
remind him that in 1938 the Austrians gave Hitler a rapturous entry into Vienna
after the Anschluss. One might say that
while treatment of the Germans was not “right,” one can understand the urge to
revenge felt by many who lived in Nazi-occupied lands during the late 1930s and
WWII. He extolled the environmentalism
of Austrians and the care they gave to their older buildings, unlike other
parts of Europe. And so on. But he was good-natured and joked with us as
well giving us the occasional biased history lesson, so it was fine.
The day was
bright and sunny and warmer than the previous three, and the sky was blue with only the occasional
cloud floating by, so it was a wonderful trip.
The scenery along the river is gorgeous, with the small towns nestled in
the hills along the shore and castles or monasteries perched on the occasional
cliff. We enjoyed a beer and the first
sun we had seen in some time.
What we didn’t
realize was that when the boat trip ended at Melk, we also received a guided
tour of the spectacular monastery there.
A Benedictine monastery, it has been at the site since the 11th
Century. The town was the home to the
family that ruled Austria before it died out and the Habsburgs assumed the
throne, the Babenbergs, who gave the land to the monastery when they left Melk
and moved east towards Vienna. Our tour
was given by a young woman originally American (I am sure, although did not
ask) and who we all think was a robot with a tape recorder, not a human
being. This is not only a thriving
monastery, it is also a secondary school with more applicants than it can take
and it has a huge library of medieval texts used by scholars for research. The library rooms are beautiful. Most remarkable, to us, was the church, which
had more gold than Fort Knox, had an extraordinarily bright and sunny nave
(only large, high glass windows, no stained glass, unusual for such a large
church), and (even without the stained glass) vied with St. Peter’s in terms of
overwhelming Baroque grandeur—if one likes Baroque. I was astonished at the enormity and the gilt
and gold out in the woods a long way from even a modest-sized town.
With all of
these breath-taking palaces (and, to a certain extent, cathedrals), one
contemplates with dismay the huge amount of wealth and effort that went into
sustaining the lives of the Habsburgs at a time when the masses were living
hand-to-mouth. At the end of the day, I
am one of those people who is uneasy, after visiting places like Schönbrunn and
the Hofburg, Versailles, San Souci and Potsdam outside Berlin, and even the
smaller Holyroodhouse Palace in Edinburgh, Royal Palace in Stockholm, and
Buckingham Palace in London, about whether these astonishing palaces and
gardens make the world a better place.
They are amazing for tourists like us, who can (for many of them) gape
at the architecture and interior design, but considering the burdens imposed on
the population in order to support the lavish and pampered lifestyle (e.g., of
the Habsburgs, or the French Bourbon kings, or even the more modest Oldenburgs
of Denmark or Vasas in Sweden), one can inquire if it would have been better
for the lives of the laborers and agricultural workers if that wealth had not
been accumulated in such amounts in order to support and glorify the
monarchies. It is true that they provide
a marvelous site for art museums, which many of them now are, but that’s a
post-hoc justification for a massive expenditure of money on one family when
much of the population was ill-housed and ill-fed. There’s no undoing what was done, of course,
but the thought about the enormous discrepancy in the allocation of resources
does cross my mind.
Occasionally the
kids will buy a t-shirt that strikes their fancy when we are traveling. I bought one for Elliott without his
knowledge when wandering around one day looking for a place to get out of the
rain. I thought it was clever; it says
“No Kangaroos in Austria.” (This was
especially appropriate for him because he has been to Australia and seen the
kangaroos.)
And yes, we
certainly had some good Austrian beer and food—although we certainly weren't
spending any time at a beer garden in the rain.
The desk staff at our Best Western provided marvelous advice on where to
eat; they steered us to some wonderful places we never would have found on our
own. That included one restaurant in a
cellar that had been dug in the 11th Century.
* * *
A few further
quick points and observations on life in Scotland that had accumulated.
-- The
zippers on men’s clothing in the UK are reversed, compared to the US. I had trouble zipping up my U of Edinburgh
fleece if I was not thinking about what I was doing.
-- There
must not be any Sherman Anti-Trust Act in Scotland. Every ceramic fixture in every single
restroom/bathroom I was in was made by Armitage Shanks.
-- Pat
said in late April that the tourists were beginning to show up in “our”
city. Among them were my brother and
sister-in-law, who arrived the last weekend in April for a visit to Edinburgh;
after they had been in Scotland a few days, as I noted, we traveled together to
take a long weekend in Vienna.
