The Lost Tracks of Edinburgh

Part of the 'work' I'm doing here made it necessary that I meet with the designers of the acoustic simulation software I'm using. Originally this was going to involve tracking them down in Denmark, but later I found out that they were actually teaching a course on the software in Edinburgh right after I arrived. After a little wheeling and dealing, I got various people to pay for my trip, and our first foray into exploring Great Britain began.

Edinburgh's grass verges appreciate the effort

It was about the same cost to take a flight, but since we had plenty of time and a desire to see the countryside, Laura and I opted to take a train to Scotland. Despite enjoying Scots (apparently 'Scotch' is not an okay adjective anymore) history and having a slew of Scottish ancestors, I had never been there and was excited to see it. The train ride up was beautiful, allowing nice views of Newcastle and the surrounding countryside.

While I was cooped up in a seminar room all day, Laura got to do some exploring (completely unfair, as she'd been there before anyway). Although to be fair my seminar room, which was on the top floor of a snazzy hotel, had an incredible view of Edinburgh castle and the North Sea.

Contemplating haggis and other serious matters

The first day when I got out of class, we checked out the National Gallery of Scotland. Like all major UK cities, this has the advantage (if you're not paying UK taxes) of being free. It also has some really beautiful landscapes of the highlands by the Scottish masters (assuming you're an art-ignorant simpleton such as I and like landscapes better than portraits). As usual, it contained some obscure painting that Laura was excited to see, but the gallery containing it was closed. I suppose that is the price you pay for knowing about art.

Afterward, we feasted at Deacon Brodie's tavern, a must-eat stop in the city. It's named for the seemingly upstanding citizen upon whom Robert Louis Stephenson based his novel Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde. Crossing off another of my lifetime to-do list items, I had some haggis. Haggis, if you're not up on your offal-based ethnic foods, is the Scottish national dish, consisting of the heart, lungs, and liver of a sheep, all boiled in its own stomach. I came prepared to be grossed out, but actually liked it quite a bit. It tastes like spicy hamburger, all ground up beyond recognition - just the way I like my sheep organs...

The castle walls prove impervious to jumping-over

The second day, we headed straight to the castle to tour it as fully as we could in what little daylight remained (Cambridge is already pretty far north, but Scotland gets even less sunshine). The castle is a wonderful old monument to Scottish history and mentality. After the hike up to the gate, we tried to take in the view as long as we could until the darkness set in fully. I'm always on the lookout for cities that are on the water but also have mountains next to them - some people have told me this is geographically impossible, but Edinburgh comes close. In addition to its lovely view of the harbor and the craggy castle that dominates its skyline, it is surrounded by ranges of hills on the mainland (some small-minded people in the UK would call them mountains, but they've all been cramped together on this tiny island for so long that we can't really hold that against them), and on a clear day you can see Ben Lomond across the bay.

My only famous ancestor of note - Robert the Bruce - was featured heavily in the exhibits inside the castle. In reality, he was nothing like the simpering coward shown in Braveheart, but was pretty dislikable for other reasons (he once agreed to a peaceful meeting with his rivals in a church, where he proceeded to kill them). Come to think of it, probably most 14th century Celtic clan leaders were not exactly the sort you'd want teaching Sunday School...

Some hoodlums took a very nice picture...before STEALING OUR CAMERA...just kidding

You can see the Scottish Honours (sort of like the crown jewels), which many Scots gave their lives to keep away from English aggressors. You can read about the stone of destiny, on which the Scottish monarchs were crowned. Further up, the chapel contains a memorial to the Scottish units that fought in "The Great War" and WWII. Even recent Scottish history possesses a certain mystique that I don't think exists as much in the new world or even in England. War, hono(u)r, heritage, and bloodshed form a strong part of the Scottish identity, from Rob Roy to Sean Connery.

Edinburgh retains that greyish, stone, 'hard' feeling that I felt in Prague, but here it feels more natural, as though it were a part of the national character. Plus, there is more green space incorporated into the city, not to mention the fabulous land- and sea-scapes that border the city on every side. A 4-day visit wasn't nearly enough; I really want to go back and see the highlands
as well.

