Let me preface my tales of Scotland, with rolling hills of plaid, kilted Sean Connery lookalikes, and its mystical seafaring critters, with a little nerd pop culture as a backdrop for our story. Several of my dear Dickinson friends and I have a bond closer than Lord Voldemort to Professor Quirrell over A Very Potter Musical, a glorious full length musical parody of Harry Potter. Just before we left for Scotland, the guy that plays Harry appeared on Glee, a show bested only by Jersey Shore in its ridiculousness (I religiously follow every single episode of both these shows with my door locked and my lights off so no one will ever discover my terrible taste), as a gay character that sings Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream. The universe put all things wonderful in a hat -- glorious musical parody, guilty pleasure TV, bad pop music, positive representation of gays in the media (Feminist Jesse makes another appearance), and wizardry (America, I know you think I’m joking, but seriously England has real Harry Potter magic) – and spit out lax bro Harry Potter singing Katy Perry for gay rights. I tend to add soundtracks and special effects to my life as it is occurring (i.e. the Rocky theme song plays in my head every single time I run upstairs, every time toast comes out of the toaster in our kitchen I imagine it shouts “SURPRISE!,” etc. ). Now imagine the effects of the constant mental image of Harry Potter singing Katy Perry for the entirety of my journey. But this is a tangent. Back to Scotland (birthplace of Harry Potter, who is real. Seriously.)
My fantastic travel buddy, Buddy Holly, and I took a coach to London, mouth trumpeting Katy Perry/Harry Potter the entire way (an option that seemed less annoying to the people around us in my head than actually singing), to meet our other fantastic travel buddy, Aussie Buddy Laura, who greeted us with a squirrel shaped Nutella spoon (the best gift I have ever received) and a pocket full of dreams. After serendipitously coming across the world premiere for Harry Potter 7 (this was an honest accident, otherwise I would have come in a witch costume and tried to embarrass all the people around me) we headed to our overnight bus (I am pretty sure that it was the same exact bus that Harry Potter took after he accidentally inflated his Aunt at age 14) for a restful night of upright slumber, interrupted only occasionally by the excruciating stiffness in our necks, the lack of heating on the bus, amusingly high pitched intercom announcements from our bus driver, and scent of human urine (we thought the back of the bus would be cool because that’s where the cool kids sat in elementary school. Unfortunately, it is also where the porta-potty is located). Despite our excitement, we had no idea of the magical adventure that lay ahead of us.
How can I express my joy? Arriving early the next morning, we stepped out of the bus station to the most beautiful skyline I have ever seen in my entire life and immediately to the left, the creepiest window display I have ever seen in my entire life. I have no words.
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| This is both too alien filled and too risque for Christmas. |
This is the point in the journey when Buddy Holly informed us that not only is Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland, but J.K. Rowling wrote the first two books of her biographical series (Harry Potter is real) in a café around the corner. So we walked along the streets of what appeared to be a Gothic architectural revival on Mars if Martians wore kilts (again. I am serious. People actually wear kilts. And it is awesome), to the Elephant House, that historic café where the magic began (yes, that was both an awful pun and yet another obscure Wayne’s World reference). Except a small sign at the front and elaborately festooned Harry Potter toilet, the Elephant Head has stuck to its roots and remains covered in Elephants insignia. (The British are clever with their bragging tactics. They place their claim to fame in the bathroom because putting it next to a toilet makes it seem like they don’t care, they're being humble… but everyone goes through the bathroom. Everyone has to see the toilet.)
After breakfast we opted to be obnoxious tourists and take a guided tour of Edinburgh, which proved to be the greatest decision I have made since I decided to purchase my dinosaur sandwich cutter. A snapshot of the great stories of Edinburgh as presented by our tour guide (you can skip this part if you dislike history or if you dislike fun):
1. Serial killers Burke and Hare who sold dead bodies to medical schools
2. Home to Jekyll and Hyde, one of my favorite stories! Apparently it only takes place in London by name and the streets really refer to the ones in Edinburgh. There was a whole museum devoted to Robert Louis Stevenson, Robert Burns, and Sir Walter Scott!
3. John Knox, one of history’s greats, who is buried under parking spot 23 because he insisted on being with so many feet of St. Giles church, but Scotland wanted to build a parking lot there.
4. Public punishment for criminals in which thieves would be nailed by their ear to a door so people could throw rotten vegetables at them
5. Proto-burglar alarms – people purposely built stairs with one odd step so strangers trip and fall on their faces
6. The origin of the slang term sh*tfaced comes from the fact that pubs in Edinburgh used to close at 10PM and this was also the traditional time that women would empty the family bedpans out their top floor windows.
7. Before witches were accepted into society (Harry Potter is real), they were thrown into what our tour guide fondly called the Lake of Poo (no proper sewage system)
8. My favorite: The Stone of Destiny is this giant stone that represents Scottish independence. Big patriotic deal. Anyway, England was holding it for years and when the Scots finally got it back, rather than choosing to play a patriotic song, Scotland played the Mission Impossible theme song as they carried it majestically up the hill to its rightful place in the castle (by the way, Edinburgh has several castles… because it’s magical. No big deal.)
Summary for those who skipped the long list: serial killers, brutal public punishment, witches, poop, more witches, Mission Impossible. Anyway, after our tour we enjoyed a delicious meal of haggis (honestly, it’s pretty good. It tastes like spicy meatloaf, and I spaced out for the explanation of what’s in it, so I’m assuming it’s made sunshine and rainbows rather than sheep heart and liver). Then we checked into the hostel where I happily claimed the top bunk because it is awesome and fort-like and I am a small child, only to discover that there was no ladder for said bunk bed, which will explain the severe bruising currently on my shins.