-- I
came to love the (now chiefly Scottish) word “outwith.” For example:
Sometimes both those inside and outwith the university fail to understand
university economic development activity.
Or, he was driving outwith the lane markers. “Outwith” seems so much more felicitous than
“outside” in some cases.
-- We
picked up (finally) the toast that the Scots use, parallel to skol or l’chaim
or cheers: slainte (health), or slainte
mhar (good health to you). “Slainte” is
pronounced just as you’d expect, slahnj.
-- The
British use the £ sign for their money, but also have the ₤ sign, which I
learned was the archaic version. Amusing
that we in the US have the $ sign, but that the archaic version has a double
vertical strike in the S. (Microsoft
Word doesn’t have a dollar sign with two vertical lines, so I can’t even print
it here. Odd that it would have the
archaic £ sign but not the dollar sign!)
* * *
As I walked in to the office the
final Monday morning, it was hard for me to believe I had made this walk nearly
100 times: through our neighborhood of
extended Folwell Halls, across The Meadows, and through the campus to Old
College. When I walked through The
Meadows, it was on a straight-line diagonal asphalt sidewalk called Jawbone
Walk. It was lined with nearly-perfectly
spaced trees about 20 feet tall. Until
this last Monday morning they had been sort of stumpy-branched black trees; now
I saw what they are: some variety of
flowering crab. They were in full bloom,
and Jawbone Walk was a glorious profusion of dark pink flowers.
For our last weekend in Scotland we
took a 600-plus mile driving trip to the north and west, in lieu of the trip we
had planned but never took when we ended up staying Paris much longer than we
intended. Or, to be more accurate, I
should say that Pat took us on a 600-mile driving trip; as I mentioned earlier,
since she rented the car, she did the driving.
We wanted to see parts of Scotland we had not visited before. (I had to assume that driving a car is like
riding a bike: once you know how to do
it, you don’t lose the skill. Since I had
not driven for four months, it was strange to get behind the wheel of my car
once again. We typically do not rent
cars when visiting European cities—we use the subways and trams. I had not forgotten how to drive.)
We drove north 4 hours to Inverness,
which sits atop Loch Ness (a 20-plus-mile long, narrow lake that runs from
southwest to northeast). The weather in
Edinburgh when we left was overcast; about half way up the gray had been
replaced by large cumulus powder-puff clouds in half the sky; by the time we
arrived in Inverness there were only the long wisps of cirrus clouds high in
the sky and it was a bright, sunny afternoon.
The landscape was greener than when we went to Loch Lomond in January
and even more reminiscent of the Tuscan hills (in my mind, at least, and that
may be the only place such resemblance exists).
Sheep were on every hillside.
En route we passed by Birnam Wood,
the significance of which those of you who remember your Macbeth will
know. Early in the play, the witches
tell Macbeth that he will not be defeated until Birnam Wood comes to
Dunsinane. Macduff camouflages his
troops in brush and the woods move, and Macbeth’s fate is sealed. (A short ways from Inverness is Cawdor
Castle, and Macbeth became Thane of Cawdor, but the historical evidence is
clear that this castle was built after the events of Shakespeare’s play. That doesn’t stop them from playing up the
association with Macbeth. We didn’t go
to the castle.)
We took an hour-long boat ride on Loch Ness (the kids were NOT going to
let us leave Scotland without seeing Loch Ness and a chance to see the Loch
Ness monster!). The boat ride included a
sort of hokey, intermittent narrative about the Loch Ness monster—which almost
certainly does not exist—but there was interesting commentary as well about the
area. On one side of Loch Ness the land
looked like the rolling farm hills of southwestern Wisconsin or northern Iowa,
while on the other side there were the tall hills named Ben-this and
Ben-that. It was beautiful scenery,
although I didn’t think it was the best in Scotland by any means. Urquhart Castle sits astride the Loch (or
rather, it sat astride the Loch; now it’s a ruin—it was blown up by government
troops to prevent it becoming a Jacobite stronghold—see below). We found it interesting that it was finally
owned by Clan Grant; we assume our brother-and-sister friends Christine and
Hugh Grant are preparing the legal papers to reassume ownership of the
castle—even though Clan Grant abandoned it in the 1600s.
We also visited Culloden Moor, the
site of the last battle in the UK, in 1746.
