The Capital

#7 Two months of ordinary hustle. This time, chasing precious Sterling—a value that is twice that of the GW dollar. (George WA, dammit). Edinburgh is somewhat ho-hum, pretty castle in the center of town, numerous bridges, pubs, stairwells, students and so forth. The "East Coast" is far more conventional and affluent. But personally, Glasgow has far more diverse architecture and beauty as well as an incomparable amount of art and music happenings.

Certainly, the rivalry of Glasgow v. Edinburgh was present. Edinburgh locals speak with far more aristocratic accents and snubbed Glaswegians quite openly.

What Edinburgh lights up for, but once a year, is the festival season, when the population doubles in size for the largest art festival in the world, the Fringe Festival. During these summer months, all is aglow, street performers line the cobblestone, the bars stay open til 3am, and
foreigners with cash to spare pour on in. At night the castle that sits on this cradle precipice of rock, is lit up with torches rendering a Transylvania-like illusion. Besides that aspect, the Scottishness was really imposed for tourists and the shows that we went to were way too rehearsed. (Apart from a local friend who is a talented ghost tour guide, the festivals were overrated and overpriced. Surprisingly, Comedians are really showcased, somewhat of a dying profession stateside. But this is another mark of the British, comedy, which is another sport—at times painful to witness…

What I did make my pint tokens on, is teaching English, thanks to my "esteemed" TEFL degree, which was first put into practice in Prague—hardly a rigorous student body. But Edinburgh is where all the well-off Europeans send their ornery and special teenagers to get their tongues disciplined to an English pitch. In addition to delineating from the Spanish lisp, I also worked with vonderful Germans, Italians, Japanese, Syrian and most memorable, the Saudi royals, with whom I tutored the art of humility-- to a fault. In an oft tutoring one-on-one, I took on a princess with a diamond in her front incisor, which she shined at me with a coy grin and a coquettish wink. Needless to say, we were not a good match, and that whole arrangement ended in vain. You can’t win them all...

(In the Ben Nevis Valley, cred. NGuettler)

The rest of the summer was spent exploring the coastline and the majestic mountaintops, including the highest peak in Britain, Ben Nevis. Notably, there was a lot of pedestrian traffic there, which apart from my backtalk, the ponies and sheep could give a care. It was on our descent that we realized, the traffic flow was organized-- a famous race was in effect. A three-mountain, 24-hour deal that National Geographic has covered. We toasted pints afterwards at the foot of the mountain with the best of them, including 16 truly Irish men of whom we hardly could understand a word. Between their serenade of song and Yankee taunts, every other word was some Catholic jeer. These boys were from the North…

Between Tunnocks' caramel logs and tea cakes (do visit this hyperlink, it is one of the best sites in around), and Tennet’s fine lager, kuntry and urban grit, hugs and headlocks, Scotland is a place that I hold very close and friends not far behind…

But sentimentality must head forward to the future where Nick and I from Day 1 had centered around: living and collaborating in the Balkans...