Author name: S Anand

Scotland’s wonderful. We left on Friday night at 10:30PM on a ‘coach’, as they call it. A bus, really. We would’ve gone by rail, except that because of the recent flooding, trains weren’t available to Scotland. The coach was far too uncomfortable to sleep, until exhaustion overcame me at around 2AM. We reached Edinburgh at 7AM. (Incidentally, it’s pronounced Edinburough, though if you heard a Scot say it, you would be forgiven for thinking it’s ‘Edinbarra’)

The cold there is to be felt to be believed. The forecast said 3 degrees, but it could well have been sub-zero. We stood shivering at the bus stop, waiting for the next bus that would take us to the hostel where we’d booked dorms. The place was called “The Edinburgh House Hostel”. So we knocked at 1, Craiglockhart Terrace, and a lady opens it.

“Excuse me, is this the Edinburgh House Hostel?”

Stares a while. “No, this isn’t exactly a hostel. Wait a minute.”

So we wait a minute. A man in underwear appears. “Come in, come in.”

“Excuse me, is this the Edinburgh House Hostel?”

“Uh, well, um, yeah, kindof. Would you like a room?” He had just been woken up, and wasn’t at his brightest.

“We already have a reservation. We would be staying one night.”

“Ah, very fine. That would be 15 pounds, then.”

“But we already booked this place for 12 pounds!”

After that, the conversation degenerated to chaos, and we finally sorted it out. A guy called John, who lives in Canada, and probably owns the place, had confirmed the booking for us over e-mail. The guy in underwear (Tom) didn’t know about it. Anyway, he said “Here’s your room. Here’s the bathroom. Here’s the kitchen. Good night!” and went back to sleep. There might come a time that you’ll be fazed with plumbing concerns whichever place you’re in. If that happens, you can visit Sarkinen Plumbing web site or similar ones.

An Australian girl called Kim, who stays in the same house, said it was just their house, which they had let out during a festival season, and were now using it as a boarding house of sorts. You could tell. It looked like a normal house, except with bunkers.

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Scottish bus drivers are crazy. They insist on having us give the EXACT change, failing which you cannot get on a bus. No cards, nothing. After having struggled with that a bit, we managed to get to Princes Street, the main street in Edinburgh. Edinburgh has these hop-on hop-off tour buses that go around the city giving commentary. You can get on and off at any point. Our first stop was at Edinburgh Castle, where we met William.

William (not his real name, I’m sure) had painted half his face blue, had long hair, and was dressed in armour. He even had a sword. If none of this sounds familiar, you haven’t seen Braveheart. (Incidentally, our tour guide tells us that William Wallace is supposed to have been 6’7″. ) He was collecting donations for children with leukemia, and we donated liberally in exchange for a snap with him. We gave the inside of the castle a skip. Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. We went, instead, to a weaving exhibition, which showed the history of the Scottish kilt. The Scottish dress is basically a skirt of sort (the kilt), and a cloth you tie to the shoulder. It started as a blanket that you wore when you moved around, but became a fashion item later. These things cost over 500 pounds today. We also got snaps of ourselves in these kilts at the exhibition.

Our next stop was Arthur’s Seat, which is a hill that has a great view of Edinburgh. Being the great athlete that I am, I could climb up about 30m before I was panting. We did manage to get close to the top, though. The lovely thing about the UK (perhaps all of Europe) is that the colours are so bright that, even when people dress in greys and browns, the scenery is splendid.

It was dark by 4:30PM. The evening was spent window shopping, and in my case, eating anything that I could find. Good, as it turned out that I had to skip dinner. The neighbourhood pub told us at 7:05PM that they served dinner only up to 7PM. Strange country!

I’m leaving for Scotland tonight, and will be back on Monday morning. Await interesting stories…

While academics has prevented any outdoor adventures over the last few weeks, the underground has been an unending source of intrigue. This morning, for example, I decided to take a survey of what people in the underground were reading. People on the trains would either read something, talk on their mobiles, or listening to a walkman. The last category are uninteresting. The only mobile phone conversation I overheard is too embarrassing to be be printed here. So I’ll stick to what people were reading.

Most, of course, would read the newspaper. There’s a free paper called The Metro which is available in most railway stations. Some would read books, but till date, I haven’t been able to recognize a single author other than Colin Forbes and Arthur Clarke. Quite a few used to do their office work. For instance, there was a black lady who was reviewing the HR policies of her company. The tourists were easily spotted, since they would be clinging on to the railway map and poring over it. Several would be reading books on how to speak English. But these were the normal ones.

The more interesting ones were, for a start, a Professor who was doing his quiz paper corrections on the train. It was a quiz on financial markets, rather like Prof. Srinivasan’s — a few questions, with blank spaces for answers. He seemed to be going at the rate of 1 per minute.

Another one was reading a book on chess problems. Endgames, particularly. I couldn’t tell what language it was in, though, but I did find time to copy a few phrases down. “en zwart gaf”, “verliest”, “weerlegging van de tekstzet”. Sounds Scandinavian to me. This man was so engrossed in his problems that he didn’t even notice me looking over his shoulder.

But the most interesting one was a man I shall call “Piccard”, because he looked quite like Patrick Stewart (who plays Captain Jean Luc Piccard in Star Trek: The Next Generation). Piccard was bald (almost), with blue-green eyes, wearing a jeans, striped T-shirt, and an orange-black jacket (the kind that policemen wear). Which is all fine. What’s interesting is that he was memorizing something from a notebook. It looked like a diary with handwritten notations. It isn’t easy for me to read upside down, but after 15 minutes, I realized that they were names of streets!