For those of you interested a little in the history, it is this. When Queen Elizabeth I died in 1603, the heir
to the throne was James VI of Scotland, of the House of Stuart, who became also
James I of England. By all accounts he
was a reasonably good monarch (in the measure of the times). His son, Charles I, had an unfortunate
encounter with the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell and lost his head in 1649. As I recalled earlier, after 11 years of the
Commonwealth under Oliver and then his son Richard, things fell apart and
Charles II, son of the late Charles I, was invited to come back and assume the
throne in 1660. Charles II was also
considered to be an effective King, but after he died the throne went to his
Catholic brother James II in 1685. In a
country that was thoroughly Protestant, a monarch promoting Catholicism was not
popular and he was deposed; his daughter and son-in-law, William and Mary of
Orange (the Netherlands), were invited to become King and Queen (the only time
in British history when there was simultaneously a king and a queen). The supporters of the House of Stuart, the
Jacobites—Jacobus is Latin for James—believed that James II’s Catholic son
James Francis Edward Stuart was the legitimate monarch, not his Protestant
daughter and her husband. When William
and Mary died without children, James’s daughter Anne became Queen. Although she had something like 16 children,
none of them survived her. Parliament
had passed an act declaring that if Anne were not succeeded by one of her
children, the throne would go to a distant relative, the Elector of Hanover in
Germany (thus began the reigns of George I, II, and III, and so on, leading up
to Elizabeth II).
James Francis Edward Stuart tried a
couple of times to lead a revolt against the British king, with Scottish
support, but failed. In 1745, his son,
Charles Edward Stuart (“Bonnie Prince Charlie”), with much French moral support
and two French ships, one of which sank en route to Scotland, led another
uprising on behalf of his father. This
one, again based in Scotland, achieved some initial successes; his troops,
largely composed of members of Scottish clans, marched to within a hundred
miles or so of London. They did not
receive the support they hoped for from English Jacobites, however, so
ultimately retreated to Scotland.
Meantime, the British government (England and Scotland had been unified
in 1707) sent troops north to deal with the Jacobites, and their last stand was
at Culloden Moor in April, 1746, just outside Inverness. The British troops slaughtered the Jacobites
and Bonnie Prince Charlie fled back to Rome and died a drunk 43 years later. There has been no serious Stuart claim to the
British throne since, although there is a Stuart heir alive today.
Anyway, we saw a short film about
the battle and then had a demonstration of how the fighting took place. The guy who gave the demonstration was
clearly anti-English and sympathetic to the clans. Culloden Moor had terrible consequences for
the clans; the wearing of the kilt and the playing of bagpipes was forbidden
thereafter and the clans were destroyed.
The battle of Culloden Moor thus has deep emotional resonance for some
Scots, especially those in the Highlands, and is considered by a number to be
one of the worst disasters in Scottish political history. (History tells, however, that not all of the
clans supported the Jacobites.) The
battlefield is actually small (it was all over in about an hour), and the flags
of the two opposing forces are posted where the troops faced each other. The site also has a number of very weathered
gravestones marking the burial sites of members of the various clans who
participated in the battle.
While I can understand the emotional
attachment to the site, and to the clans, looking back 260 years one can see it
was a vain effort from the beginning.
The Hanoverian kings were doing reasonably well and there had been a
peaceful succession from George I to II.
The monarchy was strong and French support for the Jacobites was weak; I
read somewhere that the Stuarts were essentially pawns in the international
politics of Europe, not seen by many as realistic claimants to the British
throne. The likelihood that a Catholic
monarch would have been tolerated on the British throne was nil. Even at the time, some of the clan leaders
saw that this was not where they should put their support. It wasn’t a good day for Scottish
nationalism, to be sure.
We sat outside for a beer in
Inverness after our boat ride and battlefield visit, at a little restaurant
overlooking the River Ness. We learned
shortly that there was a wedding reception going on inside the establishment,
because part of it spilled out into the outdoor area. The groomsmen (we assumed they were the
groomsmen) were all dressed in kilts and had the small dagger, the sgian dubh,
tucked in the stocking. (It’s not all
that uncommon to see men on the streets of Edinburgh wearing a kilt—although I
assume they’re coming from or going to some function, because it is not usual
attire.)
On Saturday we drove from Inverness
west to the Isle of Skye. Parts of the
landscape on the way to Inverness, from Inverness to Skye, and especially on
the Isle of Skye appeared desolate.
