No matter how much cheaper the
tickets are, no matter the traveller’s mentality telling you you’re going to be
saving money on a night’s accommodation, don’t ever take a night bus. Just
don’t do it. Unless you’re a masochist, in which case go right ahead. We took
the night bus from London to Edinburgh for these reasons, and it sucked the
will-to-live right out of me. I would rather watch fourteen consecutive hours
of Australia’s Got Talent auditions than take another night bus; I’d
rather immediately fly home, return to my old job, and write a second thesis
than take another night bus; I’d almost rather sit down and watch Isaac Brock
exchanging vowels with a woman who is not me than take another night bus
(‘almost’ being the operative word in that example).
I’m not going to bore you with the
details of the bus journey, as literally, all it comprised of was getting on in
London, getting off at two pit stops in the middle of the night, and getting
off in Edinburgh very, very early in the morning. There was, however, one good
moment just before the bus departed London. The Scottish driver made a few
announcements, including the fact that the on-board toilet was for ‘urinal
purposes only’. At this declaration, Kaitlyn turned to me quite panicked and
said, ‘But what if you need to wee?’
‘Then you use the toilet…?'
‘But he just said you couldn’t use it
for that.’ Initially wondering whether she ever took biology at school, I soon
realised that Kaitlyn was having trouble with the driver’s thick Scottish
accent, and had mistaken his announcement as being that the toilet was for
‘your anal purposes only’. I quite enjoyed explaining the error to her
(simultaneously contemplating the feasibility of her fantasy marriages to
Archie McDonald and Gerard Butler).
And then, after several tortuous
hours, we were in Scotland!
After Berlin, we’d become quite the
fans of the free walking tours offered all over Europe. The Edinburgh walking
tour had three things in common with its Berlin counterpart: it was “free” but
you were encouraged to tip your guide at the end, the heaven’s opened within
the first five minutes of it commencing, and there was a member of the group
shamelessly flirting with the guide – only this time it wasn’t an annoying
red-head with a voice that could crack the foundations of Edinburgh Castle… it
was Kaitlyn. Despite the fact we had both promised each other we would not
fraternise with any Australians on this trip, from the moment Aussie Troy
cracked his first (decentish) joke of the day, Kaitlyn was hooked. In her
defence, Troy was significantly better looking than David from Berlin, and
significantly less irritating. He also proved to be a pathological liar…but
I’ll get to that part shortly.
The meeting point for the walking
tour was outside Starbucks, which meant I was £3.00 poorer by the time they
split us into two different groups. Considering the other man had about as much
charisma as my toothbrush, I was pretty happy we were herded over towards Troy.
I don’t know whether it was the earring, or the slightly-too-high jeans, but
Kaitlyn was smitten upon first sight. ‘He’s kinda cute.’ You’re kinda blind.
Troy wasn’t a bad looking guy, but I found it hard to like the man when he lied
to us within seconds of our meeting. As the first few raindrops fell I asked
Troy if heavy rain was forecast. ‘Nah, mate. This is as heavy as it ever gets
in Scotland. Doesn’t rain here like back home.’ Troy saying that raindrops are
‘as heavy as it gets’ is like watching Rihanna’s film-clip for “Umbrella” and
saying that’s as slutty as she gets. Within ten minutes of leaving Starbucks we
were needing to take refuge down a back alley full of bins. As I was staring
daggers at Troy from between the giant, malodourous skips, Kaitlyn was wildly
batting her eyelashes – and not just to remove the raindrops sitting atop them.
We waited a few minutes for the rains to pass, but it eventually became clear
they weren’t going anywhere in a hurry. Thus, we forged on and continued to
take in the sights of the city. I won’t bore you all with the deets of
all the old buildings we visited, suffice to say we saw the sights: Edinburgh
Castle, the Royal Mile, Holyroodhouse, St Giles Cathedral, etc, etc, etc. And
we saw them all with dripping hair and wet feet. Lucky that’s as heavy as the
rain gets!
There were, however, a few things you
might find interesting. For the nerds out there, we saw Tom Riddle’s grave.
