There and Back Again, part I

This is quite a long post, as I accomplished a lot today, so be warned.

So...lately I have been thinking a bit about what it means to be in Scotland. I mean, I'm here in a country across the sea from my own, studying very cool things that I can't study at home, with access to very cool places I don't normally have access to, and hearing very nice accents every day. But I've been in the doldrums for the past couple of weeks, to be honest. I mean, Edinburgh is a great city, and I am loving it. It took me an unusually long time to adjust to life here, but I have had no complaints, and have been at least trying to take advantage of the culture. But I realized the other day that while Edinburgh is a new setting for me, it is also a city - a.k.a. it's a bit more global than the rest of Scotland probably is. By which I mean, day to day, I am not being slapped in the face by Scotland. Sure, there are cars driving on the other side of the road, the kilted bagpiper on the corner and packaged pancakes in the grocery store, but when I'm going about my daily life, I still sometimes forget that there are amazing sites nearby that I can go visit, probably because I am so used to assuming they are inaccessible from my American perspective. In the past couple of weeks, this has gotten me a bit down, and I have been feeling like I'm not taking advantage of my time in Scotland very well.

On Monday I realized I was wrong to think this, and decided that I should remedy this feeling of stagnation by taking a trip out of the city for the first time - my trip to Glasgow was not exactly a cultural event, more of an in-and-out to experience what I experience in Massachusetts every year. So on Monday, I decided that on Wednesday, today, the day I don't have classes, I would take a day trip to...St Andrews!

So I did.

At 5 AM this morning my alarm went off to start my day. I packed last night, so it was more a matter of getting to the 7:00 train. I left early because I wasn't sure if the buses were running or not, in case I had to walk; they were running, as it turned out, but the stairs to the station had apparently been closed for renovation since I last taken the train, so I had to run around and find another way in. Good thing I left early. After a bit of flailing and a trip down a sketchy set of stairs, I finally reached my destination, and was settled on the train with plenty of time to spare.

The train journey was fairly uneventful, which was good. I had brought work to do, but after about 15 minutes I realized that I had never actually seen Scotland outside of Edinburgh, because I had been asleep on the plane and had gone to Glasgow at night. After only that short amount of time the train was already in the country, and I had my first look at Scottish farmland, and even the occasional ruin. The landscape was quite lovely in the light of the dawn, and there was barely a cloud in the sky. Every day here I wake up expecting rain, but we have had a streak of sunny, almost warm weather since Saturday which held through today, for which I was grateful.

St Andrews does not have a train station, but there is one in the nearby town of Leuchars. Upon reaching the end of my line, I emerged from the train to find I was the only one on the platform. Suddenly a jovial man stuck his head out of a window in the station and bid me a very good morning in that thick Scottish brogue. I figured it was a good start to a good day. He gave me directions to the bus station, and half an hour later I was standing in St Andrews across from a very nice church.

Sadly my banana and granola bar at 6 AM had not filled me as much as I had hoped, so I vowed that I would stop at the first coffee shop I saw and get a hot drink and a breakfast pastry. Unfortunately for the local businesses, the first shop I saw was Starbucks. But strangely enough, although I never go to Starbucks in the States, it has become kind of my rock in this distant land - no matter where I am, or how foreign the territory, that familiar green circle is always right around the corner. Always. Right around the corner. It has become like a little piece of home, something familiar that I can connect with. So I stopped there and, like a hobbit, had a proper second breakfast, in the form of a hot chocolate and a croissant.

There is a part of me that is very into details. This is probably one reason why I am so drawn to archaeology, among other things. Thus it should come as no surprise that, when I travel alone, I am a rather immaculate planner. I have to know absolutely everything about a trip I am taking, whether it be to another town or the store down the street, in Northampton or in Edinburgh. I need to know where my destination is, how I'm going to get there, what time the transport leaves and arrives, how to get from point A to point B and back again, how long that will take...everything must be in order before I leave. And planning a trip is something I really enjoy, because I delight in finding out these kinds of details. With this trip to St Andrews, however, I decided to try out something completely new. I decided to test my mettle by dropping myself into this small medieval town completely cold. Of course I completely planned out my train and bus schedules and bought the tickets beforehand, but I decided against even looking at a map of the town itself. I brought the address of the tourist info place as a lifeline just in case, but essentially I was on my own to discover this town.