There are “mountains” (actually high hills) everywhere and many are
completely covered with what appears to be dead brown vegetation. We learned later that this is heather, which
comes alive with flowers in late summer and early fall, but then it was dormant.
On the other hand, the gorse was in full
bloom—large prickly bushes anywhere from 3 to 20 feet tall and equally wide
that have thousands of bright yellow flowers.
Sometimes when we were driving down the road we were driving down a
yellow alley of gorse flowers, above which lurked the brown lifeless hills.
The roads from Inverness west, and
especially those on Skye, were interesting.
Often they were curvy, up and down, and single lane (and I don’t mean
single-lane in each direction—I mean SINGLE LANE). Every couple hundred yards there are small
laybys where one can let someone pass (from behind) or pull over to let an
oncoming vehicle get by. As you can
imagine, this does not make for speedy cross-country travelling. The distance between Inverness and the main
town on Skye is about 75 miles, but it took us several hours to drive it.
Skye is justifiably said to have
some of the most spectacular scenery in Scotland, from what we know. We drove around the island quite a bit and
saw sheer cliffs dropping to the ocean, a lot of mountains and valleys,
picturesque tiny towns with whitewashed buildings nestled in the valleys (the
typical gray stone used elsewhere in Scotland is not as prevalent on Skye), and
of course more sheep. On the far
northern tip of Skye there is a small cemetery with a large grave marker for
Flora Macdonald. She was the woman who
disguised Bonnie Prince Charlie as her maid in order to help him escape from
Scotland and the British troops searching for him. (The story goes that even though she put her
life on the line for him for quite a period, he never communicated with her
again after he reached the continent.)
The grave monument is clearly well maintained and includes an
inscription of Dr. Johnson’s epitaph for her:
“A name that will be mentioned in history, and if courage and fidelity
be virtues, mentioned with honour."
When we arrived at our B&B, it appeared that Pat had come a cropper
with this reservation. We drove up the
hill in the small town of Broadford on a one-lane crumbling, pot-holed asphalt
path (it didn’t qualify as a road or street), with sort of broken-down houses
on one side, to the point where it ended at a small hill of dormant
heather. I mumbled something like, “oh
boy, what have we gotten into,” which Pat did not find amusing. It turned out to be a 4-star B&B that was
delightful, with a room larger than almost any hotel room I have ever been in,
tastefully decorated, and with a bathroom just about as large as our living
room (perhaps I exaggerate a bit, but not much). And an excellent breakfast the next morning.
By Saturday night our good weather
had departed and we saw light drizzle and overcast skies. In another case of deceptive appearances, we
took the recommendation of the B&B owner and went to a restaurant in
Broadford. (She told us it was “a couple
of minutes” away, so we got in the car and drove—the 3-4 blocks. We hadn’t realized her “couple of minutes”
was walking distance. We felt like the
stereotypical Americans who don’t walk anywhere. Jeez.)
It looked dumpy and run-down on the outside, and was a bar and
restaurant, rather than just a restaurant (which usually bodes ill), but the
dining room was very pleasant, there were a lot of people there, and the food
was excellent. We can recommend the
Claymore without hesitation, should any of you get to Skye.
Sunday the clouds were hanging low
all over the sky and it rained off and on.
For the drive back we didn’t do much, unfortunately, because there were
some walks in the hills and around that would have been fun on a sunny
day. The clouds were so low that some of
them ringed the hills, creating peculiar intersections of sky and land. Even though it was all dull gray, black, and
brown, there were some spectacular scenes of mountains and valleys and clouds
all mixed together. At one point in the
drive back, the road went through a relatively flat area; with the gray clouds
and the barren brown, it looked almost like a lunar landscape.
Before ferrying back to the mainland
we stopped at a wonderful little pottery shop in the miniscule town of
Ardvasar, owned and operated by an 81-year-old woman and her brother. They make all the pottery. We rode the ferry through the drizzle across
to the small town of Mallaig and, after some while, drove the entire length of
Loch Lomond on the way back. It, of
course, was also greener than when we first visited in January, but there were
also some of the brown mountains. I read
one little plaque at a place we stopped and learned that the pines on the hills
are not native and have now grown to a height that they will soon be blown over
in storms. The plan is to clear-cut all
of them and allow native Scottish trees to take over again. The conservation authorities in charge of
this plan, according to the plaque, say that the hills will be fully restored
to native vegetation in about 100 years.