Truths. The story goes, J.K. Rowling began writing Harry Potter in a café in
Edinburgh. This café overlooks a cemetery from the graves of which our gal
Joanne acquired many of her future characters' names. Most of these were merely
Christian or surnames (such as McGonagall and Moody), but one name she pilfered
in its entirety is Tom Riddle. For those of you for whom this is confusing let
me break it down: Tom Riddle is Lord Voldemort...and cease reading this
immediately because you’re not worthy! I think it’s probably a good thing that
he died in 1806 because it’s likely he was a really nice guy and not a vicious,
murderous dark wizard, and his family might have been kind of pissed.
Another thing of less-historical note
discovered on the tour was Irn-Bru. Fact bomb: there are only two countries in
the world that have a soft-drink which outsells Coca Cola – India, which has
its own Coke variant, and Scotland, which has Irn-Bru. Troy explained Irn-Bru
with the two comments, the first of which was that it is the “ultimate hangover
cure”. As my Eastern-European heritage means I have never experienced a
hangover (not for lack of trying), this was of little interest to me, but his
second comment was: Irn-Bru is best described as “creaming soda on crack”. When
Troy said this, I audibly gasped. This is because, despite semi-severe
allergies to artificial colours, flavours and preservatives, creaming soda is a
guilty pleasure of mine. Troy, however, mistook my appreciation of creaming
soda, to be an appreciation of crack. All I can say is that Troy must indulge
in some extra-curricular activities as he was a lot friendlier to me after
that. During the morning tea break, Kaitlyn and I sampled some. With its
fluro-orange colour, I concede I was tempting fate…although a little
anaphylaxis would have warmed up my core-temperature, which was steadily
dropping due to my sopping clothing. Lucky that’s as heavy as the rain gets!
We were getting towards the end of
the tour when suddenly it started bucketing down. And I mean BUCKETING down;
precipitation was occurring at a rate similar to vodka travelling down my
gastrointestinal tract. Even though we were all wringing out our clothes and
collecting from them enough water to hydrate a large African village, Troy
obviously wasn’t too bothered by the chaffing of his jeans as he remembered he
was relying on tips and needed to herd us somewhere dry so he could do the
final big sell with a theatrical performance. The ease with which Troy managed
to find an impossibly perfect location made me suspicious that he had known for
some time that the preciptation was going to get a lot heavier than a handful
of raindrops. As our motley group huddled together in an attempt to preserve
body-heat (me taking great advantage of an attractive German man’s generosity
in this regard), Troy went all-out in his re-telling of the legend of the Stone
of Destiny. I’ll give it our boy Troy here – he was really very funny and
entertaining…not enough to make me fall in love with him, but I could see how
Kaitlyn possibly had. In fact, he was so charming and hilarious that, as I
looked around at the monsoon swirling behind him and subtly edged closer to Mr
German, I found myself being not so angry.
After Troy collected his tips, he
invited anyone who wanted to join him at a pub for lunch. Needless to say,
Kaitlyn wanted to and, given that my fingers were blending in nicely with my
navy jacket, I wanted to as well. Plus, while Kaitlyn flirted with Troy, I would
have been more than happy to flirt with German. Alas, we did not end up on a
table with either of these people. For reasons that we are unsure of, Kaitlyn
and I seem to habitually attract the attention of old people. We’re unsure if
we look approachable, project a (false) sense of sensibility, or perhaps have
flashing neon signs on our heads saying ‘don’t leave these seats free for
attractive people our age, please sit here and deliver boring monologues about
your boring holidays’. It has to be at least one of these because it happens to
us all the time. And it happened this day as well, and we looked
longingly on at all the young people knocking back pints and having fun
together, while listening to stories about geriatric cruises where the carrots
were overcooked ‘every single night!!!’. The horror. Part-way through an
anecdote about…something…I was thinking things couldn’t get much worse…and then
our meals were delivered, and it turns out that Mr Elderly had ordered haggis.
As you may or may not remember, I’m alergický to meat. Now my
understanding is that even people who love meat find the concept of haggis
quite disgusting, so I cannot quite articulate just how repulsive I find it
and, therefore, just how tortuous it was for me to sit directly opposite
someone eating it. Just thinking about it is making me dry wretch so I’m not
going to go any further.
