Edinburgh

My humble attempt at travel writing:

Things to do // see //eat //experience

Brass Monkey - funky (rhyme intended) bar slash cinema with a Tila Tequila Shot-at-Love-style communal bed for movie showings, book reading, or nap taking. Try the Caledonian beer - the Scots are capable stewards in more than one beverage department. 3 o'clock movie showings: get there early to pick your own, before someone else chooses Se7en and ruins your vacay.

Snax Bar - breakfast and lunch and everything else plus probably dinner. 4 breakfast meal choices with interchangeable components. Best and cheapest coffee around (1 £ americano ftw), plus a lot of character and haggis-laden menu items. Around the corner from the Royal Vet school on a street whose name I can't pronounce.

Mario's Bar- a bit of a trek (a 20 min bus ride away in Loanhead, which is famous for...well, this, and Ikea). Huge and delicious pizzas to share (takeaway only) plus the most deep fried varietals this side of the Atlantic from South Carolina (word on the street says ask for a deep fried mars bar).

Teviot (University of Edinburgh's Student Union Building) - beautiful, outside and in. Huge, with many nooks and crannies (and, I guess, 6 bars, though I only saw evidence of two). Get in before 6 if you're not a student, or if you're there after, make friends with one and enter as a guest. Cheap-ish beer, good food (hint: Large Library Bar nachos), and pool tables to boot. Enjoy the Library Bar for something more tonal, well-lit and calm; or the sports bar for a lively atmosphere - especially if the Scots are playing rugby.

Peckhams and Rye - 49 S Clerk St. Avoid the Royal Mile Whisky Shops and come here (not least because they also have a wide array of quality beers and wine, plus Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - not common around these parts). A great selection of whisky and passionate employees who make certain employees at certain whisky shops on the Royal Mile seem like reluctant amateurs.

Arthur's Seat - To get a view like this in most cities, you'd have to pay. Here in Edinburgh, though, they just charge you a bit of effort and some calories. Definitely worth the calf-tensing journey up.

Old Scottish Parliament - Behind the Kirk of St Giles stands a statue. Behind the statue, and beneath the last archway on the right, lies the place where the Scottish Parliament used to meet. Now (I think) it's but a law court - but it's preserved stained glass, an ornate ceiling, and the tradition of promenading (lawyers pacing up and down the rectangular room discussing cases so that bystanders can't hear). Worth it, not least of all because it's free, a few steps off the Royal Mile, and relatively unknown.

Studentia*

I've always liked school, and the whole idea of being a student.

It's a pretty good gig really, especially the whole college thing, where unlike French high school you don't have 7-8 hours of classes a day plus homework.

Nope: for my past five quarters at SPU I had tuesdays and thursdays off, and here at Oxford pretty much everyday I have to make heart-wrenching decisions like 'do i really feel like attending a lecture today?' (let's just say I've only answered that question positively about 11 times in the past 6 weeks).

And while I really enjoy my tutorials (and some lectures), the problem is that I'm only a student:

I wake up. I read. I write. I go to bed.

Part of it is attractive, but it just gets old after a while.

And I think that's one of the more important realizations I've had while I've been here. I used to think that I wanted to be a professor because then I could write and research, not so much because I could teach and interact with students. But I think that were my life not balanced, if I only took classes in graduate school or I only researched and wrote articles as a professor, I would end up unfulfilled.

I need people. I need interaction. I need more than scholarly debates that, while interesting, for the most part seem nit-picky and irrelevant. I need something outside myself and outside the covers of rarely read books.

This is part of the reason I'm excited to go back to SPU, where I am not just a student. I wouldn't say I'm super involved at SPU, but things like work, History Club, Debate, and (starting next quarter) Young Life give me areas to direct my energy. Here all of that energy just seems to leak into my papers.

That isn't to say that I'm unhappy here. To the contrary. I love my friends. I love the experience and the rigo(u)r. I love Hugh, my tutor. I love England (minus the pricey Pound, the mediocre beer, and London). But I think that if I were to stay here the whole year I would indeed become unhappy.

So I'm glad I have three weeks left, both because I don't think I'll be completely burnt out by then, and it gives me three more weekends to explore with friends (Edinburgh tomorrow), explore Oxford, and enjoy the unstructured, somewhat surreal, nature of life here.



*I would like to thank Alex Hardy for sparking this post while watching the Avs with me at the Royal Blenheim.