Football (Both Kinds)

In the U.S. "football" is used to refer to that game where people tackle each other a bunch to get a ball into the endzone.  In the rest of the world, "football" refers to what is known in the U.S. as "soccer," a game played with a two-toned ball where the aim is to get the ball into a goal net.  A lot of people will say that "football" makes more sense when applied instead of "soccer" because in soccer, is played with the feet.  The original term for both, however, comes from the idea that the sports are played on foot, instead of say, on horseback.

I digress.  February 5th, my birthday, held a great deal of football, as both the Superbowl and a Rangers' game were held that day.  

Rangers' Game

The Rangers were facing off against a team from Dundee, which was supposedly a match favorable to the Rangers.  You can read the match report online if you're interested so I won't go into it here, but the short of it is that the Rangers lost 0-2.

Still the experience in itself was fun.  There wasn't really a narrator, or any kind of show like in baseball.  However, the fans for each side more than made up for it.  Each side had a dedicated section where fans sang songs, danced, and shouted chants to cheer for their team.  They were so loud you could hear them from outside the stadium.  In recent months, police have been trying to crack down on it for fear of violence breaking out, but I didn't ever feel threatened by the chanting so I imagine outside of "Old Firm" games it's probably relatively harmless.

I didn't find out until later, but that game was a Scottish Cup match, and losing it meant the Rangers were out  of the Cup.  The Rangers have also been having some financial problems so in general it's just not a good time for them, poor guys.

I mean to go to a Celtics game at some point - as sacrilegious as that would be to some people - to see if there are any differences.  But I'd definitely recommend a match for anyone coming to Scotland as it's good fun and doesn't take up much more than an afternoon.

Superbowl

It took us a while to remember that the Superbowl is shown live in the U.S. and thus, "starts" five hours later here, so I only got to see up until halftime.  It was playing at a bar in the fabulous Queen Margaret Union, right next to the university, so my friends and I popped in and got a few pints.

There were of course, a lot of Americans there.  A few bars in the city were hosting similar events, so while not a huge deal, it's big enough that people feel the need to advertise for it.  

The bar tried to make the experience as authentic as possible.  There were people who were slightly too drunk who kept yelling "U.S.A" at the television (and I believe they were English, or Scottish, not American).  There were even "hotdogs," served on baguettes  that were surprisingly popular.  

Unfortunately, because Britain sucks when it comes to getting U.S. television, we had to watch the game on BBC, which meant no commercials, thus defeating pretty much the entire purpose of attending.  We did get to see the half-time show, but the jury is out on whether or not that was a good thing.  

Still, watching the Superbowl in a bar with a good amount of Americans was a nice little slice of home in the middle of the term, and overall pretty fun.

How To Survive Like a College Kid

Shameless plug here.  One of my professors (from my home college) just released a preview of his new novel.  If you're into reading, please take some time to check it out.  Now back to miles across the sea...

I've been feeling under the weather the past few days, so unfortunately I don't have much to report in terms of new stuff I've done.  This weekend promises to be exciting however with a trip to Lock Lomond and my first football game in the works, so Saturday and Monday's updates should be fantastic (no promises though).

This time I'll be detailing how I've managed to go from someone who can barely make something in the microwave, to a fairly self-sufficient human being.  

First, I had to get over the whole 'needing food to be perfect' thing.  At home I like to shop organic, natural, or whatever, and I won't eat anything that's marked past the "best by" date.  Here it's a free-for-all.  Provided it doesn't have mold, it's a go.  Even if it doesn't go with anything else I'm eating, into the pot.

Which brings me to survival point number two: everything goes with olive oil.  At the start of my journey, I used to try and make tomato sauce better by sauteing some stuff in oil and then adding it to the mix.  Now I don't even bother with the tomato base: it tastes just as good without it.  Basically, I just put some veggies and spices in a pan and throw them on some pasta and cheese.  Some of the greatest hits are:

Houseplants!

• Cherry tomatoes - I don't even like tomatoes, but put these in olive oil with some salt & pepper and they're fantastic.
• Garlic - Accidentally bought six heads of garlic my first week.  Haven't gone through it, but I've managed to add it to pretty much everything I make.
• Fresh Basil - One of my better purchases.  Found a live plant for a pound at Morrison's (a mid-range grocer), and have somehow managed to keep it alive.
• Onions - Especially sweet onions.

