Balmoral

I needed to get out of Aberdeen. Something fierce.

So yesterday I took a bus along the Royal Deeside, thus named because it is a road built alongside the Dee River so that the Queen could easily get to her residence (and by residence I mean castle) in Balmoral. You know that exquisite scene in the movie The Queen, where she is at the Balmoral Castle, in the highlands, and her life is in shambles, and suddenly she looks up and there's a magnificent stag just standing there, peacefully? Trust me, it's a turning point in the film. Here-- you can watch the scene yourself: the first 3:30 takes place where I was yesterday:



Here are some of the pictures I took from the little day trip. You can see more of them on my Photobucket site, in the Scotland album. [My my, isn't THIS a media-savvy post?]





The Castle at Balmoral (the Royal Family's residence in Scotland)




Crathie, the small village outside of Balmoral Castle


It was wonderfully freeing, especially because I made my own way to the top, avoiding all the tourist routes. In fact, I don't think there were any "designated trails" on the hill I climbed. All the better. And no chance of getting lost (yes, I know it's what you were thinking) because I could always see the Dee, and Balmoral castle below me.

On the way to the top I got in some good rock climbing (on rocks so old that they crumbled, much to my simultaneous amusement and terror), some self-portraits in the forest and at the summit (including one of me putting a stone on the Cairn--or the Ebenezer, perhaps-- at the top), walked through fields covered in 8 inches (at least!) of ancient undergrowth, and in the process of all this managed to coat myself in sufficient quantities of dirt, moss and other unidentified foliage, thorns (yes, lots of thorns--especially near the crumbly rocks), and of course I managed to find some sort of goo to get all over my jeans. I shall save the water in which I wash this climbing outfit then put it into an oaken barrel along with some wheat kernels, and let it sit for 30 years, and then proceed to distill my very own single-malt whiskey. I shall call it "Elisiker", and it shall belong to the Eliselay Scotches--akin to Islay whiskies, but...woodsier.

I had a great deal of fun on the hike. I discovered lots of enormous slugs (which I poked with a twig), the ruins of a small house or shed, lots of deer tracks (and poop), and a small meadow near the peak in which I laid me down amongst the wildflowers and whispery mountain breezes for a wonderful nap...until it started to snow. I climbed several fences, trespassed through a few backyards, stumbled through two boulder fields, walked smack into an expansive marshy-swamp (but escaped before my shoes were completely soaked), and saw the biggest bunny I have ever seen on this earth. I sang old gospel songs all the way down, eating raw sugar-snap peas (which I took one at a time from my pack) between verses.

After my hike the weather turned blustery and bone-chilling, so I took the bus to a quaint nearby village called Ballater. I found a little coffee/tea shop where I sat at a table with two older women from Aberdeen, who were on a day journey in the highlands. They tried to share their tea-cakes with me but I politely declined, explaining that I was drinking coffee and it didn't seem appropriate to eat teacakes whilst drinking coffee.

Then I got back on a bus (no Misadventures with Public Transport the whole trip! I'm a little frightened about what this might mean for my Hungary and Germany tips...you have to understand how this peculiar type of Karma works for me, I guess..) I day-dreamed all the way back to the Union Street Bus Station in Aberdeen, watching the River Dee flow merrily alongside the road. The world was new again.

Today I had much work to do, so I revisited the "secret" cafe, whose name is actually Kilau (see the photo album link above for a few pictures of the coffee shop, as well as my study partner, Julie). During the research I realized that I will only be in Scotland for little more than 48 hours. I packed up my things and headed out in search of a record store, because I had to buy the Stornoway album before I left--it's a Scottish band I mentioned before, and you can't get the album on iTunes. I found a store called 1-Up, which is my new favorite thing in the world. I wiled away the afternoon there, delighted by the large selection of great Indie albums, as well as many favorite bands both old and new-- until closing, at which point I had to make the painful decision to purchase the following (but a subset of the many more I wanted to purchase):

Sigh No More (Mumford & Sons)
Fire: The Jimi Hendrix Collection
Gold (The Velvet Underground)
The Very Best of Nina Simone
The Sound of The Smiths
London Calling (The Clash)
and, of course, Beachcomber's Windowsill, by Stornoway.

While I was finalizing my purchases with the slowest sales clerk I have ever encountered (she even read, with care, all THREE of the receipts generated by the sale), the other sales clerk explained that she and my cashier, Princess Thorough-Pants, were sisters, and that their dad had owned this shop since the 1970s. She also told me they had vinyls downstairs in the basement that I should check out..but unfortunately it was already closing time (well, it was PAST closing by the time Captain Slowface finally handed me my bag). I will do my darnedest to get back to this magical musicland before I leave. I've already listened to the Smith's album (perfection) and the Stornoway album (haunting, beautiful, and very Scottish). I'm finishing Nina Simone as I type. Love me some Nina.

Right now I've gotta get back to work. And by work, I mean half-assed editing of various grant proposals (bleeech) combined with simultaneous full-assed listening to...oh, who should be next? Let's go with Velvet Underground. Yes.

T.G.I.F.

That's all I got.

LoTR

I can't go very long without reading my favorite book. I finished Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises yesterday afternoon and then realized I had read everything I brought with me on the trip. So I went to a used bookstore after work and bought my second copy of Lord of the Rings. Ahhhh....wonderfulness.

I don't get the big deal with Hemingway, anyway. If you want to understand the disillusionment of a generation, all you have to do is watch a few minutes of MTV's The Real World, or observe any number of platinum blondes with fake nails driving third-generation Hummers whilst drinking Venti Soy Non-fat Lite Raspberry Mochafrappacchinos and texting friends about how disappointed she is with the latest Gossip Girl plot twist and how annoyed she is about the BP oil spill, because, like, can't they get over it already?

