Edinburgh Life

I have spent a month in Edinburgh now, and here’s what I have been up to:

My friend Kaitlin came up here from London, and we spent a few days hillwalking and whisky-distillery visiting in Pitlochry. The weather was decent, and Pitlochry quite charming. Especially, when the lady in the distillery who sold us the tickets for the tour recognized me from the pub where we had had a few pints the night before. I had asked for what I was always drinking - Guinness and Black - which sparked banter at the bar with several bar staff and locals who were making fun of people who ordered Guinness and Black, but mostly of the young man behind the bar who had admitted to this sin to make me feel better. Guinness and Black is Guinness beer with a big splash of blackcurrant cordial.

On the train ride back to Edinburgh, Kaitlin mentioned that she liked riding trains. After picking up some of her stuff from my place, she would have had 6 more hours of train rides in front of her that same day to go back to London. Unfortunately, I put us on a wrong train which didn’t stop at my place but went almost all the way to Glasgow. After getting back to Edinburgh, she did make her London train, but ended up spending much more time on trains than anticipated. Lucky her.

My friends Inga and Michi from Munich concluded their walking holiday in the Cairngorms with a visit in Edinburgh and made me drink at least one more pint than I wanted, which led to a midnight snack at McDonalds - shame on me. I also saw the Irish musician Glen Hansard in the little bar that we got drunk in - although, the next morning I wasn’t so sure anymore if it had really been him. It was an extremely relaxed visit - maybe because I spent several hours lying in the sun in Princes Street Gardens while my visitors visited Edinburgh castle.

I visited my friend Paul in Glasgow. We saw Star Trek in the charming Grosvenor Cinema which had couches in the back! We also went to A Play, a Pie and a Pint in Oran Mor, where they showed a play about cyclist Marco Pantani, which was well done and quite moving, even though I don’t really care for professional cycling.

I went to another networking event. This one was organized by the network of the four Edinburgh universities and happened at Heriot-Watt University in the outskirts of Edinburgh. The event was about the interface between policy making and academia, therefore right up my alley. Most folks was academic, but there were a few people from the Scottish Government, and government agencies. After the obligatory initial awkwardness, I met a few very friendly people, one of whom I’ve had coffee with since.

I got me a bike! Since my place is about 4 miles (6 km) from the city centre, and I don’t want to spend 3 quid everytime I go into town, I was really happy to find a tall enough bike at the Bike Station, a charity that fixes donated bikes and sells them for a good cause. I still have to get used to the bent-over sitting on it, since it’s a mountainbike - sit-upright-bikes aren’t very common in Britain as it seems - but with a bike and Edinburgh’s great cyclepath network I’m feeling much more mobile.

I have chatted a bit with my flatmate. She is very laid-back, and when I was worried about having so many guests right after moving in, she was just really cool about it. She also owns OS Landranger maps (1:50 000) which cover almost all of Scotland. And, as it turned out today, she has walked the Thorsborne Trail in Australia as well! And fought with the coconuts there!

And finally, I climbed Arthur’s Seat and walked in the Pentlands, and I have been applying for jobs and studying. I am taking online classes at Coursera, and I have finished Introduction to Philosophy, Introduction to Sustainability, Model Thinking, and Microeconomics Principles. Right now I am taking An Introduction to Interactive Programming in Python (check out my Blackjack game - just open the link and hit play), An Introduction to Operations Management, and Introduction to Art: Concepts and Techniques (not sure if I’m sticking with this one).