part five in the multi-part series: anyone still interested?

it's 3:15 in the morning and i'm completely wired on more coffee than i've had in a long time. i can't believe i used to live like this regularly. ah, the days of parcell street and the truckstop. i don't forsee myself being academically productive at all for the rest of the night (although i ought to be), but i also don't see sleep happening on account of i'm not really blinking and my hands are shaking, so let's continue on my adventure that i'm sure all three people who read my blog are quite bored of. whatever. i like to remember.

thursday in scotland i recall being really cranky most of the day. i think the dismal weather started to grate on me--eventually, you really start to miss the sun--and i was also pissed because i didn't have any cigarettes. i suppose all of that was coupled with a hangover that made my brain fuzzy and uncooperative. we slept late and got to walking about the city, eventually ending up at the sir walter scott monument. that's the wonky-looking building in the sunset picture from my last entry. it cost 3 pounds per person to go in, so we left dejected, but then the nice scottish men at the ticket booth shouted after us that we could go 2 for 1. we counted out the change from our pockets and accepted the discount. there are 287 steep, narrow stone steps that spiral up a tall gothic-style tower in a staircase that could easily be a claustrophobic's worst nightmare. about halfway up there's a mini-museum where you can learn a few pertinent facts about sir walter. i think it's pretty cool that the scots have a monument in the middle of the city that was built to honor a writer and historian.


at the top, there was a whole lotta wind and another view of the tops of ed's buildings. there was also a few attempts at self-portraiture in breath-consuming gusts; above you'll see the only one where both of our heads are fully included. not particularly flattering (i think the wind is making me teary and snotty), but here's the pictoral evidence that i was actually there.

from there, we walked to the modern art gallery and met this cat along the way. he was just really fat and hanging out and adorable, and tom interacting with cats is always really endearing. the modern art gallery was surprisingly impressive; i wasn't expecting much having been to the moma and the nat'l gallery and the hirshorn in d.c. i saw my favorite roy lichtenstein painting, in the car, which was a complete surprise to see on account of i had no idea it was in edinburgh. there were a lot of other pretty awesome pieces (some cindy sherman photos, an awesome damien hirst piece, some dada posters) but i'll be honest, i don't feel like elaborating and i don't think that you care to read my garbled pseudo-art-talk bullshit. understand that it was all, you know, pretty good.

so whatever, et cetera, we ate some food and drank more beers and hanging out and pretty good. it took me most of the day to snap out of the stupid mood i was in, but if there was one guaranteed cure to my funk, it was the promise of a strip club that night. walking through the area commonly known as "the pubic triangle" that day, we'd communally made the decision that we needed some tits, and since i'd vetoed the grime show that we were thinking about going to, we figured tonight was the night for a titty bar. so we bought a bottle of vodka and hung out with some of his friends, getting good and wasted for the naked lady show.

being a strip club virgin, the place itself was pretty much exactly what i expected; lots of sketchy middle-aged dudes hanging out around a pole. me and tom's friends were the only girls in there who were fully dressed, and i was getting some creepy eyes from across the stage. but i wasn't there for dudes, obviously. i was really impressed with the strippers; bitches are athletes! i mean, it has to take talent to climb up a pole with yr legs like they do. i admired their moves. and their boobs. obviously. tom tried to give one of the strippers an american dollar bill, but she took it from him, put it in his mouth, then grabbed his face and rubbed it in her cleavage. then she took the dollar. it was amazing. we later tried to get the same stripper to give us a lap dance for half price (she wanted 20 quid for it, and refused to be bargained down to 10). she did, however, tell tom that he looked like nick lachey, which kept me laughing for a good 10 minutes, and then again every time after that when i would think about it. even now, i'm giggling a little.

surprise! we're wasted again! upon the suggestions of his friends, we end up going to a sketchy club called stereo, which was fine by me on account of i wanted to go to at least one sketchy club while i was there. it was completely packed but it was okay because i was completely drunk. i threw all my shit down on the floor, chugged a vodka tonic, and proceeded to dance with anyone mildly in the vicinity. i'd been aching for a dance party for so long. this was close enough, and bitches know i've got some surrrrious moves. the club was, indeed, absolutely sketchy, but it seemed appropriate given the night we'd been having. i felt dirty in the best possible way.

we'd made tentative plans to take a train to st. andrews the next morning. we'd already set the alarm for 9 am. as we teetered home around 3 (and i think stopping for falafel along the way), we both secretly pretty much knew that wasn't going to happen.