Now *that's* disillusionment. And we didn't even have a World War to disillusion us--we did it all by ourselves. So take that, Ernie.

Although, in the end I liked the book okay. It made me want to go to Spain. That's how disillusioned I am-- that I read a book chronicling the subtle but poignant love affairs or denials, waning friendships and existential crises among a group of young expatriates, and I thought the best part was Hemingway's description of the Matador's shiny green pants. Oh well. I do love green pants. And shiny things.

Yesterday Guido and I wrote a book proposal and sent it to Cambridge University Press. We did it in one hour, which got Guido very exited. He thinks we broke some sort of book-proposal-writing record. Maybe CUP will give us a trophy. That'd be nice. Maybe it will be shiny. OR green.

Today I am working on proposals for grants again (and the peasants rejoiced?). But if I work hard, then I can go home and read more Tolkien! (and the geeks rejoiced!) But really, how can one help it? --here, surrounded by shires and sheeps and Lothians and...well, the mood is trés apropos. As it were. This weekend I will take a day trip out of Aberdeenshire to do some "tramping" of my own. It has been far too long...

American Populace Enthralled By Idea Of Getting Enthralled By World Cup

Oh how I love The Onion (from which I took above headline). It makes me miss the homeland.

I haven't written a real post in a long time. Part of that is because I'm working really, really, ridiculously hard and that diminishes the potential for boredom which diminishes the potential for adventures. I haven't even had my Obligatory Misadventure With Public Transport In A Foreign Country yet. Maybe something special awaits me in Hungary or Germany. I leave Scotland in exactly one week. ONE WEEK!

Also, I happened to have a very difficult weekend, and so haven't felt much like writing about anything uplifting because I've been feeling pretty rotten. In shambles, in fact. And being in shambles alone in a far distant country (no matter how green) is tough. Nay-- awful. So yeah. That's what's up. But you know, the sun is back today, for the first time in almost a week, and...what else. And I got to have a chocolate cookie at breakfast today, so there's that.

Though through these last few days I have had something of a revelation: when life gives you lemons, read The Onion. You can write that down.

Here's a smart-alecky little interactive feature from aforementioned news source, in line with the title of this post. I do enjoy how Americans are able to make fun of themselves. I think it's fairly unique, actually. At least I don't get that hearty sense of self-deprecation from any other nation. U. S. A. ! U. S. A. !

US 1, England 1

Okay, so the game wasn't entirely bad. We were far too often playing on the defensive, though. Not a strong showing in the latter half in particular. I ended up just watching the match in my room at Arkaig house because I was feeling introverted. I'd been too much of an extrovert Friday night-- a friend and I went out for dinner and dancing, and had a grand time but only left the club at 4 am, by which time the sun was already up. Weird.

But enough about that. Right now I'm killing time before the same friend (she is from France and is also visiting Guido this month) and I study downtown at a café *so* hip that it doesn't have a sign out front, and the door isn't marked. You have to "hear" about its location from other people. Hilarious! I will sneak in my camera and take pictures. I find it entirely amusing that there's a coffee joint-- not even a club or restaurant-- that is soooo cool that it can only be found by the most elite of all Aberdeen's hipsters. Ha! Needless to say I have huge expectations.

For now I just wanted to share a little story about Mark, my office mate, who told me where to find this hidden café, and who is fast becoming one of my favorite applied theologians ever. His wife Ellen, who I just met Friday afternoon, is also one of those people you only meet for a moment but you still sense their intrinsic fabulousness. They are both ordained preachers in the Church of Scotland--they met at Union Seminary in NYC, in fact.

Anyway, Mark is in the process of finishing up his dissertation, though he's already got a position as a lecturer at the Uni and also is a chaplin down in Edinburgh once a week, and other things. He rightly complains, "I'm an applied theologian. What's the point of writing an esoteric book when I could be out ministering?" True that. Alas, the powers of the academy being such as they are, he's been coming in to the office to get a certain number of words written on the diss each day. I can empathize with the humdrumness of slogging through certain chapters, boy howdy.

So there we were Friday afternoon; we'd both been quietly working at our respective desks for an hour or so uninterrupted--Mark type type typing and me, well, translating translating translating, and of course talking to myself now and again. After a while I hear Mark stop typing, sigh an enormous Scottish sigh, lean back in his leather office chair and say under his breath, with all composure,
"Ach... what would Jesus type?"

I laughed so hard at this unexpected externalized monologuing that I spat out my coffee AND managed to snort, in that order. We both had a good laugh, because it's true in some sense that Mark does want to write what Jesus would write-- he's doing Christian theology after all. Not so much the same for me, as I'm working on translating a particularly dense, neo-Kantian philosophical treatise on quantum mechanics these days. [Caveat on this: it's fascinating. The essay was written by this woman Grete Hermann, who, because she wasn't in the right social circles in 1930s Germany and she wasn't a MAN-- didn't get very much attention. But now that I've been studying her philosophy of physics I can't believe that this particular thesis got lost until now! It's so good-- so amazingly deep. She GOT stuff, you know, about quantum physics, that many of her contemporaries debated for decades to come. And then she explained what she "got" in a philosophically careful and deep way, which many of the physicists themselves couldn't do-- and that includes Heisenbergy, Dirac, Pauli, and others--because they weren't trained in philosophy (KANTian philosophy, to boot) the way she was. It's both an exhilarating discovery and a tragic historical fact that this amazing woman, who's known (if at all) for work on a few mathematical theorems--was nevertheless ignored by the quantum physicists. Caveat over.]

When Mark left the office for the day ("At last! I've met my quota!" he cried, and then packed up his computer and papers faster than you can say "noggle that niggle"), he stopped over my desk, put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Just think Elise: what would Jesus translate."

A fair question, Mark. A fair question.