Other than that "recipe," I've made great use of Tesco and BBC, both of which have tons of recipes themselves.  The former even lets you plan out your meals (though their recipes tend to leave out ingredients in the ingredient lists).  Best thing is that they both have all their measurements in "British," which isn't always just a standard metric conversion.  A lot of things (like say, butter, and milk), will go by weight instead of volume or vice versa.  The only drawback is that both sites try to make their food too good, and as I'm poor I have to simplify them a lot.  But pretty consistently my flat-mates walk in while I'm cooking with praise of "that smells good!" or some such.  Which is a big change from the normal response of, "What's burning?"

Whisky + Haggis + Dancin' = An Awesome Burns' Night

Robert Burns:  Largely regarded as Scotland's "National Poet", Robert or, "Rabbie" Burns was born before the U.S. even became a country.  I had admittedly never heard of him before coming to Scotland, but you can't walk around Edinburgh, Glasgow, or I suspect any other major Scottish city without running into Burns-themed stuff.  With good reason.  He has quite a few famous poems (as much as poems can be famous), and the lyrics for Auld Lang Syne, which is that song everyone sings to bring in the New Year.  If you listen to it with the lyrics, you'll quickly realize that it is not really in "English," but in Scots, which is a sort of germanic language, sort of English dialect that exists in, you guessed it, Scotland.  But unraveling that distinction is for another blog post!

Burns Night is the celebration of Robert Burns.  It's held every year on Robert Burns' birthday, 25 January, and involves a host of traditions which are lots of fun.  I can't really think of an American holiday to equivocate it to: no one gets off from work, and not everyone celebrates, so it's not like Thanksgiving, but more people observe it than something like Earth Day.  Regardless, there was an event being held at one of the student unions that came highly recommended, so a friend and I decided to check it out.

First was the Piping in of the Guests and the Chairman's Welcome, which as you can probably imagine, involved a bagpiper playing while the main guests entered and then the chairman giving a little sort of speech thing.  This part of the evening was rather formal, since no one had been given any alcohol yet.  Following that, the haggis was brought in while the bagpiper played, and then an address was given to said haggis.  I did not transcribe what was entailed here, but luckily Wikipedia did, so if you're interested in the actual script, here it is.  

Technically we were supposed to toast the haggis after the address, but our Chairman was English and sort of forgot that bit, so we were served our wine before we made our whisky toast.  It was a big decision for me, as I know nothing about wine at all, but I ended up settling on red wine because in my mind everything red should taste like fruit punch or cherry (Hint: it doesn't).  Shortly after, our host remembered that we were to toast the haggis, and I was finally taught how to drink whisky.  Note: this guy could have totally been pulling my leg, I don't know if this is really the way to taste whisky so don't quote me on it or anything:

1. Hold glass in hands to warm whisky up to room temperature
2. Smell it.  Remarkably, tasting whisky is a lot like how I imagine tasting wine to be.
3. Sip it.  Be sure to swish around in mouth to get full range of flavors and to ensure you smell like alcohol for the rest of the night.
4. If you're feeling adventurous, blow over the whisky while in your mouth.  I did not attempt this, and I think it may have been a joke, but what do I know?

I've been told on separate occasions that adding water is good for some whisky as well.  Anyway, by this point, we've all had a dram of whisky and some wine and we're prepared for the food.  A fantastic soup was first (potato and leek), and then Scotland's national dish: Haggis, Neeps & Tatties.  

A bit of an explanation is needed here.  Haggis is made out of gross things no one really wants to know about, traditionally stuffed into a sheep's stomach and simmered for some three hours.  I think most haggis are made in just some sort of plastic casing today, not that it matters because when you're served an individual portion you don't see the outside anyway.  It basically looks like some ground beef with couscous.    Neeps, are a mashed turnip-like vegetable, and tatties are just mashed potatoes.  The latter two, I could care less for, since I've had a vendetta against all mashed foods since my childhood, but haggis is delicious.  

