Week One

I'm writing this from my 3rd floor walk up flat in Edinburgh, Scotland. My bedroom, although just a transformed dining room, has all the charm of a European apartment that I was hoping for. The door handles don't turn, the floorboards creak, and we use big old fashioned keys to lock our door. My room looks out onto our street, Hillside Crescent, and out across to Hillside Gardens. Although I can only see green from my bedroom, I can still hear all the sounds of the city. We are only a ten minute walk to Princes Street and a twenty minute walk to the Parliament. The kitchen is as tiny as you would expect a European kitchen to be, but it is outfitted with many modern conveniences. My roommates are good at cooking. Frances, who is from Santa Cruz, made chicken soup the first night we were here. Tonight Julianne, who goes to UCI, is making chicken pot pie. When it is my turn to cook, I am going to make a very anticlimactic pasta dish. 

 The view from my room

My bedroom, day 1 

I'd apologize for the mess, but we all know that's just completely typical

The outside of my flat

I can't believe I left almost a week ago. It seems like I just got here yesterday and it hasn't really hit me that I'm here yet. I spent the first few days in Berlin, Germany. My friend Jacob picked me up from the airport. We dropped my excessive amount of luggage off at his apartment near the Tiergarten and went to go get dinner. We got Durums which have chicken, creamy sauces, potatoes, and chili powder in a tortilla. It tasted so good, but that may have been because the last thing I ate was hours before. It was a bag of tomato and basil flavored crunchy things labeled very specifically "Snack" that they served on the British Airways flight from Heathrow to Berlin. 

The second day I was in Berlin, I snuck (sneaked?) into Jacob's class excursion to Potsdam. It took us an hour to get there by train. With fifty others from his class, we got a guided tour of Sans Souci, a summer palace for Friedrich the Great, who Jacob nicknamed Friedrich the Fabulous because he was presumed to be gay. Sans Souci means "Without Worries" in French, so we joked that it was the original Hakuna Matata. The theme of the palace was "Live in the Moment" so we also joked that it was the original YOLO. The palace was gorgeous and the grounds were gorgeous. 

 Jacob and me in front of Sans Souci 

 Sans Souci grounds

Chinese House on the grounds

There are more photos on my Facebook, but to avoid redundancy I'll only post new ones here. We had a two hour break so we walked around Potsdam with some other people from Jacob's class and ate Donners, which were like Gyros. They were incredible as well, but very messy. I ordered in German and the guy immediately switched to English. This was a recurring theme. After lunch, we went and saw Prince Wilheim's palace where they held the Potsdam Conference. The British, American, and Soviet delegations met here and it was the place where Churchill, Truman, and Stalin made the decision to each occupy a fourth of Germany after World War Two. I learned a lot about history and the conference, but I will spare you the boredom. If anyone's interested in the history, let me know and I'll spew nerdy fun facts at you. At both Sans Souci and the Potsdam Conference place there was a three euro charge to buy a photo license to take pictures inside. Neither Jacob or I wanted to do that, but Jacob managed to take pictures slyly with his phone, so I will post those when he sends them to me. 

Busses, trams, and trains later we made it back to Jacob's apartment. We went out for dinner with some people from Jacob's program at a Vietnamese restaurant. I got a vegetable tofu pho with glass noodles soup thing. It was very good. We were hungry later and ended up getting Currywurst and Pommes for a snack. I tried the Currywurst just to say I did and then switched back to eating Pommes.

On Saturday we did a huge walking tour of Berlin and saw all the major attractions, which was really fun. Jacob knew a lot about the sites and told me about their history and their relation to the city and what happened to them during the war. We saw the Reichstag, Humboldt University, Museum Island, the Dom, and more. We walked so far, which is something I've been doing a lot every day. We grabbed a German snack at a bakery at a train station and ate it while we waited for our train and it felt very quintessentially European, which was fun. I got a Kasebrezel and Jacob got a pastry thing. We took the train to Siegessaule, which is a tower on the outskirts of town which we hiked up and took pictures from the top. It was very, very pretty, but I broke my glasses at the base, so when I got to the top I had to hold them lopsidedly to my face so I could see the view. 

Berlin is a city of beautiful juxtapositions. Jacob told me that sometimes people call it the City Janus after the god with two faces that were always looking opposite directions. This was apparent in every part we went to in Berlin. Modern all glass buildings were sandwiched between darkened pock marked cathedrals. Huge green parks ran parallel to busy city streets. The clean and modern West ran right alongside the Soviet era grey East. Every part of Berlin was gorgeous and interesting. I told Jacob that I'd expect that if you spent your whole life in that city, you'd never run out of new things to see. I felt like I got a pretty legitimate Berlin experience, being shown around by someone who'd lived in Berlin for over a month. 