That’s long-term planning.
Wouldn’t you know it, for the only
time we were in Scotland we got caught in a monumental freeway traffic jam in
Glasgow—at 6:00 on a Sunday evening. I’d
figured the roads at that time of day would be pretty clear and it would be a
clear shot from the northwest back through the city and on to Edinburgh. Instead we sat in traffic for about half an
hour. We never did see any cause for the
backup, either.
* * *
A couple of final reflections on European cities: Now that we’d finished our whirlwind tour of
European capitals (Copenhagen, Oslo, Stockholm, Paris, Vienna, Edinburgh), I
came to realize that I like European central cities more than I like US central
cities. There are more green areas and
more walking space—although there are not, on many of the downtown streets
themselves, many trees. As our geographer
friend Judith Martin pointed out to us several years ago, Europeans use their
cities as an extension of their homes much more so than Americans—and that
difference in use is evident. The cities
are generally more pleasant, and at least in some of them there are large areas
reserved for pedestrians, away from vehicular traffic.
Although it’s not of particular import to a tourist and pedestrian, the
difference in the age of European cities, versus those in the US, is something
we’ve found fascinating. One eats a meal
in a place that has existed for 800 or 1000 years; I always wonder who’s been
in that place before. It’s interesting
to walk around streets and buildings that existed long before the American
revolution, and in some cases before Columbus came to North America. I, at least, have a hard time comprehending
that people have lived in these structures for centuries. (And I think our current home has been in the
family a long time because we’ve owned it since 1940. Big deal.
Once Pat and I move out, it won’t be in the family any more—so much for
longevity that parallels that in Europe.)
* * *
We were much more efficient than we had expected to be in packing
suitcases and tidying up the flat in preparation for returning to the US; as a
result, we had a free afternoon our last full day in Edinburgh. Never ones to miss an opportunity to do or
see something, we decided to make a small trip we had planned our entire
stay—but had never gotten around to. We
drove a short while south of Edinburgh to the pleasant little village of Roslin
and visited Rosslyn Chapel. The Chapel
is a legitimate medieval landmark on its own, but its fame was increased
enormously after it became part of The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown.
As is the norm for such sites when we visit, it was covered in
scaffolding and even had a shed built to cover it up. The chapel is suffering badly from the
elements, after 500+ years, so they built the shed to dry it out so they could
carry out renovation. (I have perhaps
not mentioned that it seems that little is ever completely dry in Scotland,
except perhaps in the summer, so there is light moss everywhere. It’s not bothersome, but I can imagine that
it can do harm to a building after many decades.)
It is the inside, however, that is the interesting part of the chapel,
with its wonderful stone carvings of various representations of good and evil,
angels, the family that founded the chapel, the Green Men (faces with vines
coming out of the mouths, signifying fertility, but they look grotesque), and
so on. The chapel does have suspected
historical links to the Knights Templar, which links it to the story Dan Brown
tells. The kids even enjoyed it,
although they generally detest visiting churches; in this case, I suspect they
were interested at least in part so that they could say they saw in real life
what they later saw in the movie “The DaVinci Code.”
What should be the more famous local establishment, in terms of the
future, we did not visit: The Roslin
Institute, home to the cloned sheep “Dolly.”
But it was an extraordinarily pleasant day, one of the first we could
sit outside and each lunch at a local restaurant in Roslin in
shirtsleeves. I was again impressed that
we drove 8 miles outside of Edinburgh (according to the road sign) and were,
for 3-4 of those miles, driving through crop fields and sheep fields. It was amazingly green and rural, and then
suddenly one is in Edinburgh. Where
would one be driving south eight miles from downtown Minneapolis—in
Bloomington, perhaps?
This is only faintly related to Scotland, but amusing enough anyway,
perhaps. I had a strange “thought
experience” as I was laying in bed the last night we were in Edinburgh. It wasn’t a dream because I was awake, but it
was a stream of consciousness that followed its own path. (And no, I had not had much to drink—two
beers before dinner, quite some time earlier!)
In my thoughts I was on our deck in our back yard one day in August,
later in the summer of 2006, having a drink with Pat, wearing shorts and a polo
shirt from the University of Edinburgh.
I suddenly found myself sitting in Constitution Hall on that same hot
August day, but in Philadelphia in 1787.