(next [the final installment]: the weekend! penguins, more booze (gasp!), touristy things, and i leave some of my heart in edinburgh's streets.)

(current events addendum: i've got a new job and a new place to live next year and the weather is beautiful. everything's coming up sapple. except for the whole academia thing.)

#4

i'd say that most days i was in scotland, i was hungover in the morning and drunk again by early evening. i wonder how i managed to not die, or at least not resort to crawling through the streets at night and puking on the sidewalk. at least i wouldn't be alone if i had.

wednesday we went to the national museum of scotland (i think?), which was sweet because there were skeletons.
there were other things, like old pottery and jewelry and weapons from the ancient celtic period, and a lot of descriptions based on assumptions since apparently no one actually knows anything about these people, but the best part was obviously the skeletons. i also saw robert the bruce's sword, which i forgot to take a picture of, but which was so badass that i don't think the picture would have truly done it justice. it was massive and would have killed you if you looked at it the wrong way. there was a lot more stuff, but once i got past ancient tribal warfare and medeival torture, i got bored and wanted to hang out on the roof instead. once you got up on the roof you found yet another place for a beautiful panoramic view of edinburgh. i guess that's what happens when you have tall buildings and a city on a hill. the first picture i posted in my first entry was taken from that rooftop terrace. also, we saw dolly the cloned sheep, who was cloned at the university of edinburgh. she's stuffed and illuminated and spinning in a glass case in the royal museum.


after meeting the day's quota for culture, we decided it was time to go on a pub crawl, since clearly we hadn't been doing enough drinking here already. tom took me to rose street, and the entire time i thought he was saying "rowe street" which made me homesick for my hood but also seemed fitting that i should be pub-crawling there. we started at the bad ass (pictured above), which was nice but decidedly less badass than perhaps the name suggests. when i go into a pub with such a name, i don't expect posh leather sofas and coffee tables and trinkets on the walls and cocktail waitresses that politely bring me my pint while i read the paper.

we went to about seven different pubs, getting different beers every time. at one place tom suggested we try tenents ember, which neither of us had tried before, which tasted a little like what i imagine filtered diarrhea might be like. we finished, in the spirit of the crawl, but quickly moved on having learned our lesson. to be fair, tom guided me most of the week in my decisions on ales and this was the only time he steered me wrong.

at some point, we ended up in front of a pub called filthy mcnasty's. i was well into drunk and at that point where people shouldn't be seen in public with me, and upon reading the name i doubled over into my drunk cackle in the middle of the street. you all know the sapple drunk laugh; it's loud and it carries. so of course we had to drink there, and i giggled the entire time. then tom started talking about chicken sandwiches, which sounded totally sweet at the time so we went to burger king. yeah. i don't eat at burger king in the states, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. we sat in front of the window and made fun of everyone who walked by behind the safety of the glass.

by the time the sun went down we were legitimately stumbling. a day well spent. walking back, tom found a little ID photo of a blank-faced asian man on the ground, which we both greatly appreciated. i think he kept it, but i wish i had it. we got back to his dorm, fell asleep drunk at about 7 and woke up again around 11, just in time to mix more substances into my addled brains and go to a flat party nearby. i was socially and mentally retarded on account of things, so i sat in a chair and stared at everyone and talked to tom's hall mates whenever i could pull together some coherent sentences. good to know that college parties are awkward (or maybe, i'm awkward at college parties) no matter where in the world i am. stupid cunts are still stupid cunts, drunk girls are still embarrassing and hilarious, and i still don't know how to respond to being hit on other than pouring more alcohol down my throat and thinking of a reason why i need to go over there.

(tomorrow: titty bar!)

shotgunwedding does the scots: part 3

tuesday was the first day i really got immersed in scotland weather. the first couple of days were sunny and mild and deceptive. i was told not to expect it much longer. sure enough, tuesday morning i walked out into an obnoxious mist. arthur's seat was swirled with fog and haze and looked like mordor. i can't say it was raining; this precipitation was far more irritating. it was the kind of mist where you don't take an umbrella because you'll look like a pussy and you don't think you'll get wet anyway, but after about 20 minutes yr soaked through on account of persistent tiny droplets. and for me, being a nerdy four-eyes, my glasses got all wet and i couldn't see and of course i don't have one dry article of clothing with which to dry them off. this kind of weather went on for the rest of the trip, and having experienced it for a week i admire the scots so much more now. it takes the right kind of mindset to be able to live somewhere where the sun is a novelty and yr always wet.