We walked through Tiergarten to Potsdammer Platz. Tiergarten was very pretty. Everything was pretty. I was very impressed by Berlin. When we got to Potsdammer Platz we saw the Sony Center, which I remembered from the last time I was in Berlin. We took pictures by remaining pieces of the wall and then, after walking for about 6 hours straight with no breaks, we had to sit down outside a Starbucks in Potsdammer Platz to rest our feet. We used Jacob's smartphone to check our Facebooks. Jacob doesn't have WiFi at his flat so we had to hit off the free unpassword protected wifi at Starbucks. Jacob's Dutch friend Ana, who ate Vietnamese with us the night before, met us there. She's taking architecture classes so she told us a little bit about the buildings. The three of us then went to a Mexican food restaurant near Potsdammer Platz and got burritos. While no Chipotle, it was still very tasty. We then walked around Kreuzberg until we decided it would be best to go and sleep because I had to leave at 4:30 to catch my flight to Manchester. 

Jet lag unfortunately caught up with me and I was unable to sleep the whole night. Jacob however, was a real trooper, and woke up at 4:30 and helped me find my way to the airport. I checked my bags and the kind lady at Lufthansa took pity on my pathetic attempts to cram more and more clothes into my carry ons and allowed my overweight bag to go through without any charge. Exhausted, hungry, and disoriented I was especially vulnerable to the few people I ran into who were rude, however I noticed that for every rude person there were at least five friendly or helpful people who I ran into who pointed me in the right direction or struck up a conversation with me in line. In a tank top and sweats, I don't think I could have stood out more as an American if I tried, but I didn't care. 

The flight to Manchester was short. I passed the time slowly eating my very German snack. I ate the whole thing (because I was starving). Regardless, I was very impressed with myself. I slept a little bit on the plane. When I arrived in Manchester I went through immigration and very proudly told the stoic immigration officer that my reason for staying for four months was that I was interning at the Scottish Parliament. He stamped my visa in my passport and waved me through. I picked up my bag and followed the signs to the train station. When the train arrived a little less than an hour later, I got on the wrong car. I almost got off to walk up, but it was a good thing I didn't because half a minute after I decided to walk down the middle of the train, it left the station. It took me two trips to walk four cars up. The first one was easier. The second one I had to drag my behemoth obnoxiously overstuffed suitcase down a very narrow aisle. When I say dragged, I mean dragged. It was too wide to wheel so I put it on it's side and pulled it behind me.  

My train (the wrong car)

I sat next to a Malaysian girl who was moving to Edinburgh to do a year of Master's degree work there for accounting. I ended up watching the English countryside go by/sleeping. I got to Waverly station a little bit before one o'clock. I attempted to figure out the bus schedule so I could catch a bus to my apartment, but it was a lot of walking around the station with my suitcases, so I eventually just got a cab. I had changed my money at the airport. They gave me British pounds, which work in Scotland, but Scotland also has their own currency. 

I was already in awe of the city by the time my short cab ride was over. From the window of the taxi I could see huge green hills and dark detailed buildings. I don't even know how to describe it, but it is a very beautiful city. 

Sweaty and unshowered, I arrived at the apartment. My roommates were both there and they buzzed me in. It took me two trips to carry the suitcases up the stairs. We all introduced ourselves and then decided to go for a walk around the city. We ended up getting lost, but we got a nice long walk in, admiring all the sights. There was always something to look at. 

 The walk to Princes Street

I have no idea where I took this one

The parliament building where I'll be working and Arthur's Seat in the background

View on one of the walks we can take to get to the Parliament

Same place but 100 yards up the street

We got back later and I unpacked and got settled into my room. We ate dinner and watched a bit of British TV. I fought to stay awake until 10:30. 

I ended up sleeping for fourteen hours and woke up around noon the next day. I continued my substitution of powerbars for meals because I hadn't made it to the grocery store yet. Julianne and I went for a run, but she had trouble breathing so we had to stop. We continued walking, but got very lost. We ended up walking for an hour and forty five minutes through a lot of residential areas in Leith. In running shorts, I got a lot of very strange looks, especially after it started to rain. We eventually made it back to the apartment, showered, and then our landlords came over to see if we needed anything. They were very nice. We then decided to try and figure out the bus system. We were painfully unsuccessful. We ended up asking directions, giving up, and walking the rest of the way. It was a very short walk though. We were headed towards The Elephant House. It is a coffee house where JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter. There is a view of Edinburgh Castle from the coffee house. Inspiration for Hogwarts? 

Julianne and I ordered hot chocolate and I got a spinach and feta pie. We shared a table with two ladies who were speaking what sounded like an Eastern European language. 