(Only a poli sci major and history student would have this bizarre flow
of thoughts.) Anyway, there I was, in
this stiflingly hot hall, sitting at a table, looking at James Madison, George
Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, and the rest of the
boys.
They were as surprised to see me there as I was to be there. I explained that I had no idea how I got
there, but that I came from 2006, 219 years into the history of the nation
whose constitution they were writing. I
reassured them that their work was worthwhile and their creation would still be
alive and healthy at least to 2006 and thereafter, as far as I could tell. (That last thought of increasingly doubtful
validity for each year of the Bush administration that passes.) I then got into explaining that we had
airplanes, could get from New York to London in 5-6 hours, that a man had
landed on the moon, that I came from a city that didn’t exist in 1787 but that
would grow in a place that would be part of a large land purchase one of the
early presidents would make. Recalling
that George Washington was bled as part of his medical treatment in 1799 (he
died anyway, but I didn’t remember what from), I told them it was quackery and
the basis of modern medicine was germs, vaccinations, etc. Somehow the conversation came to chemistry
and makeup of matter, so I lamely tried to explain the periodic table of the
elements and the structure of atoms, and that one of the elements would be
used, in 158 years, as part of an explosive device that would level an entire
Japanese city in order to end a world-wide conflict. I told Alexander Hamilton that in the dispute
between him and Thomas Jefferson in terms of their opposing vision for the
future of the nation, his view would prevail, even though Jefferson would be
the more honored. I warned them,
however, that they would fail in one signal way in their constitution-writing,
to deal with slavery, which would lead to a civil war in their country, a war
that would claim more American deaths than all other wars put together (at
least up to the time that I lived.) I
explained, to Dr. Franklin’s great interest, that we tamed electricity and used
it to light our homes and buildings—and that in my time, we had something
called air conditioning so we did not have to sit around in wigs and
breechcoats sweating profusely in the middle of the summer. They were all amazed at the pen I happened to
have in my pocket, and even more astounded by the laptop that I happened to
have along. (Sure, I sit out in the back
yard having a cocktail carrying a pen and the laptop. . . .)
This exchange theoretically went on for a couple hours, but I began to
be distraught because I had no idea how I would get back to my wife and
children and friends and life in 2006.
Then, poof, I was back home, in our living room, and there was my
family—but it was not Pat and Krystin and Elliott. It was another woman and two different
children, about the same age as the ones I had left behind when I found myself
in Philadelphia. I looked at them quite
puzzled; the woman asked if I was OK and said they’d no idea what had happened
to me. I asked who they were; they were
shocked. I asked if I had a brother; I
did have the same brother and sister-in-law.
Did I have friends Joe and Genie Dixon?
I did. I called both my brother
and his wife and the Dixons and insisted that they come to our house, no matter
their plans. They did. In the meantime, I noticed that the family
photograph we have in the dining room taken 7-8 years ago did have me in it—and
these other three strangers.
(Still in this long train of thought) I had to test my sanity against
my brother and his wife and the Dixons.
They greeted the three people in the house as long-time friends, but I
told them I didn’t know who they were. I
asked if I had played bridge with the Dixons for 30 years; I had. With my partner Ann Sonnesyn? That elicited an “Ann who?” I asked the woman who appeared to be my wife
if I—we—had just spent 4 months last semester at the University of
Edinburgh. She looked puzzled and said
no, we had been at University College, London.
Why, I asked, did I then have a University of Edinburgh polo shirt
on? In a further attempt to check my
sanity, I pulled from my wallet (which had gone to 1787 and back with me) our
health coverage ID cards (I always carry Elliott’s dental and medical card
because I take him to most appointments)—and sure enough, it said Elliott
Engstrand. Everyone was astonished by
this evidence, and my “family” was extremely upset by the fact that I didn’t
know them.
I told them that while they might think I needed psychiatric help, I
thought I needed to have a conversation with some leading theoretical
physicists who could explain to me what had happened. (They would not be able to do so, of course,
because there is no known or even theoretical way in which time travel is
possible in any practical sense.)
Back to real life in Edinburgh, I think I fell asleep then. But my long and winding—what, reverie?—while
lying in bed once again highlighted the paradoxes of time travel (what if you
went back and killed one of your parents when they were a child? That would mean you wouldn’t have been born,
so couldn’t go back and kill your parent.)
