Two week blur

December 6, 2008 by admin.

I just ended the best two weeks I have had in a very long time. I will try to recount as best my memory allows. i spent the last two weeks in Edinburgh jumping from hostel to hostel until i found home and roots at the Budget Backpackers Hostel in the middle of “old town” Edinburgh. the whole area is at the foot of the stunning and emasculating Edinburgh Castle. I won’t bore you with the first two hostels I stayed at they were rather lame. from the beginning of being at the budget backpackers it felt like home. Everyone, and i do mean everyone were welcoming and warm. this place puts a huge emphasis on the social aspect of hosteling. I very quickly became friends with all of the long term residents and employees. as i said before it was a complete and utter blur of pub crawls and dancing till  in the morning, i danced so much… and i don’t dance, unless its on a coffee table ;) basically i found a bunch of mates who like getting stupid and acting a fool as much as i do. i did meet a girl who asked my for my phone number… high five, it’s nice i like, except i don’t have a fucking phone… shit. we will get back to later. after about 5 days of debauchery i went back to Glasgow to see Jenny Brown who moved there recently to go to veterinary school, and asked me to come back and give it a second chance.

Glasgow take 2- night 1

i got in around 4 pm, got settled in my hostel called jenny and met up for the “Dick Day” pub crawl. Dick day is the day that the Glasgow vet school sports teams play the Edinburgh vet school sports teams. its called “Dick Day” because the Edinburgh vets school is named after its founder William Dick. and being populated by hormonally charged infants “Dick” stuck. Any way this pub crawl was of respectable size, only about 150 people… modest aye? anyway we had lots of drinks and went home.

Glasgow take 2- night 2

uneventful night went out to find some music but i ate some sort of Scottish pie that had some sort of meet like substance that my stomach did not enjoy so i went home early and made a well deserved and needed break.

Glasgow take 2- night 3

Jenny invited me over for dinner at her house, her German roommate was cooking traditional meatballs cabbage and ‘tatoes’. So we sat, jenny, roommate, roomies friend, and myself; drank wine, ate food, talked and laughed. then we went out in the west end. made a very late night of it i think i went home at 4:30.

Glasgow take 2- night 4

Jenny invited me to go with her to a friends house for an early thanksgiving dinner. cool, small casual gathering, or so I thought. it turns out that half the first and second year vet students came… all dressed to the nines, and there’s me in jeans and my dingy sweater that i don’t think i washed in two weeks (hey its not me, you try doing laundry on a regular biases when your at a place no longer then 3 days) at least i remembered deodorant and a shower. Any way we had a great time, and i have a feeling everyone thought we were together, i didn’t mind it. there was so much food i wanted to cry. it made me missed my family t-day and Spanksgiving. after that we went out to meet jennys friends for one of their birthdays. and called it a night early because i was going to fall asleep. i love tryptophan!

Back to Edinburgh-

Before I left for Glasgow i left Kim my email and said to leave me her number so i could call her when i got back, and once again jumped right back into the thick of the blur. had a good week of getting stupid and dancing. and i must say my friend Roy and I stopped a dance floor with our awe inspiring dance off. it was great! night after night of this and during the day, Kim. she taught me allot about myself and things in general. but as the case is with all hostel love it was destined for premature termination, and we both knew it but we did our best to keep it in the moment and not linger too much on past or future. then it ended and fast as it began. C’est la vie. and again jumped deep into stupidity and revelry with my family away from home. ice-skating and dinners, shit Thanksgiving, i knew i was forgetting something. on thanksgiving in Edinburgh was the Christmas lighting ceremony, which left something to be desired. there were supposed to be fireworks but i think something went wrong, because behind the crowd were loud booms and an impressive amount of smoke, but now oohs or awes or eyes on the skies, a few snickers but that was about it. Anyway my last few days at the hostel Roy (who is me but Aussie and funnier) and I started “evening M.A.S.” or Music Appreciation Society. in reality it was a bunch of us sitting in a circle taking turns playing the group a song on our iPods and drinking beer of course. My last night at the hostel was also Roy’s who had been there longer. we started the night with dinner with the five of us men eating dinner cracking jokes and eating good cheep food not 100 yards from the castle (cool!) then had one barn burner of a final pub crawl! finished around 3:30.

the next morning i was off to Oban, for all you scotch fans, the home of one of the finest distilleries in Scotland. the town was very small and populated entirely by pensioners and teen parents (i swear to god it smelled like a retirement home and dirty diapers, from the very young and very old alike). it was very cold and boring so i got the hell out of there and started my final journey toward Dublin. which is where i am now. sitting in Glasgow, a-fucking-gain, waiting for a train that will take me to a ferry that will take me to Belfast where a train will take me to Dublin, where one week 5 hours and 7 minuets i will board a plane to JFK transfer and come home.

i must admit that i am slightly nervous about coming home… maybe anxious would be a better word to use. i am very excited to come home and see my friends and family who i appreciate so much more now then i would have ever expected, for all the support and kind words that the sent me over the last 7 weeks. two in-particular, you know who you are.

i will make one or two more entries on this documentation of my life over the last two months then put it to rest until my next travel.

thanks for reading,

The Found

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