My dinner

View of the castle from the Elephant House (taken today)

After that we walked home. I invited Julianne to come hang out with me and Erik and Helle and some of their friends. They lived on the other side of Edinburgh. It was raining so we tried to catch a bus to get to Erik's. I spent a long time reading timetables and maps. We got lost on our way to the bus stop and out of dumb luck we ended up at the bus stop that serviced the line we wanted to take and the next bus was coming in ten minutes. So we waited and then got on the bus. The only problem was, we could not tell where we were at all because there were no signs telling us what stop we were at or what stop was coming next or announcements of any kind. We decided that people must grow up intuitively knowing these things and by growing up in a public transportationless state, we did not possess this intuition. So I kept rubbing the fog off the windows and reading the street signs to Julianne to see if she could locate them on the map I got when I was at Waverly. Which was hard because it was dark and rainy and I broke my glasses in Berlin. We could not find a single street I read off on the map. Eventually we asked the guy behind us where the stop was we were looking for. "Oh..." he said, appalled. That was the reaction we would continue to get anytime we asked someone for directions for the rest of the night. "That was way back where I got on. Do you remember where the bus came from? Go back that way and then go across the street and down a hill and you'll get there." We later found out he was wrong. The bus stop we wanted to get off at wasn't for a few more stops. But we hopped off the bus hurriedly, not knowing this, and walked back to the stop he got on at. We were able to trace it back two stops, but we couldn't figure out the next direction. We asked a nice lady who was waiting at the bus stop for directions and showed her the map. "You're off the map." She told us. She gave us very helpful directions though. We walked and walked and walked through the outskirts of Edinburgh, not seeing anyone. I kept calling Erik and texting him where we were but he couldn't figure it out. A few more directions later, a couple U turns, and a trek through a grassy park, we eventually got close enough to where Erik was able to come out and find us, thankfully. In total, we think it took about an hour and forty minutes.

We hung out with them and it was really fun. We talked to a South African architect who told us about the controversy about the Parliament building's construction and design. We talked to a bunch of people and everyone was really nice. When we decided it was late enough to go home, we decided to walk since the buses were so difficult to navigate. It took us twenty minutes. 

It didn't rain either, which was nice. We then went to bed. This morning when I woke up it was sunny. I ate the last of my power bars and was still hungry, so I took it as a sign that I should go grocery shopping. I thoroughly enjoyed my grocery shopping trip. Having never lived in a city before, it made me really feel a part of urban life going grocery shopping in the city. 

I incorrectly assumed that a clear sky = warm weather and no rain. I took a roundabout way to Tesco's unintentionally. It was a very pretty walk, however, it was freezing and would rain sporadically on my walk, even though it was sunny.

I was so hungry when I got to the grocery store. Walking into Tesco's was almost like walking into the base grocery store when we lived in Germany, even though there were like no American foods (which I expected, of course). I was just so excited to buy food. I got a lot of cans of soup, and typical stuff like turkey and bread and pasta sauce.

I'm starting to recognize landmarks, which is a good sign, so it took me less time to find my way home. I walked through the lovely buildings carrying my Tesco's grocery bags and marveling at the fact that there seems to be no part of Edinburgh that isn't lovely. 

I made myself a turkey and cheese sandwich, and then I made myself another one because I was still hungry. We then went to go meet up with the other people from our program. We met them at the Parliament. It was sunny still, but very cold and windy. We all walked and talked and decided to go to the National Museum of Scotland. We only made it to one and a half floors. It was very interesting and very interactive and very thorough. It almost seemed to be a museum of everything. But we got tired, and decided to go get coffee. We ended up being near the Elephant House, so we went again and got a snack. Some people got tea, but most of us got dessert. It was very tasty. I got a peanut butter brownie. We then walked home, ate dinner, showered, and Facebooked.

Tomorrow we have our first of three orientations I believe. We're taking a "Political Walking Tour" of Edinburgh. I'm a little nervous to start the internship next week. I've been hearing intimidating things about the amount of work and type of work we will be doing. It sounds like we will be working forty hours a week and doing legitimate work, not just getting coffee. The one thing it seems like is that I will be learning an insane amount while I'm here. I'll know more about all of it later this week. It should be a great experience. Ideally, I'd just like to live here and not work and just keep travelling and exploring because I really, really like doing that, even though it's exhausting. However, I will hopefully get a lot of good life experience just living here and working and stuff. 

In other news, the next thing I will be doing is buying more warm clothes. I underestimated how cold it will be here. But I'm having a great time so far. Props to you if you made it through this lengthy post. Comment on this and let me know what you're up to! I still haven't quite figured out this blog thing yet, so we'll see how it turns out! 

I love you and miss you all!