It’s Hella Cold Over Here

Escape From IV: Extreme Edition

I stepped off the National Express train into Waverly Train Station in Edinburgh onto the very same platform that Queen Elizabeth II uses when she travels to the city. In contrast to her majesty, I received no royal welcome; no one and nothing was there to greet me but the harsh, bitter Scottish cold when I set foot onto Scottish soil (or concrete if you prefer) for the first time. There is nothing that would have felt more appropriate. It is hard to imagine Scotland without its wind and rain, and after two weeks of travel and transition I was ready to be somewhere that felt like home, even if it was about 50 degrees colder than California. The only thing missing from the greeting was rain, and that met me when I finally lugged my bag out of the station.

In front of me was a huge castle perched high overlooking the city. To my left and right were the tenements long ago converted to designer shops, and surrounding me on every side were the people. All types of people, all fleeing the downpour, some pulling on their cigarettes like their lives depended on it, others (the locals) bundled up and hiding under their umbrellas, and finally, people like me, the tourists, wrapped up in plastic ponchos displaying the cross of St. Andrew.

So there I stood, huddling under an overhang, quickly realizing several things about the nation that was to be my temporary home.

1. It is freaking cold.

2. The rain is only cool when it is not blasting into your face.

3. Spend as much time looking out at the weather than in it.

The people are of a wide variety. If we speak in stereotypes, and we usually do, you can break down the people on the sidewalk into four categories. First you have the bulk of the population, the normal people. This usually includes families, old people, and cab drivers. Sure, they talk in an impossible accent and have replaced the word “yes” with “aye,” but overall they are fairly stable demographic. Second, you have the Neds. They are basically young people that travel in packs, dressed like idiots, sometimes looking for trouble, but usually just irritating. Third, the students, people that migrate to the cities for short periods of time to “grow up” and spend most of their time getting drunk and looking for anything to distract themselves from study. There is also a subset of the student population, the English. Initially I was a bit worried that I might find a bit of hostility as an American. Little did I know that I was safe, as the Scots would much rather hate their neighbors to the south than us “yanks” (and yes, that term is still in use here). I have heard it said that Edinburgh is the last English colony because so many of them pour over the border to seek out distance from home and socialized education.

Since we’re on stereotypes, let’s talk about some. Yes, they wear kilts over here. It is not rare, and is downright expected for fancy occasions, although on a daily basis you are more likely to spot them on street bagpipers looking for a coin in the hat. The whisky that is so famous is actually as good as they say it is, if not better, but it is also more expensive than they say. As a result, you are more likely to find students swilling a more student friendly alternative, beer. This isn’t your Natty Light or Keystone though; this is usually Tennent’s, a local Glasgow lager, or the surprisingly popular Stella Artois, which has a mystical grip on the student population.

Then there’s the accent. I had friends and family who chided me for not traveling to somewhere with a different language. Let me tell you my friends, Scottish is a different language. If you ever had to rewind a Sean Connery film, or turn on the subtitles for Trainspotting, you know a little of what I’m talking about. I have reached a point where it pleases me when people actually ask me to repeat myself when they find my California accent too tricky. Sometimes its tempting to try to trip them up on my “complicated” accent by talking faster and throwing in as many “hellas” and slang words as I can, because lets face it, sometimes it’s just depressing to be the only one that people understand.

Daily Nexus columnist James Fremgen is trying to spread “gnarly” across the world, one country at a time.