The plan worked marvelously. I had no agenda, because I didn't know where anything was, so I spent the first part of my day just wandering the streets, keeping track of where I was, but basically if I saw something cool and old, I just went and looked at it. I knew the castle and the cathedral didn't open until 9:30, and, again, I didn't know where they were - there were signs though - so I had time to just get a feel for St Andrews. It has a great feel. There was a nice aura about the place; it just felt friendly. The town also, with all of its buildings, had a sense of long history about it, but at the same time, with the university right in its midst, there was an air of youth with so many students about. It was an interesting combination, and it somehow worked.

I found the castle after seeing some very neat buildings, and was impressed by the ruins, as I always am. I would have gone there first, but the sign said I could get a double pass for the castle and the cathedral at the visitor center of the latter, so I wound my way there. The cathedral ruins were spectacular. I could barely tear my eyes away to get my ticket and entry to the museum and bell tower. I started in the museum, which was very nicely laid out; one part was in an underground vault area, and in another part the St Andrews Sarcophagus was on display, which I had learned about in a few lectures this semester, so it was nice to see it in person.

Sadly I learned that the castle was actually closed for renovation, but I could still gain access by going on a guided tour at 11. This gave me about an hour to wander the ruins after leaving the museum. The ruins consist of the cathedral, once the largest building and most important church in Scotland, and the attached cloister. I was so drawn in by the architecture and remains that I just had to examine every detail; as a result, I had only covered the cloister and part of the cathedral by the time the tour was scheduled to start.

The tour was quite good; there were only four of us, so the guide was able to get more personal with us and answer specific questions, as well as let us wander the castle for a little while afterward. He also used to work for the National Trust, so we had that in common. I could totally relate to the couple of stories he told about his career as a site guide - the person in your tour who knows more on the subject than you do, the first solo tour you ever give which happens to be a massive group of people...although here I was thinking that 40 was bad, and it turns out he had 250.

Anyways, the St Andrews castle was great, and although it was a bit of a wreck, that made it all the more fascinating to me. It had quite a history too, becoming the home of the bishop and later the site of a number of unpleasant deaths (including the bishop's) and even a siege at the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. There was also a rather brutal prison cell carved into solid rock below the castle with no way out. But at one point in the tour, our guide told us that in later times, it became customary to coat and paint your castle, because 1. the layer helped protect the rock, which in this case was sandstone, which is soft and prone to weathering; and 2. because pigments were extremely expensive, and using them on your house was a great way to show off your wealth. He gave an example of one castle whose great hall was recently renovated - the workers pulled some pigment remains from the original walls, analyzed it and found it to have been bright, electric yellow, in which they then proceeded to paint the restored hall. All day the image of a bright, electric yellow castle has been coming back to haunt me, and I believe that information alone has disturbed me more than the stories of gruesome deaths the castle has served witness to.

I mean seriously. Who would want a yellow castle.

After the tour, I returned to my analysis of the cathedral, and finally got through the whole thing. It really must have been a beautiful building, it is hard to believe it was purposely destroyed during the Reformation. Afterward, I went up the bell tower next to the remains, which is all that remains from the church that was there before the cathedral. Very cool. It was rather high, though, and the stairs were literally the never-ending stairs of doom. The lower section of the tower's steps are out of commission for some reason, so it starts off on this spiral metal staircase a little ways up, where you can clearly see the gap below you. But then you get onto a ledge where the normal stair picks up, so you're on the actual medieval staircase (unless it was rebuilt, I'm not sure) going straight up and around the sides of the building. But only a little way up, it bunches into a corner and goes back to a spiral staircase. Around and around and around...forever and ever and ever...it feels like you will never get to the top, because you can't see up or down, because it's a spiral and it's stone. It is also extremely narrow, so if anyone were to come the other way, there's no room to pass. Fortunately there's a handrail installed; I can't imagine climbing that in the Middle Ages with nothing to hold on to.

But the climb, though harrowing, was worth it - the view was spectacular, especially on such a clear and beautiful day; I have included a picture above. I stayed up there for a while looking at the sites and the town. On my way down, I did end up running into another visitor on her way up, and ended up going all the way to the top again because I couldn't pass her, but there were no worries. Of course her first question was "am I almost there?" At least she had someone to tell her "yes!" The stairs were an adventure going down again too, but again, thank goodness for the handrail.

I stopped to look at the stone foundations of the very first church build at St Andrews, and then it was time for lunch. I found a fish and chip shop, and treated myself to a Coke; I enjoyed my meal on a bench looking out over the ocean. It was quite scenic. I then decided to wander the town again to look at some of the shops, and this was when I found the gem of my trip, and, quite possibly, of the semester? It was that fabulous.

To be continued below...