Post-haggis and seconds away from
post-death-by-boredom, Troy came to the rescue, appearing at our table to
talk-up the company’s other services. I tuned out for most of it, and then the
magic words ‘Pub Crawl’ were uttered. Sold. Kaitlyn and I had already decided
that we’d be doing one that evening, and although the fact Troy would be
running it the following night made her hesitate, we still found ourselves
sitting in a bar dressed to party. We had been directed inside to take a seat
by the man running the crawl that night. I have wrapped sushi rolls in sheets
of seaweed with more charisma than this guy. He looked so entirely bored when
we arrived, I had to resist the urge to grab his wrist and check for a pulse.
Not long after we sat down, a girl
with a striking resemblance to Kate Middleton came and asked if we were doing
the pub crawl. Mary was from San Francisco and, despite having a 6.00am flight
to Dublin the next morning, was keen to par-tay. I can spot a bogan from
a mile off and, when two guys started over towards us, one look at the blonde’s
fitted cap, hoodie and acid-wash jeans told me that I needn’t bother shrugging
off my cardigan so early. His friend, on the other hand, had me whipping my
cardi off faster than Willow whips her hair back and forth. He was Canadian,
nice to look at and, I found out later, really quite irritating. We were
part-way through our introductions when Mr Personality came in and, with two
other people in tow, drawled some bad news. ‘We have exactly the minimum number
of people needed to run the crawl so, if you want to go, I’ll take you, but
it’ll be shit,”. Way to sell it! I don’t think this dude would be able to sell
coke to Lindsay Lohan. It was pretty obvious that this guy would be as much fun
to party with as a coma patient, so we decided to come back for the official
crawl the next night (much to Kaitlyn’s Troy-filled delight), and do our own.
We were getting towards the end of
the tour when suddenly it started bucketing down. And I mean BUCKETING down;
precipitation was occurring at a rate similar to vodka travelling down my
gastrointestinal tract. Even though we were all wringing out our clothes and
collecting from them enough water to hydrate a large African village, Troy
obviously wasn’t too bothered by the chaffing of his jeans as he remembered he
was relying on tips and needed to herd us somewhere dry so he could do the
final big sell with a theatrical performance. The ease with which Troy managed
to find an impossibly perfect location made me suspicious that he had known for
some time that the preciptation was going to get a lot heavier than a handful
of raindrops. As our motley group huddled together in an attempt to preserve
body-heat (me taking great advantage of an attractive German man’s generosity
in this regard), Troy went all-out in his re-telling of the legend of the Stone
of Destiny. I’ll give it our boy Troy here – he was really very funny and entertaining…not
enough to make me fall in love with him, but I could see how Kaitlyn possibly
had. In fact, he was so charming and hilarious that, as I looked around at the
monsoon swirling behind him and subtly edged closer to Mr German, I found
myself being not so angry.
After Troy collected his tips, he
invited anyone who wanted to join him at a pub for lunch. Needless to say,
Kaitlyn wanted to and, given that my fingers were blending in nicely with my
navy jacket, I wanted to as well. Plus, while Kaitlyn flirted with Troy, I
would have been more than happy to flirt
with German. Alas, we did not end up
on a table with either of these people. For reasons that we are unsure of,
Kaitlyn and I seem to habitually attract the attention of old people. We’re unsure
if we look approachable, project a (false) sense of sensibility, or perhaps
have flashing neon signs on our heads saying ‘don’t leave these seats free for
attractive people our age, please sit here and deliver boring monologues about
your boring holidays’. It has to be at least one of these because it happens to
us all the time. And it happened this day as well, and we looked
longingly on at all the young people knocking back pints and having fun
together, while listening to stories about geriatric cruises where the carrots
were overcooked ‘every single night!!!’. The horror. Part-way through an
anecdote about…something…I was thinking things couldn’t get much worse…and then
our meals were delivered, and it turns out that Mr Elderly had ordered haggis.
As you may or may not remember, I’m alergický to meat. Now my
understanding is that even people who love meat find the concept of haggis
quite disgusting, so I cannot quite articulate just how repulsive I find it
and, therefore, just how tortuous it was for me to sit directly opposite
someone eating it. Just thinking about it is making me dry wretch so I’m not
going to go any further.