we went to holyrood palace that afternoon and took the audio tour. holyrood palace is the queen's residence in edinburgh. mostly, very stuffy and british and historic. prince charles gave the pre-recorded welcoming address on the audio tour. the best part was holyrood abbey. it's a ruin attached to the palace.
i was really excited to be there, mostly on account of the nostalgia. when i was little and living in england, my dad and i would go on excursions to ruins every weekend. we'd get the red vw golf and comb the uk looking for something that i could climb on. ruins of castles were my jungle gyms. and while i was climbing and looking, my dad would be following me telling me the history, which i was legitimately fascinated by. i'd reconstruct the building in my head and daydream a scenario where it was 1100 a.d. and i was there. apparently fourteen years later, if you put me in ruin, i'll still play medieval make-believe in my head and want to climb on all the slippery stones. i think tom was worried that i was going to hurt myself, and given my track record he was justified.
there are about a dozen slabs on the ground marking graves, and i felt very solemn and quietly excited to be walking over so many bodies. it'd be a great place for a scene in a zombie movie; i'd love to see the decomposed corpses of old scottish nobility rise up from the ruins to feast on fat american tourists and their children.

on the way home, it was deemed necessary to stop for chocolate. so tom takes me to this place that we'd walked by a few times. they had the most absurdly delicious-looking baked goods in the window; cakes and things made out of candy bars and such. inside there were so many sweet things hanging from the walls and piled up places that you could only walk single file in a narrow aisle, and if you were tall you probably needed to stoop a little. tom got this muffin. a fucking cadbury cream egg muffin.

yeah, that's a cracked open cream egg. look closer...

it was magical. take the best muffin you've ever eaten and multiply it by 100 and then fuck it because it's still not as good as this one. i mean come on, look at it. imagine a pile of those in a window next to mars bar cakes. it was too rich to eat in one go, even between the both of us, which was fine because we got to eat it again later before we went to go play beer pong.

yep. i paid $600 and flew for 9 hours across the sea to watch people play beer pong, solo cups and all. there were pint cans of tenents instead of natty light and intense german competitors instead of issac and connor, but all the moves were the same. apparently it was something of a tuesday night tradition to play pong at this flat. it was actually really enjoyable. i'm really awkward in social situations and it's only amplified in strange surroundings, but it was really comfortable to be in a familiar setting. so i leaned against the wall and watched the games and talked to everyone (most of the kids i met were really friendly and great to hang out with) and explained to everyone how i don't play because i'm awful and how that rule transcends national borders. later i quietly rescinded, on account of i met this kid who's also from (the periphery of) baltimore and also terrible at pong who needed a partner. i was 2 tenents into the night and buzzed enough that i agreed, and as soon as i stepped onto the table i got called out by everyone in the room.

i actually started pretty well, making two cups in a row which is a record for me. the guy i was playing with (who was every bit as terrible as he said he was) started to doubt me and i think, for a minute, suspected me of being a liar and something of a pong shark. but i relapsed; i'm actually still as awful as i was last time i played. i know that we all hoped for a "rookie of the year"-style return to beer pong after my surgery, but clearly my pitching arm just continues to suck. however, even though we lost the game (which was fine because i get really bored after just one), most of the cups that team baltimore made were mine. owned(!), kind of.

after pong we went across the street to a bar that was really crowded. tom was approached by a german girl - who was obviously coked out of her skull - who wanted to know if he was interested in buying pot from spain. she talked for a good 10 minutes about the merits of such a transaction. when she left i almost fell off my stool from laughing. i mean, this is his life.

(next installment: we get real drunk and end up at burger king.)

scotland: part 2

i'm as of yet undecided as to how many parts this will stretch into. i suppose it all hinges on my skill/patience as a writer, my academic burdens, and whether or not my health holds out. as it is, none of the above are looking good. i've spent the better part of the past two days breathing out of my mouth and coughing into wadded up tissues that i carry around with me. it snowed today. where is spring?

monday in scotland saw me once again thrust into the uphill streets of edinburgh alone. my friend, ever the darling, gave me a compass (which i accidentally stole) and a city map and pointed me in some direction after we had to part ways so that he could go to school. i almost went to a lecture, but then remembered that it was fucking SPRINGBREAK 06 WOOOOO and i don't do no book learnin'. so i went to play in the hypercapitalist city with my new credit card and no concept of exchange rates.


