Glasgow

i got to Glasgow and Georges Square was pumping with music, lights and rides it was the first day of the Glasgow Winterfest. also both the Glasgow football teams were in town so there were a heap of supporters, which was a great vibe to be around. i heard that the football crowds can be quite violent but i didn't have a problem. supposidly Glasgow has the highest murder rate in all of the UK, maybe they should sell T-shirts at the tourist information that say 'I survived Glasgow' then again, maybe not. by the way, its definately winter now, i've even resorted to wearing the thermals. but even that didn't stop me from coming down with a cold. the few days i was here i felt really average and my nose was running like a tap! but i'm feeling much better now in case you were wondering.

Something i learnt pretty early on in my stay here was they are mad about this guy called Charles Rennie Mackintosh, he was an architect and you can't go far without seeing a building of his, there littered throughout the city. i went to a tea room that he designed called 'The willow tea rooms' on the Sauchiehall street. they were quite nice i suppose. not far from there is the Glasgow school of Art which i think he help design also, this is where band Franz Ferdinand went to school.

Something i did like was the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum (i think it was better than the Modern art gallery). there were some nice pieces of art work in there, even a Dali. but there were two displays there that touched me the most. the first was a huge display of stuffed animals around the world, the kids were going nuts for them. but it really shocked me when i figured out the room was full of animals that are now extinct. i couldn't get over the number of different wildlife that were no longer walking on this earth. it was pretty tragic really and in a way quite embrassing as a human being. i felt terrible that this is the only way of seeing these beautiful creatures. the second exhibit was women being abused. i actually have seen a couple of exhibits like this in Glasgow, there must've been a big problem here in past or perhaps even present, it was pretty full on and something i didn't really expect in a museum, but i think it was a good idea to teach children that its not ok to abuse people, physically or emotionally.

Glasgow science centre is an interesting modern building and just across the river from it is the Scottish exhibition and conference centre, to me, when you look at them together they both kind of look like two big snails sliding along the riverside. not suprising i suppose, scotland has great weather for snails, its generally drizzling. The Barras Market was 'interesting' to say the very least, if you want to go people watching, here was the place to do it. i'm pretty sure half the stuff there was hot goods, if not it was going to be stolen for the stall. The Barras Market was right near the Peoples Palace which, in my opinion is nothing to really rave about except for the glass house on the back of it. it boasts about its terracotta fountain at the front of the building, supposedly its the only one of its kind from that era.

One thing Glasgow is known for is its music scene. quite a lot of big bands come from here, like Franz Ferdinand, Travis, Belle and Sebastian, the list goes on. i checked out 'King Tuts Wah Wah bar' (which is consistently voted one of the best venues in thr UK) and 'the Arches' which is where a lot of the bands played some of there first gigs. so that was kinda cool, they were both pretty cool bars. i can't say i really enjoyed Glasgow as much as i thought i might, i don't really know why, i just don't think it lived up to expectations. i would say West End was the only part i truely liked, they had some good shops, interesting laneways and a good vibe about it which i kind of felt the rest of the city lacked a little.

while i was in Glasgow i took a 2 day tour up to the highlands. the scottish highlands are absolutely stunning, and i had a really great time. i think it helped that we had amazing weather and our views weren't spoilt, but also, our tour guide was hilarious and had a one liner for everything, he was brilliant off the cuff too. he took us to some really amazing places and things (we saw highland cows too, which are one of the oldest breed of cows in the world.) i was suprised to find that the mountains aren't that high in comparison to other ones around the world, but our guide was saying that more people had died climbing them than in the Alps. mainly becuase they don't look that high up and they underestimate the climb. while we were up in the highlands i saw my first dump of snow since i've been in europe. and naturally we had a good old fashioned snow ball fight! brilliant! along the we saw plenty of lochs but of course we saw the most famous of them all. Loch Ness, funnily enough i didn't see Nessie but supposidly over time, a thousand people have. the whole time i was there i kept thinking of this episode of 'The Goodies' and how they went for a swim in the loch and got chased by the loch ness. pretty strange i haven't watched the goodies since i was really really little. its funny what you remember.