Final score: 8.0/10.0

Bridge on the River Cam

We have often walked down this street before

So, after a good bit of galavanting about the continent, we finally came to Cambridge (our fair city), where we would be actually living for the year. I've been contemplating how to write about Cambridge, since my initial impression of it was shaped by the fact that I knew I would be living there, and my impressions since have a depth lacking in my short visits to other places. Cambridge has a large amount of history behind it, and I've been able to take lots of it in and select the parts that appeal to me most. Because of this, I've decided that I'll just do a series of posts about aspects of Cambridge that stand out to me, and try to leave behind the nutshell-reduction approach that I've used for everywhere else.

Cambridge is located is located about an hour's train-ride north of London, in the middle of a swamp that is affectionately known as the Fens. The city has basically no natural resources in itself - everything it has needed has been imported over the centuries. Though the city is often compared to "the other" English University city (Oxford, though we prefer not to speak the name here), Cambridge does not even have its own rock quarry, which has made its architecture much more varied over the years, while Oxford's building style is much more uniform.

The brick- heavy front gate of St. John's College

While the University of Oxford predates the city of the same name, Cambridge existed as a city before the university came about. The university traces its roots to an incident in 1209, when a dispute at Oxford threatened to bring about scrutiny from the monarchy, and a group of scholars decided to make for the market town of Cambridge to lay low for a while. However, like most
scholars who try to get out of academia, they found that they possessed no useful skills, and soon took up teaching again.

Though the first college was not founded for another 20 years, Cambridge University has been recognizing 1209 as the official founding date of the university, mostly because it gave them a great excuse to undertake an 800th anniversary fundraising campaign throughout 2009. In 20 years, they may change their minds to celebrate another 800th anniversary, depending on their financial situation.

The bonfire on Guy Fawkes' Day

The university currently consists of 31 independent colleges, which are residential bodies responsible for housing, socialization, and one-on-one tutoring of their students. For most of the university's existence, the colleges held supreme power over the actual education that went on at the university. However, in the 20th century, as Cambridge's scientific prowess created a need for expensive laboratories which individual colleges could not afford, the university's departments gained more power through the construction of such facilities, which the colleges shared between them. Older facilities, such as dining halls or playing fields, are still owned by individual colleges.

Though Cambridge was a younger university than Oxford, it proved adept at gaining royal patronage, which can be seen by such marvels as the famous King's College Chapel, built by Henry VI-Henry VIII, and the fact that HRH Prince Phillip is the symbolic chancelor of the university to this day.

King's College Chapel - excellent, er...rib vaulting

Many of the oldest and richest colleges are located along the river Cam, possessing green space next to it which is collectively known as "The Backs." The quintissential Cambridge experience is to going punting down the Cam through the backs, looking at the architecture of the old colleges and feeling inconsequential in the scope of history. Punting, by the by, is not a football (or even rugby) term, but rather an idiosyncracy of English cities on shallow rivers, whereby people get in flat-bottomed boats called punts, and propel themselves by sticking a long pole into the bottom of the river and pushing themselves along.

If you're less interested in the history of Cambridge than interesting stories, a fun passtime is to simply wait on one of the bridges over the Cam and listen to the profession punt tour guides. While there are some things along the Cam that it's generally agreed that there are certain things along the Backs that have interesting stories about them, there is virtually no consensus about what those stories actually are. For instance, the Clare College bridge contains a stone ball that is missing a wedge. Apparently, this is a boring stretch of the river, because every single tour guide has a different take on what this means - some will say there was a tax to pay on fully completed bridges, others will say that the builder wasn't paid and sabotaged the bridge out of vengeance.

The mathematical bridge, nails and all

When you pass another bridge in Queen's College, known as the mathematical bridge, some guides will try to persuade you that Newton himself, in the midst of a metal shortage, constructed the bridge out of wood without any nails, despite the fact that nothing about Newton would lead you to believe him to be an exceptional bridge engineer. If you brought up the fact that the bridge obviously contains nails now, they would tell you that it later needed repairs and was disassembled, but no one could figure out how to put it together again without using nails. It combines a ridiculous unprovable assertion with a deity-like glorification of a Cambridge icon - everything you need for a good punt story. The truth is that most of these stories are lost in history; things are the way they are because they've always been that way (we haven't even started using oars, for crying out loud!). If you enjoy romanticized versions of history, stop by sometime and I will punt you up and down the river with even more ridiculous stories than these.

Or maybe I'll just keep posting them here.