this is princes st., as photographed from the top of the scott monument (more on that in thursday's account). basically it's all the spending allure and prestige of georgetown fit enticingly into old european stone buildings; there were 2 h&m's within 3 blocks, not to mention fancy stores i'd never heard of but adored. for the most part i was impressed by uk fashion and really wanted to pass for edinburgh eurotrash, mostly on account of the straightleg jeans and tunic tops with polkadots (less for the mini-mini-denim-skirts always worn with black leggings and uggs, or some furry boot variant). so i spent hours shopping, at least one of those trying to figure out european and uk sizing, which are different from the us as well as different from each other. thank god for h&m, which puts all the international sizes on the tag. then once i'd figured out the conversion, i spent the rest of the day elated in front of dressing room mirrors as i discovered i'm now 2 sizes smaller than i was in january. regardless of if that's true or uk sizes are just generous with the cuts, i felt hot and terrific for an afternoon and straight strutted down the sidewalk with mad sway in my hips.

scotland, don't even front like you didn't want this.

before committing ourselves to nighttime, we ate baked potatos at a little take-away place that only serves baked potatos. potatos are about the closest thing you can get to a vegetable in scotland, which is fine by me on account of i love them in all their delicious forms. so this place gave you an extensive list of potato toppings, you picked one or some or whatever, and they made you a giant tasty potato. i got vegan chili on mine. fucking a. it was an experience.


so then we commenced to drinkin'. we started at this bar called rush, which was apparently voted the best backpackers bar in the city, presumably because it's pretty cheap. it was early, and the place was pretty empty and pretty dive-y, which is how i like bars. i like to be able to just sit and drink and talk and gesture with cigarettes in my fingers. we threw back more than one, smoked the last of my american cigarettes (seriously, i'm a dumbass), and moved on to the jazz bar where i threw down 10 pounds to see ravi coltrane.


i loved the space. it was pretty much exactly what i imagined a place called "the jazz bar" would look like: a little brick basement with b&w photos on the wall, tables and chairs for hanging out, an intimate stage, and a smoky haze. however, at this point i was quite drunk and wouldn't have cared much where you put me; i was hanging out and pretty good. we got there early so we had a table, which was great. the place filled up to standing room only pretty quick, but the whole time we got to sit there and look hip (well, not so much me; apparently camera flash and alcohol turns me into a crazy looking albino) and drink gin & tonics while listening to jazz. while ravi was playing, i was the happiest kind of drunk i could have possibly been at that moment; i was so content with where i was and what i was doing and every noise in the air. i had my eyes closed for half the set, but i was actually awake and so warm and happily aware of everything. the music was beautiful, and was probably the first time i've actually really appreciated listening to jazz. i'd love to tell you more about it, but i don't know how to talk about jazz.

after stumbling to the surface, i turned from calm, relaxed drunk to super high-octane drunk and started challenging tom to races down city blocks. something about our dynamic necessitates that most things be competitions. he always wins, unless it's about the date of the battle of hastings. i would have won the races if i had my running shoes and i wasn't wearing my messenger bag and my legs were as long as his stupid tall limbs. i remember feeling so excited that night, and like i was the only person in the city who really knew how good it was.

(next update: the best muffin you've never eaten, and beerpong goes global)

scotland: part 1

at noon on the day i left, at my dad's retirement luncheon, continental airlines called me and told me my plane from baltimore was cancelled. get to the airport now, they said, we have to put you on a train to new jersey.

immediately i lost all semblance of cool, the way i do when i have everything properly planned out in my head and it goes to shit at the last minute. i should learn to expect this more often, obviously. i fought with my parents the entire way to the airport, eventually having to run after my mom down the concourse to apologize for being an asshole. wrapping up our problems real quick, a la full house, i rode the amtrak to newark airport, where i boarded a plane for edinburgh, where i flew all night long, not sleeping on account of i can't sleep on planes. i watched "walk the line" and when that was done, i watched the graphic of the plane creep its way across the GPS system. i had a window seat and watched the sun rise in the sky over ireland while eating a croissant. flying over scotland was beautiful; apparently it had snowed the day before and all the fields were white.

the customs lady in edinburgh was very suspicious of me. not only did she want to know how long i was staying, but where i'd be staying, who i'd be staying with, my relationship to that person, what he was doing in scotland, how long he'd be there, what he was studying, what i was studying, where i was studying, when i planned to graduate, and what i planned to do after graduation. i earned my stamp.