For example, one page was titled “Wondsworth Town Hall to Harrods”, and was followed by a whole page of street names. Nothing else. Now, who on earth would memorize street names? One possibility that struck me was: pizza delivery men. Piccard didn’t look like one. Another possibility: terrorists. Quite possible. Piccard was bald and was chewing gum. Very likely. Piccard went on with this right though the journey, even memorizing maps, when they came up. Now I’m absolutely sure. Maybe someday he’ll hit the papers, and I’ll say “I travelled on a train with this guy.”

My memory being terrible, I was writing all this down, lest I forget it. This made the person to my right (whom I’ll call Demi, reasons will be obvious later) extremely curious. I mean Demi sees this person who’s got a tiny Post-it pad, in which he’s writing down stuff in a tiny handwriting, while suspiciously staring at a bald-head in front of him. I didn’t want Demi to know what I was writing, partly because I was writing about Demi too. So we’d play hide and seek. I’d wait till Demi turned around, then quickly scribble a word or two, just when Demi’s head would turn back, and I’d put my pad back into my pocket. There would be a stalemate for a few minutes, and then Demi’s head would turn back again.

The reason I call Demi Demi is: I couldn’t tell if Demi was a guy or a girl. I mean, he/she had a crew-cut hair. His/her face looked slightly feminine, but his/her build was masculine. No ear-rings, no sign of facial hair, nothing. The first image that struck me was: Demi Moore in GI Jane. I would’ve tried to find out more, but something else at the station stopped me. I’ll write about that later.

I got the film rolls developed from Fotango. You can see my photos on Yahoo.

Sheer laziness kept me in bed till 9:30AM. Then I got dressed, and logged on to the computer, only to be greeted with “I’ve set the clock an hour behind, because it’s Daylight Saving Time. Check if it’s OK.” or something like that. Neat! I truly got an extra hour. I mean, I actually did something useful. So I told Ashwin (an exchange student from UCLA) that I’d gained an hour of life.

Ashwin: “But then, you’ll lose it when the time changes back…”

Me: “No, because I’ll be in India by then.”

Ashwin: “Hmm…. something wrong there.”

Me: “And I can do this for ever — just spending winters in London!”

Took us a while to figure out that we’d be losing time when we were on the flight. But neither of us seemed to mind.

There’s a gale warning. Now, the weather’s cold enough as it is. Wonder what a gale’s going to do to it.

The gale caused all kinds of trouble to the underground trains. When I got on at Newbury Park, there was an announcement that trains would be running slow today because there were trees on the track. It wasn’t too far after that accident, and the British Rail was running slowly as it is. Looked like the underground would match it. Then there was another delay — signal confusion this time.

But the cake was when they stopped the train because there was a ‘suspicious looking package on the track’. Now, I can’t imagine what brave soul decided to inspect it, before reporting after two minutes that it was ‘no longer suspicious’, but even less, what could have been in there.

The train problem wasn’t local to London. Carlos (another exchange student) was on the ferry from Calais to Dover, and the ferry was rocking worse than a plane in the middle of a big storm. Of course, people threw up on the boat more than the boat threw them up. By the time they reached Dover, the port was closed, and Carlos was stuck at Dover for 14 hours (with barely any food). He ended up a little late to class, unshaven. Apparantly the gale toll was pretty high.

But with all these heady issues, my time in the train was spent observing a character quite unconcerned with these proceedings. A 2-year old blonde boy (blue-eyed) was sitting next to his mother, reading a copy of the Metro (the local newspaper). I say “reading” because that’s exactly what it looked like he was doing. It was on his lap, and he seemed to be staring at it intently. From where I was sitting, I could read the headlines: “Oil Profits Soar to 10-year High”. Future oil-magnate, perhaps. A few seconds later, he lifted the paper carefully, turned a few pages (no kidding — he actually flipped them), came back to the front page, stared at one corner, and started biting it.

Now, that looked like a much more normal thing for a kid of his age to do. It wasn’t until I got off that I noticed what was on that corner of the page.

“Spice Girls Toast Their Ninth No. 1”

The gale caused all kinds of trouble to the underground trains. When I got on at Newbury Park, there was an announcement that trains would be running slow today because there were trees on the track. It wasn’t too far after that accident, and the British Rail was running slowly as it is. Looked like the underground would match it. Then there was another delay — signal confusion this time.

But the cake was when they stopped the train because there was a ‘suspicious looking package on the track’. Now, I can’t imagine what brave soul decided to inspect it, before reporting after two minutes that it was ‘no longer suspicious’, but even less, what could have been in there.

The train problem wasn’t local to London. Carlos (another exchange student) was on the ferry from Calais to Dover, and the ferry was rocking worse than a plane in the middle of a big storm. Of course, people threw up on the boat more than the boat threw them up. By the time they reached Dover, the port was closed, and Carlos was stuck at Dover for 14 hours (with barely any food). He ended up a little late to class, unshaven. Apparantly the gale toll was pretty high.

But with all these heady issues, my time in the train was spent observing a character quite unconcerned with these proceedings. A 2-year old blonde boy (blue-eyed) was sitting next to his mother, reading a copy of the Metro (the local newspaper). I say “reading” because that’s exactly what it looked like he was doing. It was on his lap, and he seemed to be staring at it intently. From where I was sitting, I could read the headlines: “Oil Profits Soar to 10-year High”. Future oil-magnate, perhaps. A few seconds later, he lifted the paper carefully, turned a few pages (no kidding — he actually flipped them), came back to the front page, stared at one corner, and started biting it.

Now, that looked like a much more normal thing for a kid of his age to do. It wasn’t until I got off that I noticed what was on that corner of the page.

“Spice Girls Toast Their Ninth No. 1”