A Scottish weekend

The Edinburgh castle

Last Thursday, I took the train in the afternoon to Edinburgh, Scotland. After a 4-hour trip I met up with F, my friend from Plymouth who had a 2-day training session there. I was quite impressed when I arrived and saw the castle sitting on a hill overlooking the city and many dark, old buildings… I dropped off my bag in a backpacker near the station and met up with an American friend of ours who studies in Edinburgh. We ate the most delicious Indian food! Then we went to a pub to have a drink with some Australian friends from London who were also visiting Edinburgh. I tasted one of the local beers (Caledonian) and it was not very tasty.


Edinburgh Old Town

On Fri I walked a bit in the Old Town, admiring the old buildings, the little dark streets, the touristy shops selling kilts, rugby shirts and cashmere scarves and playing recording of bagpipes. Then I decided to go to the nearby National Park and climb the mountain to go sit on Arthur's Seat, which is the highest point in the area. Once arrived on top, I had the most gorgeous view on the city and the sea. I sat down there for more than 30 mins, so impressed by the landscape… I was so happy it was sunny, I could see so far away!

View of Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat

Then I went down and decided to go to this bagel place my Lonely Planet guide recommended: Elephants and Bagels. It was near the university, so full of students. The food was yummy and the decorations very cute so if you ever go to Edinburgh you should totally check it out!

Cute drawings in "Elephants and Bagels"

My American friend joined me there and we went to have a walk in the Princes Street gardens, a park just under the castle. Needless to say, the park was lovely :-)

Princes Street Gardens

After a dinner in a pub with my friends I went to a Australian bar with F. We were overjoyed when we saw they had our favourite Australian beers that we couldn't find in France (or only in rare occasions and it cost us an arm), namely, Coopers Pale Ale, Coopers Sparkling (from South Australia) and James Boags (Tasmanian beer)!! The pub had big maps of different regions of Australia so that customers could pin the city they were from. Judging by the number of pins, there were a lot of aussies visiting Edinburgh!

Aussie beer anyone?

After the pub we went to an indie-rock music night in a club and had a really good time. It was kind of hard to get up the next morning, but we were excited about visiting the interior of the castle! It was quite expensive: no student discount so 10 pounds per person, with 3 pounds extra for the audioguide :-/ The visit was interesting, since the Edinburgh castle is quite different from the Windsor castle: it's darker, with a prison and lots of exhibits about war and weaponry. We had a good view from the city as well.

View of Edinburgh from the castle


Enough with the bagpipes!

We then went to a pub to taste some local food, so I was brave and had some vegetarian haggis with neeps and tatties (turnip puree and mashed potatoes). It was actually quite good, spicy and salty. The rest of the afternoon was spent in museums like the National Gallery and the City Art Centre to check out some Scottish paintings, some of which were remarkable. We also went to an exhibition on space, with Star Wars figurines, miniature robots, space Barbies and Kens, fun facts, and most of all, clothes you could try on like the costume of Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story (Buzz L’Eclair in French), Walle’s head or space outfits… With my friend F we tried on everything (well, not everything, since the clothes were made for kids, we couldn’t fit in some of them^^) and the guy in charge of the exhibition was laughing in a corner, hihi.

I know, I'm such a kid^^

In the evening F and I took the train to Newcastle Gateshead on the North East coast of England, about 1h30 from Edinburgh, to visit a friend from France who's been living there for the past 3 years. Apparently Newcastle's reputation is that of a party town, with plenty of bars and clubs to stay out until late... Which is exactly what we've done :-p
The next morning I managed to get up to go have a look at Newcastle's quayside with all the bridges crossing the river. One of them, the Millenium Bridge, is very modern and impressive; when boats need to go under it, the two parts of the bridge close as if it was the lid of an eye.

Newcastle

The Millenium Bridge and the Baltic museum in Newcastle

More bridges in Newcastle

I had enough time to go to the Baltic, a big industrial building which is now the contemporary arts museum. From the 5th floor I had an amazing view of the city (but unfortunately no photos were allowed) and I also saw several intriguing exhibits, such as one by Steve Mc Queen where you enter a huge room, plunged in darkness, and once your eyes get used to it, you can see that there are lots of mirrors where you can see yours and the other visitors' shadows, while little lights are projected on the walls and thumping and thundering noises fill the room and make children cry^^

After a brief walk I took the train back home. Strange experience to take the train for long trips like that, because people actually get drunk in the train! Indeed, it is illegal in England to drink on public transports such as buses and metros, but is legal in trains. So between Edinburgh and Newcastle, about a dozen of 20-something-year olds drunk at least 5 beers each (in only 90 mins!) and were being totally ignorant of the fact that they were travelling in a quiet coach. On my way back, this time 4 50-year old women were boozing on cheap wine and chuckling between two pretzels. I’ve got to say, and sorry for those who will think I'm being conservative or stuck-up, but I found that a bit disturbing that people were getting wasted in the train like that :-/
Anyway after a long trip I arrived home around 11pm, utterly exhausted! Luckily I had prepared my lessons for this week. I showed my students a video of French boys dancing tecktonik, this dance that became very popular last year among teenagers in France. For those who wouldn't have heard of it, it's quite funny to watch, here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYaZYmTwOxA

I showed my students a couple of articles explaining this trend and I was surprised to see how tolerant they were. I mean I'm pretty sure that French students would have burst out laughing in the first few seconds of the video, seeing the clothes the dancers were wearing and their weird disarticulated moves. But my students were watching attentively, and said things like it's very different from what we see in England, it's interesting, asking me if I knew some dance moves (God, no!!!), etc. My first student on Monday morning asked me out of the blue if I was going to come back next year, because she gets on with me and understands me well! So cute! I said I didn't know yet but that it was good that they changed assistants every year or every other year, it makes things more challenging and they can hear different accents and way of speaking.

Today I taught my primary school kids how to count, and when we started some games to check if they had understood and memorized the numbers, I realized they were confused between 2 and 12, which are ‘deux’ and ‘douze’ in French. Apparently they can’t hear the difference between the two sounds… Anyway it’s just one of the many examples to illustrate that I’m learning more everyday from my experience as an assistant and I’m glad I made this choice. Overall I had an awesome weekend and an interesting beginning of the week, even if I desperately need some sleep! ^^ Hope you are all well, drop me a line when you have the time :-)