we stayed the night in a place called Inverness which was a really pretty little town. even though its quite small, the girl that worked at the hostel told me, its known for its music and have a lot of great bands in the area, also the guy who wrote Peter Pan is from here. on the trip i met a guy from Spain, Ismael, he was there with his girlfriend who didn't speak much english. so when we stopped in Inverness they saw a spanish restaurant and said that i MUST come with them to try some tapas with them. it was actually a really good experience because they told me about the foods and how they should taste and how they're cooked. it was funny, ordered one dish that had blood sausage in it, Ismael asked the waiter where abouts the sausage was from and it turned out it was from the same butcher that his girlfriends father worked at. small world. i spoke to Ismael about his english and asked him if he learnt it in school, he told me that he did get taught it at school but he mainly learnt english from playing Nintendo! he told me when he was a little kid he got a Nintendo but all the games were in english so he was sit down in front of the TV with a controller and a dictionary to translate the words! i couldn't help but laugh. TAKE THAT all those people that say you don't learn anything from computer games!

something interesting i learnt while i was on the trip was that the kilt you see today is different to the way they originally were. they actually were a lot bigger and thicker and were used mainly in the highlands becuase it was so wet up there, it was quicker and easier to get throught the terrain if you didn't have pants on because you would get weighed down when they got wet. also they would smear animal fat on them to keep them waterproof and of a night use it to wrap themselves up in to keep warm.

something i really enjoyed seeing was the Clava cairns. they are these ancient burial mounds that are thousands of years old. looking at them, theyre a little bit like stonehenge i suppose but with a pile of rocks in the middle. not much is really known about them apart from they used to cremate people in them. so amazing.
we went to a waterfall on the way home and there was a small old building on the top of crest that overlooked the waterfall. it turns out it was owned by one of the Dukes that lived around there a few centuries ago, and lets just say it wasn't used for hoildays. the Duke had a taste for ladies of the night and would take them up there. so i guess you could call him a McPimp daddy!

on the trip i heard so much about the different clans, Robert the Bruce, William Wallace, the Campbells (not the soup company) and the McDonalds (not the fast food resturant) and it was a little hard to take it all in. but one thing i did take in was it was a very violent history did you know that to find out if you were a witch they would throw you into a river and see if you drowned, if you did, congrats your not a witch however your dead and if you did float you were burnt at the stake. another way of finding out if you were a witch was if you had red hair, so if if you had fanta pants your in big trouble!

it was really nice to get out into the country for a bit, such a nice change from seeing cities. the only annoying thing was that the tour ended in Edinburgh so i had to catch a train back to Glasgow, but it ended up being quite good because i was sitting right near the toilet on the train, generally its not the hottest seat on the train but this time it was. there was this drunk guy on the train and he was trying to get the door to the toilet open but he didn't realise that it was an automatic door and all he had to do was push a button, instead he was trying to pull the door open. i was going to tell him, but it was too funny. then he finally openned it and went inside. i pushed the button so it would close but he didn't see me. the look of confusement on his face was priceless, anyway after a while he tried to force the door open again, by this stage there were a few people aware of what was going on and we all just look at each other and giggled. when he finally got out he said in a drunk scottish ascent 'that toilets haunted!' i couldn't help but laugh. classic.

Something i'm really enjoying about the UK in general is the radio soaps. call me an old foggy but they are pretty good! so nice to hear theater of the mind. i don't think they do them in Oz, which is a real shame. this probably explains why i'm so bad at coming up with ideas for radio ads! so far the food over here has been rubbish! its no wonder a lot of people over here are so over weight. i went into a fish and chip shop one day and ordered some chips, the girl behind the counter asked if i wanted some sauce on my chips i said 'i'll just have some salt please' the girl nearly fell over with shock, she said that everyone that orders chips from here always put a million types of sauces and stuff on it. i told her i was a purist! however the only thing unhealthy that has sucked me in is fudge, i could eat the stuff all day!
Oh well, that was the Glasgow experience, now i'm off to Belfast. Bye!