Scotland: Home | #Europe2015

There is no other way for me to describe Scotland than familiar. The moment we got off the bus with almost no idea where we were going, wandering through the streets of Edinburgh as the sun went down and it got dark, I just felt a kinship with Scotland. Even as we walked down the street from Castle Rock Hostel, a hostel tucked into an old stone building in the shadow of Edinburgh castle, in desperate attempts to find food, dodging past drunk older men, I felt strangely at home (maybe it was because the situation wasn't so different than a late night in Berkeley, I dunno). We ate pizza in Scotland and got the honor of seeing not one but two stag parties starring men in princess costumes. 

We walked to a farmer's market in the hopes of finding some world famous homemade marshmallows and in doing so traversed the streets of Edinburgh on a beautiful, early morning. The cobbled streets, the rows of houses, the perfect weather - I didn't feel like a tourist. I felt like I had returned after an extended time away, almost as if I knew where I was going. 

All the pictures above are from Edinburgh Castle, a castle that's also a museum that's also a beautiful spot to view the entire city. We got a nice tour but it was even more fun to just walk through all the many parts of the castle, including a war memorial, a tower with the crown jewels, and a war museum. The views were spectacular and the wind was powerful. There was a wildness in Scotland, despite the fact that there were cobblestones instead of grass, tall buildings instead of mountains. I felt like I was standing in the middle of history, that somehow nothing had moved in the last few hundred years. 

We took a day trip out to the Highlands. It's an interesting feeling you get being out there. There is mostly just one road and all around you sights like the ones below, just mountains, grass, and hundreds of small lochs. It's calming and refreshing. It's also wrought with turmoil and history. The whole bus ride was filled with stories of warring clans, of an unstable monarchy, of unwanted change and adaptation. 

No Nessie :( 

During a night tour, we learned all about the darker side of Edinburgh, of influential people gambling in hidden dens, of doctors that stole corpses in order to study them for research, their skin supposedly used to create a book that we later learned was housed in the The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. We went to the National Museum in the search of the book, and to clear up confusion about the shifts in power with the British monarchy. 

I had a moment when I saw the name "RITCHIE" etched into an old church pew that was housed inside. 

"This must be why I feel so at home," I had thought. My dad's name is Ritchey, named after my grandma's maiden name. While she was raised strictly German, I became convinced in this moment that somehow, somewhere, one of my ancestors was from Scotland. Real or not, I suddenly had a very real, very visceral excuse as to why I loved Edinburgh so much. Why it felt so familiar. 

Edinburgh was absolutely stunning. It was such a beautiful and indescribable fusion of old and new, of feelings of modernity mixed with a deep, ingrained sense of history. I bought my tartan scarf like a tourist and walked down the cobbled streets like I had lived there for months. There was just such a comfort walking in its streets, breathing the Highland air. I want to go back so badly, spend weeks there instead of days. I want to go back to make sure it wasn't a fluke.