After the haggis, I surprisingly managed to finish off another course - one of the best desserts I've ever had - while entertainment was going on.  In this case, entertainment involved poems by Burns, some funny and some a bit more serious.  Then, the "Immortal Memory," which is a short speech about some aspect of Burns' life, and yet another dram of whisky for a toast.  By this time, most everyone in the hall was in a pleasant mood, and with that began a "Toast to the Lassies".  In the olden days, this was literally supposed to be a toast.  However, in our modern times (and keeping in mind this was a student function), the toast was a bit more tongue-in-cheek.  I recorded part of it, but can't figure out how to get it to just audio, so I'll have to post it later.  Following that, was a rebuttal "Reply from the Lassies," equally tongue-in-cheek, and an ending speech thing before the tables were all pulled up and we went off to the Ceilidh.

Normally, I'd explain the Ceilidh in this post, but since it's already gone on for a bit I'll save that for another time.  To leave you off, here's a video of the lovely piper who entertained us during parts of the supper:

Licking Stamps and Other Weird Things

Today I made my first trip to the post office in order to buy some stamps and start sending out all the postcards I've been writing.  I was going to just buy stamps online, but the Royal Mail shop is a bit confusing and I gave up.  Anyway, after trying to peel off the stamps for about five minutes, I figured out that you have to lick them to put them on.  The Air Mail stamps, which must accompany the normal stamps, are peel & stick, however.

There are lots of little things like this that are not quite the same here as they are in the U.S.  Many of them, like the stamps, seem completely nonsensical to me.  Others make sense once I consider the context of the culture, and still others just seem like better ideas period.  Here are some of the ones that have struck me the most:

• Kit-Kats, Milky Ways, etc. are not the same here as they are in the U.S.  Some are vastly different, while others are just tweaked.  I have no idea why this was necessary.  Perhaps the candies evolved differently and were just attributed to familiar names?  Either way, it makes me suspicious every time I buy a chocolate bar.
• Eggs are not necessarily kept in the refrigerator.  I think this is because they're mostly free-range, and chickens raised on certain diets lay eggs with thicker shells and some other stuff, removing the need for refrigeration.  It took me a while to find eggs in the supermarket, but now I keep mine in the cabinet and they seem to be fine.
• Traffic crossings stop all directions.  This makes tons of sense to me.  If you stop all traffic, you remove the annoying action of having to cross, then wait, then cross again.  If traffic isn't moving, you can just cross diagonally and be done with it.  Not sure what the effects on heavy traffic would be though.
•   The pharmacy is known as a "chemist" here, which evokes images of mad scientists for me but doesn't seem to bother any of the locals.
• People don't wash their clothes often.  Now I have no proof on this, but judging from the fact that it is three pounds to wash and dry my clothes, I'm guessing people don't wash something after every wearing.  When it's cold though, and you're not worried about sweating I guess it's not as big of an issue.

That's all for now!  Maybe I'll add more as the year progresses.

Free Stuff

One of the best things about Scotland is that there are loads of free and "cheap" things to do.  Museums, healthcare, and even prescriptions are free, and student discounts abound for pretty much everything.  You can get discounts on public transport, movies, food, and even in certain clothing stores.  This seems to be a thing perpetrated "nation-wide" (England doesn't really have the same amount of free-ness, sadly), and makes Glasgow in particular an awesome place to be a student.  Today, I took advantage of a free museum that's just 10 minutes away from my flat and in between my route to and from the university.  Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum  is, like every other museum I've encountered thus far, free. It's located in a building built in 1901, which to my uneducated American eyes looks really, really old and quite majestic even without it being a museum.

You can trek the entirety of the museum in an afternoon if you don't read every single exhibit, and there's a good mix of gallery and history, though I would say that the art gallery on the upper floor is definitely superior to the sometimes strange taxidermy and preservation.  It's one of the most visited attractions in the entire UK, and worth a visit for Dali's Christ of the Saint James of the Cross alone.  There is also an organist that plays in the main hall at least once a day, which is worth just sitting in on even if you have no intention of walking the museum.

