Winter has belatedly arrived in Edinburgh.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
The Great Outdoors.
Ardgartan, a secluded little village by Loch Long in Argyll and Bute, was a charming wee haven, an idyllic getaway from the mechanised racket down south.
It’s solitude up north, a place to gather thoughts, ruminate, recharge the proverbial batteries. I often listen to the devastatingly dramatic music of Richard Wagner in these moments, and think of ways of taking over the world. It’s never going to happen, but one can fantasise.
Highlights:
Laziness.
I’ve always been more into looking at scenes of natural beauty than … climbing up them. I therefore gazed in admiration at the surrounding hills with their snow-topped peaks, and took a few photos of the beasts. Neglecting any extended adventuring, I did manage to crawl out of our liquor lodge estate and ramble around Loch Long to the Village Inn and back.
The swing.
I’ve not been on a swing in decades. Nostalgia kicked in. Other estate guests offered some concerned facial expressions my way. Perhaps I should have jettisoned the Jack Daniel’s bottle.
Bug Hotel.
Even travelling insects need their comforts.
Dublin Craic (again).
Another ad hoc bar crawl in Dublin. Lots of Guinness, Jameson, muffled conversations over live music, and the occasional tumble off a wooden stool.
Impressions/Thoughts:
Temple Bar.
Temple Bar is a shower of shite. It’s world renowned and I don’t know why. Two pints of Guinness and two shots of Baileys = 27 euros. Nothing distinguishes this particular craphouse of a drinking den save its almost anachronistic talent for making one feel like a fool.
Mission: Impossible.
It’s (almost) impossible to get ejected from a Dublin bar. You slur your words and just barely manage to point at the whiskey bottle of your choice yet the bartender serves you up. It’s comforting.
Fisticuffs.
A group of women, rather scruffy lookin’, wailing and spitting at each other outside of what I think was a job centre. It was a horrific sight, albeit slightly surreal.
O’Connell Street.
Wow, a casual stroll down this boulevard made me tingle. Peppered with cracking little bars, it’s a keeper.
Guinness Storehouse.
I greatly enjoyed its alluring view of the city from the rooftop bar. The rest was the expected corporate paradigm, but then Guinness is a global brand so why shouldn’t it be. Nevertheless, I did feel perplexed at times during my Storehouse ramble. A tour guide eloquently waxed upon the dimensions and parameters of proper Guinness ‘tasting’ to a room of us, each clutching a small measure; it was like he was describing a surgical procedure. I downed my tipple whilst playing with my phone, nonchalantly disregarding his recommendation that I sniff it (the Guinness, not my phone).
Outside, stood in the freezing cold, are poor bedraggled horses waiting to tug tubby tourists back to their hotels for 40 euros a carriage ride. Gruesome.
The Zoo.
There is a zoo. I wonder if they sell booze on the premises. It wouldn’t surprise me.
Fresh air.
Dublin smells nice. It smells mostly of booze. Sublime.
Coca-Cola cans.
Bar managers aren’t fond of clientele bringing their own mixers in. You still don’t get chucked out, though.
Dublin Airport.
Security staff have always puzzled over cans of tuna chunks stored in my carry-on luggage. This airport is no different. It’s a can of tuna, mate. Treat it with the respect it deserves.
Voyage to Italy
Milan.
Milan didn’t feel like Italy for me. It is indeed in Italy, and is full of Italians, but I never felt like I was rambling in the Land of Amaretto. Locals (admittedly fly) buying clothes and walking slowly whilst carrying bags of flashy clobber. I have no interest in clothes. I have a personal detestation of slow walkers. The bars were lifeless, the streets listless. I did climb the stairs of a cathedral in the city centre, but it knackered me and the heat perplexed my senses. Anyway, it was alright. I was gonna see the San Siro but decided to drink Grand Marnier on a bench instead. Farewell, Milan. Take care.
Venice.
Venice blew my socks off. I crept in by train under the auspices of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony, visions of Dirk Bogarde and a murderous dwarf in a red jacket dominating my hangover. I’d heard icky tales of the sewage and the rats; I couldn’t smell the former nor see the latter, though I don’t mind rats. I had one, Rambo, as a pet. Now I just picture Rambo en masse. The city is a belter, another world, a hinterland of frozen memory, a breathing anachronism untouched by time. I loved the place, and didn’t even mind getting lost (constantly). Thank the heavens for Google Maps, for without them I would have slept on an illegally commandeered gondola every night. I was crestfallen upon leaving. I struggle to fathom why Marco Polo left, but understand why he eventually returned.
