Month: November 2009

Actually, these are from the air after having departed Edinburg on our way to our connecting flight in Amsterdam. I’m posting them from a hotspot at B24, waiting for our flight to Munich.

(Parenthetical paragraph: Thanks Adam, for the Schengen-non-Schengen explanation of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and the concourse / security queue layouts. I told a ticket agent at Edinburgh what a pain Amsterdam can be for that very reason. Fortunately, it was pretty painless today, too.)

Edinburgh has an impressive bus system – at least based on outward appearances. 3GBP for an adult day pass is a pretty good deal, if you need it. Turns out we didn’t, based on where we were staying and what/how much we wanted to accomplish each day. We only used the bus twice – one trip out to Cramond and one back. You see busses, hundreds of them even, out on the street at all times of day. But if you don’t know exactly which bus you need or where it stops, good luck. The signage is awful — self-defeating actually, since often we couldn’t read the bus numbers at the stops until having reached the bus shelter, as OTHER bus signs were obscuring the ones we needed to see. Why bother with signs at all then? And it didn’t do us much good to try to figure out on the bus system’s website where the stops are on a real map (not just a schematic). I’ve seen that Google Maps has started marking U-Bahn stops and routes for Munich (and presumably other metropoles) on the maps for that area. That’s “brill” and a long time coming. Now every city needs that, for all their lines.

How about that Starbucks Gingerbread Latte? Pretty freakin’ tasty. Finally a reason other than Frappucinos to head into a Starbucks. I think I had three of them this trip. Seems like there was a Starbucks on every other corner around the bigger streets in New Town.

Shepherd’s Pie eluded me on this trip, but not for lack of trying. We did manage to snag some fantastic Indian (“curry”) take-out on our last evening. An original West Cornwall pasty at the airport on the way home and the fish-and-chips towards the beginning of the trip meant that we got enough native British stuff to eat. Especially considering the amount we brought home from Marks & Spencer to prepare/consume at the apartment.

When boarding planes, why don’t they get a PROPER boarding order down to a science? Sure, Extra-Special Lesser Deity Gold, Silver and Silver Plus can get on the plane first, for all I care. But why not implement a Window, Middle, Aisle seating order? We’ve all got boarding passes denoting the seat. Wouldn’t that make more sense? Over and over and over again passengers seated in the middle or aisle have to get up and let the window-seat passengers get to their window, just because they boarded out of this order. Seems like a simple solution to getting the sheeple onto the plane and seadted more quickly doesn’t it?

I don’t banter well (anymore). I think I used to; I must have lost this skill somewhere over the last five years. I wonder if the UK, or maybe English-speaking countries in general have banter-prone cultures. It’s not that I mind making small talk about practically nothing among those I know or want to know better — but the cashier selling me a hat and a shirt at Marks & Spencer doesn’t seem worthy of getting my life story, or even the circumstances which brought my American accent to his cash register. When forced, my answers are usually clipped and humorless. Clearly this also presents its own distinct disadvantage: potentially missed opportunity. We dined at a restaurant with a perfectly lovely and chatty waitress here in Edinburgh. She inquired as to our accents, wanted to know where in the U.S. we’re from, how long we’d be staying in Scotland, and even divulged that she too is a native North American (from P.E.I. to be exact). Sarah played along much better than I. Good thing too, otherwise we probably wouldn’t have gotten her tip to visit Cramond Island or at least the shore at Cramond, a town on the coast of the Firth of Forth (love saying that). We had a nice walk from the #41 bus route down into the village at out to the shore, where lots of people and their furry fetching friends were also out for a stroll along the seashore.

I wondered if this was evidence of the supposed superficiality Germans sometimes claim Americans exhibit. I mean, if that’s originally a British cultural artifact, then it makes sense that we as Americans have absorbed it. But the Germans don’t claim that the Scots/Welsh/Irish/English are superficial, do they? That’s an honest question, since I don’t know enough people from the British Isles to ask whether Germans accuse them of being superficial in their interpersonal activities.

I think Sarah nailed it when she said it’s simply a more frequent readiness to smile, shoot the breeze, etc. When we asked for extra help around here (with catching a bus, directions inside the airport, etc.), we got more smiles and chuckles than we bargained for every time. Even passers-by on our stroll along the shore at Cramond made pleasant, cheerful comments of encouragement. It was actually quite…warm. I think I can see how others might classify Germans as culturally cold if they were coming from a place where random pleasantries* are frequent and above suspicion.

Here are the best shots from our last full day, Sunday, in the Edinburgh area. It was a great trip for the city and it did well to convince us that we’d like to see more of rural Scotland, perhaps by flying into a big city and renting a car for a BnB-hopping adventure next year.

*And I can see that the term in itself is subjective. What is an objective term for those things?