Post-haggis and seconds away from
post-death-by-boredom, Troy came to the rescue, appearing at our table to
talk-up the company’s other services. I tuned out for most of it, and then the
magic words ‘Pub Crawl’ were uttered. Sold. Kaitlyn and I had already decided
that we’d be doing one that evening, and although the fact Troy would be
running it the following night made her hesitate, we still found ourselves
sitting in a bar dressed to party. We had been directed inside to take a seat
by the man running the crawl that night. I have wrapped sushi rolls in sheets
of seaweed with more charisma than this guy. He looked so entirely bored when
we arrived, I had to resist the urge to grab his wrist and check for a pulse.
Not long after we sat down, a girl
with a striking resemblance to Kate Middleton came and asked if we were doing
the pub crawl. Mary was from San Francisco and, despite having a 6.00am flight
to Dublin the next morning, was keen to par-tay. I can spot a bogan from
a mile off and, when two guys started over towards us, one look at the blonde’s
fitted cap, hoodie and acid-wash jeans told me that I needn’t bother shrugging
off my cardigan so early. His friend, on the other hand, had me whipping my
cardi off faster than Willow whips her hair back and forth. He was Canadian,
nice to look at and, I found out later, really quite irritating. We were
part-way through our introductions when Mr Personality came in and, with two
other people in tow, drawled some bad news. ‘We have exactly the minimum number
of people needed to run the crawl so, if you want to go, I’ll take you, but
it’ll be shit,”. Way to sell it! I don’t think this dude would be able to sell
coke to Lindsay Lohan. It was pretty obvious that this guy would be as much fun
to party with as a coma patient, so we decided to come back for the official
crawl the next night (much to Kaitlyn’s Troy-filled delight), and do our own.
And so our fake pub crawl began.
Members: Mary, Kaitlyn, Bogan, Canada, America, Chile and myself. America and
Chile were a couple; he was lovely (and lovely to look at), whereas she would
have been better suited to our would-be pub crawl leader. Unless there was a
camera on her (and between Kaitlyn and me it’s no surprise this was often the
case), she sat on a bar stool with a face which looked more like she was
suffering human rights violations under Pinochet’s dictatorship than sitting in
a bar in Scotland nursing a glass of red. We spent quite a while in this bar
because, as well as having a decent atmosphere, it served a heap of Aussie
beers including Cooper’s, Boags, Cascade and VB. Winning. Several hours and
many beverages later, we were sufficiently drunk to venture to some clubs.
Chile wasn’t interested and,
therefore, America was out also, so the five of us found ourselves at The Hive.
We have since found out it is referred to amongst Edinburgh locals as "The
Dive", a much more apposite moniker. The average age of people inside the
establishment would have been sixteen and a half. At a stretch. There was a
bubble machine – A BUBBLE MACHINE – and a whole lot of fluro, but more
disturbing than this was when I was hit-on by a seventeen year old. I was
standing at the bar trying to get a drink when he approached me with some
clichéd pick-up line I failed to commit to memory. He spent a good five minutes
talking about himself - then offered to buy me a drink. With beverages in hand,
he asked me about myself. Specifically, he asked me if I was in school. I
replied that I had just finished. ‘When did you finish? Like this year?’
‘Yep!’
‘So are you like having a year off or
like going to uni next year?’
‘I just finished uni…’
‘What? You’ve like been to uni
already?’
‘Yeah. I just finished my thesis.’
‘How OLD are you?!’
‘I’m 24…’
‘Oh my GOD! I thought you were like
16! I’m like 17.’ Like 17, or are 17…? ‘You don’t LOOK 24.’
‘Thanks….?’ The poor kid looked
distraught, so I had to let him buy me another drink. After that our motley
crew of five found our way back to each other and we hit up the DF with the
rest of the children and partied hard into the night. Mary, Kaitlyn and I
partied so hard we even ended up on the website!
As always, I was feeling brilliant
the next morning and bounded down to breakfast, whereas Kaitlyn was feeling
somewhat seedy, but managed to drag herself down too. We’d been sitting there
for a few minutes when we both spotted who we were sure was Hayden from Masterchef.