seeing this guy waiting for me at the airport was delightful. i sure did miss his smile. in a truly expected fashion, he whisked me into town and bought me a pint at 9 am at the scotsman's lounge, where we talked and smoked cigarettes and drank beers on a barrel in a pub that opened at 6.

i was disoriented and overwhelmed by my surroundings, so i spent a lot of that first day walking uphill quietly, jerking my head around to make sure i wasn't missing anything. the entire fucking city goes uphill all the time, which i got used to, but didn't please me so much when i had 2 bags of shit on my back. i also quickly realized that it was stupid of me not to have bought a carton of american cigarettes before i left virginia. first: they don't have camel lights in the uk. they're camel blues and not quite the same. second, and most importantly: they're fucking 5 quid a pack. that's like $9. bollocks, huh?

we went to see capote that night after a long nap. my critical two cents: fucking brilliant. hoffman deserved that oscar. perhaps the best part about the moviegoing experience (aside from the terrific movie, of course) was the bar in the theatre, and the fact that they'd make you a drink in a plastic cup to take into the movie. i bit my lip and tried not to be an obnoxious american about it; obviously everyone was used to it, but i just wanted to point and shout "look! i'm drinking alcohol in the theatre! and it's not a 6-pack of PBR that i snuck in with my messenger bag!" so i watched truman capote drink a bunch of gin and tonics while sipping on one of my own; too bad you can't smoke in movie theatres any more. also, too bad the shots are smaller (fucking millilitres) in the uk. better to order a double.



on sunday, tom had papers to write. he had to be a student so i had to be a tourist. his dorm is right at the base of arthur's seat, so i hiked up it on account of i thought i oughtta. it was an unusually sunny day and not as cold as it would be later in the week. i wore terrible shoes for hiking; kids, don't plan an extended trip to edinburgh wearing vans slip-ons. nevertheless, i put my face against the wind and climbed that fucker.



the views on the ascent were incredible. being a dump who smokes, i had to stop a time or two to catch my breath, which was fine because everything was gorgeous on the way up. and once you got to the top, yr payoff was gale-force winds taking yr breath away, a beautiful (my camera doesn't do it very much justice) panoramic view of edinbugh and the firth of forth, and tourists asking you, the solitary girl with an ipod and a camera and an unassuming face, to take pictures for them. seriously, the wind was so intense, and i love it when you have to be conscious about breathing, especially when the air is so cold and cutting.



i came down exhilerated and with very chapped lips. i decided to go exploring the strange city, so i picked a street and went straight on it until i felt like turning, then got lost on purpose and tried to find my way back. it was pretty easy (i just looked for arthurs seat; you can pretty much see that and/or the castle from anywhere in town), although i learned that you can't really rely on street names to help much since those change about every block. i fell in love with the city pretty quickly. i love it's walkability; i had my ipod on and fed everything important directly to my ears and eyes, walking up and down streets and taking everything in. the architecture is gorgeous, and in places it's such an urban pastiche. there's kebab shops on fucking every street, and pubs on every other. there's fliers pasted everywhere and vomit on the streets sometimes. i saw a man in a leopard print dress walking down the street shouting, and i saw an english dandy in a 3 piece suit and an ascot on a bicycle with his umbrella and briefcase strapped to the back. i saw grizzly scottish construction workers in their truck singing along to bohemian rhapsody. tom called it a very 3 dimensional city, and i have to agree. the streets wind around each other, up and down hills and over bridges, and it's really interesting to see it all relate once you know where yr going and where you've been.

i think that night we just smoked some pot with his friends and went to sleep early. oh, right, we got pizza, and on our way to get it we ran into a scottish friend of his who told him to "take her to domino's, man. treat her right." fucking mint.

(more to come. digest this for a few days.)

shotgunwedding jumps the pond

in a little more than 48 hours, i'll be with feet planted in the united kingdom, immersed in new european things and attractive accents and a projected average temperature of 40 degrees (i don't know what that is in celcius; perhaps i should brush up on metric conversion real quick). i can't wait to get my dirty american hands in everything scottish.

i've been trying to go back to the uk since 1992. so hot fucking damn. hey edinburgh, i'll see you on saturday morning. i hope yr as stoked for me as i am for you. and i'll see you again in 10 days, virginia. i'll bring back stories and plaid.