Rome.
Rome was pissing it down for much of my stay. I don’t think Rome liked me very much. Nevertheless, like Quasimodo, I was stricken with unrequited love. The Colosseum already had me at Gladiator (2000), but being there, up close, I could almost detect the baying chants of the Roman mob, the bread and circuses. It’s an antiquated football stadium scene, essentially. Proceeding via Piazza Venezia to the Vatican, I was once again reminded of the fact that I grimace daily at my residential surroundings back home in Edinburgh, and struggled to locate the reason I continue to operate there. Depression can arrive from the most serene origins.
Irish Bars. Every city on the planet has or desires one. I’d like to imagine folk congregating in a relatively quiet district of Baghdad for a Guinness and a lamb stew. The Scholar’s Lounge just off the Piazza Venezia is just sublime, an authentic, not-too-pricey liquid hideaway with staff from Dublin, Cork, Waterford, and Shannon. There’s nothing quite like an inordinate volume of Smithwick’s and a live-screened football match after a day of trudging around the Lonely Planet’s must-sees. I got reeking off Guinness in there, my only memory past 10:00 p.m. a 30-minute chat with a skater bloke from Oakland, California about the improbable rise of Donald Trump.
A note on selfie sticks: these things do my tits in. They were omniscient, from the folk selling them to the sniffers swinging the apparatus about with careless abandon. I certainly wouldn’t want to look at a photo of the Trevi Fountain with my mug dominating the snap; that’s not the sweet life. The pursuit is another bizarre evolution in the travails of the human species.
I now seek out Sicily and Naples. Soon.
Amsterdam – The Wrong Time.
Amsterdam. I’d been there many times before, eight in fact, and thought it most logical to visit once more for a loafing late-summer weekend.
Maybe it was the dingy, lifeless hostel (Hotel Hostel Mevlana) and the pack of pubescent, constantly nattering potheads in my dorm, maybe it was the insipid air and grey afternoons, maybe it was my belated realisation that I have no interest in cannabis or its self-propagating subculture, or maybe it was the fact that I had far too much on my mind to be luxuriating in boredom.
Maybe it was all of those things, but I truly hated Amsterdam this time around. I hated the trams, the plethora of bicycles, the casual hyperinflation of its bars, and the general nuisance of its drug dealers and small-time scammers. I found the city beneath me, not worthy of my time. It was an unpleasant feeling.
“What a dump this place is,” I muttered to myself as I stood outside Centraal Station puffing on an e-cigarette. I had been there all of ten minutes and felt stunned at my own aversion to the city; I’d saturated Amsterdam to death and was stuck there for another four days. Depression kicked in. I walked the streets, frequented many a coffee shop, watched some football games in its bars, and even popped into a few museums. My heart wasn’t in the matter, though. I’m struggling to fathom why I ever was fond of the city, and I’d like to have the whole trip exorcised from my memory by the end of the month.
The highlight – save the flight home – was sitting in the park on my own under a tree, drinking Cointreau and reading a book about the fall of the Soviet Union (Lenin’s Tomb by David Remnick). This, of course, could have been conducted in my front garden. Anyway, it was, I guess, a valuable experience in melancholy management.
Dortmund, Köln, und Bonn – North Rhine-Westphalia abenteuer.
I’m sweating profusely in Dortmund; I’ve wandered into a sun-kissed inferno and the only panacea is a ridiculous volume of water, *washed down* with Grand Marnier and Jack Daniel’s. The vexing humidity aside, the city is most pleasing. Architecturally, I’d describe it as the metropolitan equivalent of a comfy deckchair.
The A&O Dortmund Hauptbahnhof is a two-minute stroll from our bus stop at Hauptbahnhof. It’s your generic A&O, a bit sterile and impersonal but with all the expected mod cons, including a bar and a smoking area. And that’s what’s most important, really. Classy €4.99 bourbon is subsequently sourced from Aldi and then guzzled in the park, the heat beating down so intensely that the locals luxuriate shirtless in fountains, a kind of La Dolce Vita (1960) tribute sans Anita Ekberg (but with beer). The relaxed milieu is illustrated by a static city-centre tram experiencing a peculiar metamorphosis – construction workers slowly modify it … into a pub. It will be something.