Best of all, it is again, all free!  The idea being that knowledge (and well-being) should be accessible, and not hoarded just for those who afford it.  As a student on a budget, I'm all for it!

It's Food Time!

Glasgow has a pretty interesting food culture about it.  There are all the places you'd expect in a big city: McDonalds, KFC, Starbucks, etc. albeit in smaller numbers than many U.S. cities.  Then there are your smattering of pubs, of which no two have the same name (according to the Strathclyde police), and an almost countless number of small restaurants and chains that are unfamiliar to anybody in the states.

Since I've been free from classes for the past week, I've gotten a chance to visit a bunch of great places in both Edinburgh and Glasgow.  Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Tennent's Bar in Glasgow.  This is located in a highly convenient spot in relation to the university, and serves what is, in my mind, traditional bar fare: burgers, fries/chips, etc.  They also have some curry and a few more Glaswegian items on the menu.  Supposedly, they traditionally did not allow women into the establishment, but that's all changed now.  Seemed a little blue-collar when I visited-lots of people in uniform and older men-but that may have been because the term had not started yet.

2. Whistle Binkies, or "Billy's Whistle" as my group has come to call it, is in Edinburgh.  Great pub located in what appears to be a basement (depending on which entrance you take), with some sort of live music every night.  Went there on a weeknight and it was still surprisingly lively.  Not sure if they have food, but they have a good selection on tap and everyone in our group seemed to be able to find something they liked.

3.   Forsyth's Tea Room, again in Edinburgh.  This place is special to me because it was the first full meal I ate in Scotland.  Prices are a bit steep for what you get on some items: even accounting for it being right off the Royal Mile.  However, the proprietor was so kind to me, and the decor so homey, that I felt like it was worth it.    Food ranges from salads and sandwiches, to an "All-Day Breakfast" which consists of things like bacon, sausage and black pudding.  Not a pub, as you might be able to tell by the name, and a place more for tourists than for students.

4. A Glasgow establishment, this Indian restaurant is supposed to be one of the best.  They have a pretty small listed menu, however they seem to be able to accommodate special requests, so if you know what you want be sure to ask.  Went with a group of friends: the majority of whom got "Buttered Chicken," which was very good.  Venture out and get something spicy and you won't regret it either.  Waiters were very friendly and accommodating to the huge gaggle of Americans (and one Finland-ian) that stumbled through the door.

A Tour of Glasgow

Went on a tour of Glasgow on one of those double-deckers.  9L for an two-day pass, and I got it for free because someone had an extra!  These aren't all the stops, but anyways, enjoy:

 

 
 

 



 

 
 

Day #2: Edinburgh

With Love from Forsyth's Tearoom

Day #2 of Scotland and my first full day!  Woke up at 10AM after a wonderful 13 hours of sleep and went out to explore some more.  I've been sticking mostly to the "Royal Mile" and Princes Street, which are touristy areas of Edinburgh, but I ventured into a little back-alley breakfast/tea parlor this morning for lunch.  The woman who ran the shop was like a little old grandmother - sweet but imposing - and made my food right there after I ordered it.  We talked a bit, and she ended up giving me a ribbon of lavender satchels in case I ever "studied too hard and needed a break".  Can't beat Scottish hospitality!

Before going to Scotland, I stupidly asked my mom if there were big hills there...well...

After lunch/breakfast took a walk down and then back up the Royal Mile.  Got a chance to go yesterday, but didn't really venture out from the immediate area in case I got lost.  Today I gave myself a little more freedom and ended up at the Scottish Parliament - a fairly modern building and perhaps the only modern building on the Royal Mile - and then at Edinburgh Castle.  Lots of tourists, and tourist traps, including a bagpiper and a man dressed as William Wallace.  Still, everything is still new and exciting, so even silly things like that seem cool.  Didn't get a chance to go inside anything like the castle, but I'll make it sometime during the semester and will be sure to update you on it!

Finally, after orientation me and my new friends from Arcadia ventured out to try and find a pub.  After an unsuccessful attempt to get to somewhere with "grass" in its name, we stumbled upon the wonderfully named  Whistle Binkies where I finished my first beer (an IPA of unknown type, if anyone's interested)!  Good way to start off I think.