Long story short, it wasn’t actually Hayden, but a German dead-ringer called
Bernhart but, continuing with our European tradition of not using people’s
actual names, we continued to call him Hayden. We ended up having breakfast
with Hayden and his two friends, Stefan and Martin, and sometime between cereal
and toast, talked them into joining the pub crawl that night.
Our culture for the day was a trek
out to Rosslyn Chapel. A 15th Century chapel, you may know it from The Da
Vinci Code – specifically the part where the chick finds out she is a
descendant of Mary Magdalene and J-Chri. Despite the fact I bear a striking
resemblance to Audrey Tautou, movie recreation wasn’t the (primary) reason we
made the excursion:Kaitlyn’s family has been tracked back to the Sinclair
family, and it was William Sinclair who founded the chapel. In other words,
it’s her chapel, and so we made the journey out to Roslin. The chapel itself is
really quite beautiful, but it was doing its best impersonation of London with
scores of scaffolding clinging to its facade. And, as beautiful as its stained
glass, pillars and carvings are, the highlight for me lay, not in the striking
architecture, but in a crude little old Australian tourist.
Not long after our arrival, they
started a tour of the chapel which we decided to join. Just after we took our seats
on the pew, a cute little elderly couple seated themselves in the row in front.
At least, I thought they were a cute little elderly couple…and as far as I can
tell, the gentleman was quite delightful. His wife, on the other hand…well she
was something else. Seconds after they took their seats, a young woman from the
staff began her tour with a brief history of the chapel. She couldn't have been
talking for more than thirty seconds when, not so quietly, the lady demanded to
her husband, ‘Move!’
‘Huh?’ Mr Elderly was trying to listen
to the tour guide and was not entirely focused on his wife’s orders.
‘MOVE!’
‘Why?’
‘I’m not sitting through this boring
shit.’ I wasn’t sure what was funnier – that Grandma had such a mouth on her,
or that Grandpa simply ignored her and re-focused his attention on the tour. I
decided it was the former when, loud enough to wake the Sinclair family from
the crypt below, she repeated, ‘I said MOVE! I’m not going to sit through this
boring SHIT.’ Honestly, there was really that strong an emphasis placed on the
word ‘shit’. And in a church! Old people these days - no respect at all.
When Troy informed us early on in the
night that we would, at one point, all be partaking in mandatory karaoke, I
began perfecting the heartbreaking tale of the nodules on my vocal chords and
subsequent throat surgery which rendered me unable to sing. This was before I
started shotting like the East-European pro that I am. By the time we arrived
at the bar, no one wanted to sing more than me. There were a lot of people in
the bar that night, and although there were some impressive performances
(including Troy’s rendition of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"), no one could
hold a candle to Kaitlyn’s and my duet of "Black or White". For two
not-so-sober people, we rocked the SHIT out of that song. And there is no
sarcasm in this statement whatsoever – we were strangely really good. In fact,
we were so good that after our performance the compere stated that he hadn’t
‘been that sexually aroused by Michael Jackson since he was six years old’.
Upon reflection I realise that doesn’t sound all that much like a compliment,
but I assure you that it was.
As the night progressed and Troy
loosened up, I found myself liking him a lot more. I thought this would please
Kaitlyn given that we all like our BFFs to get on with our partners. However,
Kaitlyn was too mad at Troy to appreciate my newfound fondness for him.
Apparently she had caught him flirting with an American girl a number of times.
This night saw the birth of what became Drunk European Kaitlyn’s catchphrase:
‘I’m waaaay prettier than her but, whatever’. And it was true, Kaitlyn
was indeed waaaay prettier than this girl (Tori Spelling was waaaay prettier
than this girl), so it turns out that Troy was an idiot…although to be fair to
him, I don’t think he actually ever realised Kaitlyn was on the table (and I’m
not even sure she really was…I think she just really enjoyed me agreeing with
her that she was prettier). The rest of the night is a blur of drinks and
"I’m waaaay prettier than her but, whatevers”. I know I danced with
a guy who was dressed like Neo from The Matrix (and whose attempts at
communicating were about as easy to understand as The Matrix); I also know
that I got accidently punched in the eye by some over-zealous club-goer who
failed to notice me chillin’ down by his elbow…but I got a drink out of that
one so, winning!
Next thing I know I’m waking up and
needing to pack my shell and leave for Poland. Epic winning!