Half an hour later, I received a text from one of my Dickinson at UEA friends asking where I was to which I responded “Edinburgh, Scotland.” Five minutes later we discovered that he and 7 other Americans from the Dickinson science program had coincidentally booked a room upstairs in our hostel. This coincidence can only be explained by the fact that I am so brimming with American family values and patriotism that America literally follows me wherever I go. So our band of countrymen and Aussie Buddy Laura (the other former colonist of England with warmer climate, slightly more delightful accent, and convict ancestors) went on a ghost tour together after which Buddy Holly, Aussie Buddy Laura, and I went on a quest for live music and discovered a Scottish blues/folk band squeezed into a pub about the size of my shoilet room. I can’t say that I’m not a little disappointed that there were no ghost attacks or at least an appearance from Nearly Headless Nick (Harry Potter is real), but it was a fun, relaxing evening after our previous night of Night Bus sleeplessness.
The following morning our 12 other roommates and I awakened to the dulcet sound of Buddy Holly’s phone wedged within the walls of a metal locker violently shaking the entire thing with its vibrate alarm, and the subsequent sound of Holly ripping off the top of the locker like the incredible Hulk and diving head first into the locker from the top bunk to turn off the phone. After a quick but reverent recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance (except Laura, boomerang-throwing convict spawn), we went to Mount Holyrood where hiked to the top of King Arthur’s seat. Despite her inexplicable lack of sycophantic obsession with America, the greatest country in the entire universe, Buddy Laura was still a champion, managing to hike up the entire mount in a pair of ballet flats. The view was beautiful, but more importantly the wind was so strong that I could spit like five times as far as usual. Sadly, our elaborate plan that Holly twist her ankle on the mountain and three Scottish men inevitably ride up on horses and come to the rescue as they do in every single chick flick including Scottish people ever created did not work (The closest we came to this were the three slightly homophobic Irish men drinking out of sand castle buckets we met at a pub later, one of whom claimed to be Colin Farrell’s first cousin, and another of whom was so convinced that I was Barrack Obama’s daughter that he called his friend and insisted that I talk to him. They probably would not have liked lax bro Harry Potter’s rendition of Teenage Dream).
So we climbed a mountain before lunch. Then we came back down and saw the new Scottish Parliament building, which looked like Salvador Dali’s childhood tree house.
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| Scottish Parliament. Notice the weird bamboo overhang and crazy window covers |
I saw a gentleman in a powdered wig walk into the old Parliament building earlier and am now wondering if they still wear powdered wigs in the new one. Also, here’s a picture of the palace that happened to be next door to the new Parliament building, like 50 feet away.
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| Palace next door. |
After an afternoon of museums, we ate dinner in the hostel common room where passive-aggressive-movie-guy got really upset that we and everyone else in the room were talking over the Patriot, which was playing on TV (only American TV played the entire weekend. I can understand passive-aggressive-movie-guy’s frustration of course. If I lived anywhere other than America, the beautiful, I would want to absorb every ounce of glorious American television I possibly could, too.) Then we decided to sample Edinburgh’s nightlife. Highly successful on several accounts. 1. We successfully escape from the sandcastle bucket Irishmen. 2. About one quarter of the men we saw out that night were wearing kilts. I’m not joking. 3. The streets of Edinburgh are built on various bridges because of its various hills. As such, we found a club the bottom of a cliff. Just as I was preparing to scale said cliff in the name of adventure, Buddy Laura found a ramp. 3. We successfully escaped Lord Voldemort as he pursued us down the street (this may have actually been a small cat in retrospect) 4. The club at the bottom of the cliff had five differently themed stories to explore.
The following morning we watch some of the Remembrance Day bagpipe demonstration which went on despite the freezing rain. Then we went into St. Giles church which is if not the most beautiful church I’ve seen so far, at least rivals St. Paul. Also it has a carving of an angel playing bagpipes in one of the chapels. Extra points. Buddy Holly and I may also have gone back to the Elephant House/Harry Potter café while Buddy Laura did actual educational things. Holly and I may also have gone back to Greyfriar cemetery and looked for the grave of Tom Riddle for twenty minutes (to be fair, we wanted to see Greyfriar again anyway. Sidenote: cages stick out of the ground in Greyfriar cemetery because they buried people in cages to deter body snatchers. Also the body of William McGonagall, famously know as Scotland’s worst poet, is buried there).
We end our visit with a trip to Starbuck, a place so imbued with evil that, if I had a lightning scar, it would have stung. The epicenter of the American plot to annihilate all other cultures by slowly incorporating its own cultural phenomena into other countries their by erasing their own (a tactic also used by the Greeks to conquer empires), Starbuck’s was teaming with probably every American in the city. But not red-blooded, Big Mac eating, SUV driving real Americans. No, Starbuck’s markets to pseudo-yuppies who drink 20 prefix lattes (mocha-frappe-nonsensaccino) and correct your Americanized Italian when you order a panini instead of a panino. However, this place was more evil than your everyday evil Starbucks; I could sense it by the cozy mood lighting and shelf of pretentious books presumably there for customers who never read them. That’s when I had a Harry Potter Occlumency psychic vision. This Starbuck’s was Voldemort’s favorite hangout spot as a teenager. But before I could search for Horcruxes, we had to catch our train for the long journey home. I plan to return and search again so I can do my part to save the wizarding world (also because Edinburgh was absolutely amazing. My favorite city so far).
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