We impulsively opt to do the Borussia Dortmund stadium tour. This is enjoyable initially, but as the tour is in German, we gradually lose interest in proceedings, escaping to the pub half-way through. I don’t wish to listen to a ten-minute monologue about the intricacies of a changing room – in any language.
My shoes – deteriorating for some time – then finally fall apart; I purchase a new pair for €15. I don’t expect them to last a week for they seem to be cobbled together with Pritt Stick. Shortly afterwards in Netto supermarket, a woman rudely skips in front of me in the queue. I call her a ‘rat’. She scowls. We then head into a transvestite bar out of curiosity. It seems quite tame for only the bar guy is oddly attired, and not extremely so – he’s wearing high heels … and a scarf (it’s still blisteringly hot). Slightly disappointing.
Cologne.
We arrive here on a train with too few windows. It’s a furnace, a pool of sweat by my feet. What I do notice is that no matter how much I drink, I don’t seem to have the need to pee. It must be the incessant sweating. Anyway, Cologne cathedral. To once again recycle cliche, it takes the breath away. And it really does. Cologne’s de facto primary landmark, the beast towers above sunbathers scattered along the River Rhine, an overwhelming structure dominating the square below and surrounding suburbs. I don’t go inside, though. Exteriors have always interested me more than the insides of buildings. It mostly stems from the fact I hate paying for entry. Perhaps the ‘Kölner Dom’ was free. I’m not sure, but I’m content with the delightful scenes of tiny figures scurrying about under its spires.
The No. 16 U-Bahn from Hauptbahnhof to Appellhofplatz and then a No. 3 to Piusstrasse and we’re right at the door of Weltempfänger Backpacker Hostel & Café, an intimate lodging nestled amongst some of the city’s bohemian bars and cafes. Swing music emanates from an apartment across the road from the hostel. A man with his top off dances around his living room, occasionally screaming profanities. Ominously, an air rifle hangs on the wall. It’s all very disconcerting. An evening of Schnapps, sushi, and shisha kicks off, which culminates in falling from my stool in a cocktail bar in town and being picked off the floor by a bloke who looks like Eric Cantona.
Cologne walking tour.
Walking tours usually bore me, mainly because I often read up about a city’s history prior to arriving. This was pretty dull, but rather amusing for one reason: a bloke I went to Primary School with was on it. We exchanged pleasantries and stories; we had last conversed in 1996 so plenty of topics were discussed. And why was I amused? Because I pissed in a bottle of Fanta in 1992 and he drank it unawares. To this day he doesn’t know he downed my urine. True story. I feel bad about it now, but in retrospect I was only a child. Boys will be boys.
A special thanks to the U-Bahn(s).
The U-Bahn, that underground – sometimes briefly *above ground* – train network efficiently, even elegantly, zigzagging through city sewers, is a treasure. I can spend an entire day on there, a wannabe Ninja Turtle in a sweater and jeans, pedantically figuring out the fastest route from a museum to a top-rated pub, the anticipation of what awaits increasing by every minute I lurk about in the darkness. More than this, though, I hate walking. Dear U-Bahn, you save me hours of boredom and unwanted extraneous activity. Dortmund and Cologne had me at U-Bahn, and if I could design my own city, it would start with a batch of trains and tracks, and a digging team.
Bonn.
Bonn was a one-hour train ride away. Formerly the West German capital, it’s a charming city, a sort of laid-back semi-paradise peppered with cheap booze, rickety trams, a large population of pigeons, a Lidl, an Aldi, tall voluptuous women, and a gargantuan statue of Beethoven, for the city was Ludwig van’s birthplace. After a stroll around the city centre and a stumble upon Beethoven’s house, we spend the majority of the day sat in a Turkish bar discussing the decline of the Ottoman Empire.
If I had nothing else to do I’d retire and live out my days there on a hotel balcony, smoking shisha and sipping on piña coladas whilst Beethoven’s 9th symphony blares out of an adjacent boombox. One day.
Goodbye, North Rhine-Westphalia.
Splendid.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 