It also revealed the increased adrenalin that manifests itself on the
eve of a big event. Both of the kids
said they slept very little in anticipation of getting back home the next
day. Elliott said it was like the night
before his birthday. Pat and I, and even
Krystin, allowed that we don’t get too excited about birthdays anymore.
* * *
A few final observations.
-- It is annoying that many of the
establishments in the UK, when one uses a VISA card, print the entire credit
card number on the receipt. I am not
someone who retains every VISA receipt—I check over the bill when it comes to
see if the places and amounts seem right, which they always have been. But in an age when identity theft is
pronounced to be a major problem by the info tech powers that be, I’m reluctant
to simply discard the receipt when it has my full credit card number. So I end either burning them or tearing them
up and putting them down the toilet.
Most US establishments only put the last 4 digits on the printed
receipt, as far as I know.
-- Speaking of toilets, I realized once
again how accurate the designation WC is in the UK: they really are little closets, with walls
and doors, rather than the open-bottomed, open-topped stalls that we have in
the US. (Despite the traveling we
crammed into four months, I can’t now recall if there are similar closets on
the continent. I guess I don’t pay THAT
much attention to bathroom matters.)
-- I wish there were some way they could
have picked us up, en route from Amsterdam, in the plane that brought us
home. We no sooner took off from
Amsterdam than the pilot announced we would be flying over Glasgow, northern
Canada, and into the US through Wisconsin and into the Twin Cities. Glasgow is less than an hour by car or train
from Edinburgh, but we had to fly all the way to Amsterdam so we could fly back
over Glasgow on the way home. (Edinburgh
is planning an expansion to its airport that they expect will increase the
number of air passengers from about 7 million per year to about 25 million; the
Edinburgh-Glasgow trains will be rerouted though the airport. Perhaps at that point it will be easier to
get a direct flight from the Twin Cities to Edinburgh. Especially if there is some airline other
than Northwest.)
-- It is interesting the different levels
of scrutiny that airport security and immigration control staff give
travelers. At Edinburgh, we had to allow
them to open and completely remove the contents of Elliott’s backpack and
Krystin’s carry-on. Elliott’s backpack
had electronic game stuff, a DVD player, and some other items (including a
crystal paperweight that must have lead in it because it showed up as a black
ball on the x-ray—they loved that).
Krystin had a variety of items they also didn’t like. The Edinburgh folks were nice enough, if
efficient, and warned us that we’d have to go through the same thing, or worse,
in Amsterdam.
In Amsterdam, in contrast, they
zipped everything through the security check with no hesitation (we had moved
Elliott’s DVD player so it could be sent through separately but had done
nothing to Krystin’s suitcase). On the
other hand, we (every passenger) got hauled one by one or group by group to a
small lectern where we were seriously questioned about the packing and possession
of our luggage. It was all quite
friendly, as she checked over the passports and eyed the carry-ons, but it was
thorough. I think the Scots would have
been more likely to find potential trouble because they actually searched; we
could easily have lied to the Amsterdam agent and they would never have known.
-- In one respect I was profoundly glad
when we got home. When Pat and I travel
on vacation, we usually manage to get everything into one carry-on suitcase
each. For this trip we had 8 full large
check-in suitcases, all packed to within a pound of the 50-pound limit, plus 4
backpacks plus 4 carry-on suitcases. The
backpacks and carry-ons weighed nearly as much (and perhaps more than) the
check-in baggage. We would have been in
trouble if the airline decided to weigh the carry-on stuff (they do have a
posted weight and size limit, but we’ve never had any airline actually weigh it
nor have they measured it, and we certainly pushed both limits on this
trip). Hauling all those heavy suitcases
and carry-ons is for the birds! We also
now own more large suitcases than we shall ever need again. If any of you need to borrow a big suitcase
for a long trip, let me know.
-- We were curious to see how we would
react over the intermediate term once we returned. Our friend Margaret in Bo’ness recalled that
she had, earlier in her life, lived in Vienna for a year, and that it took her
a long time to get back to a “normal” feeling once she returned home. We knew it would be peculiar to deal with
certain things because life in the Twin Cities for family and friends had gone
on for four months—but without us, so we would not know of it or have memories
of it. This was not at all to say we
should not have gone to Scotland, only to remark on the funny little gap that
will exist in our lives vis-à-vis the Twin Cities and our families and
friends. Psychologically we picked up in
the Twin Cities as if it were a few days or a week later, rather than four-plus
months. But it all worked out fine and
pretty smoothly.
-- One of the odder sentiments that came
out of nowhere, for me, was the regret that I could not print out and send to
my dad my weekly travel notes. I know he
would have enjoyed them immensely—and he knew that we were going before he died
last May (2005). My mother died so long
ago, and it’s so difficult for me to imagine her 79 rather than 62, that I didn’t
have quite the same sense of regret about her.
(Heavens, I’m only 7 years younger than she was when she died! That’s a scary thought.) Like many family members that all of you
have, I am sure, especially older ones who are less adapted to the electronic
world than we, he would have enjoyed the mail and the tales. (It occurs to me that he, and my father-in-law,
are the only two family members I know of who had an experience even faintly
similar to our trip to Scotland: They
were also overseas for an extended period of time—during World War II. I suspect the ONLY parallel between their
experience and ours is that we were both overseas.)
-- I even have an idea of what prompted
the thought about my Dad: Wells Fargo
bank has added further evidence to my longstanding and
increasingly-well-documented belief that banks are among the most
ineptly-managed organizations in the western world. Before we went to Scotland I twice made
personal trips to his bank to close his checking and savings account; twice I
did not succeed, although I was assured both times that the accounts were
closed. I continued to receive
statements for the savings account, forwarded to Scotland, reporting the 4¢
balance. (I accumulated additional
evidence about banks while in Scotland, so my belief now extends to the
Anglo-American world, not just the US, but that’s a different story that isn’t
worth the telling.)
-- Pat made the accurate observation some
time ago that four months is too short a time for this kind of stay if one
wants to also use the opportunity to travel.
We would have made about the same number of trips but spread them out
over a year, had my leave been that long.
As it was, it almost became “oh, another flight, another European
city.” We had no preparation to do
except pack our (carry-on!) suitcases for these short trips, and had none of
the anticipatory build-up that (at least for us) precedes a major trip abroad
when we are planning it from Minneapolis.
(And I just read an article somewhere in the last couple of weeks
reporting additional research on what makes people happy; the authors reported
that it is much more the anticipation than the event/the purchase itself—you
will get more happiness from the anticipation of buying a new car than you will
from the car itself, if you’re the sort who gets excited about buying a new
car.) The trips we made, even including
the ones in Scotland, became somewhat blurred together in our minds; thank
heavens for photographs. (I gave Elliott
a little quiz shortly after we returned, trusting him to answer honestly when I
asked him if he could remember the hotel room in Kirkcaldy, in Cupar, in Olso,
in Stirling, in Copenhagen, etc. He
could remember all but one—but there was one that I couldn’t remember,
either.) We have concluded that we don’t
really want to condense so much travel into one short period of time as long as
we have jobs and a house and animal and child commitments. Maybe our opinion will be different once we
have retired. Having said all that, we
also agreed that even if we had it to do over again, we’d still make the same
trips (well, maybe with a few details in Paris changed).
Finally, it occurred to me that in a political/social sense, Scotland
is a different place. It is not a
country, although we found ourselves thinking of it as such. Nor, however, is it "just" a state,
like Minnesota, in the US. It's more
than a state but not a country. With its
own long history as an independent nation, independence won only after bitter
fighting with the English, and then union in 1707 with England, it still
retains a sense "in the air" that it's not just part of the UK.
* * *
At the end, we
were ready to come home. But it was not
because we were tired of or suddenly disliked Scotland; it was more a sense
that because I’d finished what I came to do at the University of Edinburgh,
Elliott was done with school, Krystin had finished travelling and doing her college
work, and Pat was just ready to be done being June Cleaver—we’d pretty much
accomplished what we came for. So now we
were ready to go back to our own home.
We left, however, with mixed emotions:
delighted with the experience and the travelling we were been able to do
and the people we met, but looking forward to getting back to our regular
jobs/schools, our own beds, and our cats and dogs (who we feared might not
remember us—it seemed, however, the cats and the older dog did while it was not
clear with the younger dog).
I
miss walking to work each day in Edinburgh.
Unfortunately, in Minnesota it’s too far by just a bit (perhaps about 4
miles, compared to my 1+ mile in Scotland), especially when it’s bitterly cold
or hot & humid. I looked forward
each morning and afternoon to the period of no stress and simply thinking about
whatever was on my mind, which was anything from the intellectually interesting
to things university-related to the ridiculously trivial and mundane.
