On the Fringes of Scotland

 

Alright; now about Scotland, the next item I crossed off my bucket list a couple of weeks ago. I had a lovely time visiting Edinburgh and the highlands, even though it was a fairly short trip at less than three full days. I'll break up the visit into three parts: the food, the highlands, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

Edinburgh Castle

The Food 

Let's start at a very good place to start: breakfast. The pic above shows a typical Scottish breakfast, comprising the usual eggs and bacon, sausages, tomato, potatoes, a nice and crispy slice of mushroom, and toast, all of which I was well acquainted with. The new entrants were haggis (the brown circular cutlet-like piece), and black pudding, which despite its name turned out to be a black circular cutlet-like piece. Now here is where you vegetarians (all two of you, yes) stop reading and skip to the highlands. Black pudding is made from pork or beef blood, fat, and oatmeal, and is as sinful as you imagine. It's also quite tasty, despite being a bit dry.

Haggis is a mixture of sheep heart, liver, and lungs coupled with oatmeal, onions, and spices. You can eat it like a cutlet in the above picture, or with 'neeps and tatties' as in the pic on the right. Now these are actually cunningly disguised turnips and potatoes, which you discover later, much to your chagrin. The Scots call haggis a pudding too, but don't believe them. This isn't the pudding your mom fed you in India when you were all cold and feverish. What's more, you should be in the highlands by now. 

 Scotland offers other kinds of food as well, like this plate of fish and chips for the wife's dinner, and this nice bit of steak for the ever-hungry teenage boy. Said wife was also very happy with the devilishly well-made eggs she had for breakfast, and wound up skipping both lunch and dinner that day.

Fish, chips, and strangely enough, peas

 

 

 

 

Deviled eggs with the inevitable haggis below

 I would be remiss if I did not include the wonderful pulled pork roll we consumed at this appropriately titled restaurant, Oink. You decide your size, you pick your bread, choose your stuffing - which includes the omnipresent haggis, of course - and pick your sauce. You then plonk down if a seat's available, and dissolve into a state of bliss until you lick the sauces from your fingers and your stomach congratulates you on a job well done.

 

You know what would be remiss too, don't you? Oh, you do. Much to my surprise, you can't ask for Scotch in Scottish restaurants. Nor can you insist on single malt with a splash of ice, like you do in every Indian Bar and Restaurant ever. You have to go with whiskey, making sure you pronounce the 'e'. If you are a connoisseur like me, you can ask for a flight of whiskeys, sip all of them, and promptly forget the names of each one of them. They were all very good though, ranging from the less smokey to the very peatey. I slept quite peacefulley that night after the whiskeys.

The Highlands

Scotland is divided into two, as per our tour guide and bus driver, Neil. The highlands, which ye'll take, and the lowlands which I'll take to make sure I be in Scotland afore ye. Stretching from slightly north of Edinburgh to pretty much every other part of the country, the highlands are mountainous, sparsely populated, and comprise forests, castles, coastlines, and thirty three thousand lakes, called Lochs just to confuse the average tourist. Now the average tourist would make a beeline for Loch Ness, since they would have heard of Nessy, the monster that lives there. Not us though, the clever tourists that we are. Being brought up on a steady diet of Tintin comics, we headed to Loch Lomond, the closer (and more affordable) tour offered by Rabbie's. The lake and the surrounding hills are drop dead gorgeous, and is absolutely a must-visit if you are in the area. 

Inveraray, north-west of Loch Lomond

 We also got to visit multiple castles, some of which you may have seen on shows like Outlander or Game of Thrones, or in movies like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In fact, Doune Castle has a souvenir shop that sells not just Python t-shirts and hats, but coconuts as well. 

Doune Castle, of Outlander & Winterfell fame (just S1E1 though)

Kilchurn Castle, stronghold of the Campbell Clan

 Cows in the highland have a shaggy mane, powerful horns, and are called Coos, to make them look cuter to tourists. They are apparently the oldest breed of cattle in the world, and have survived for centuries as Malayalees hadn't made the long voyage over yet. The three we met were called Hamish, Honey, and Baxter (the Efficient one). 

 

Edinburgh Festival Fringe

August 1947 witnessed two historic events. One was the completion of a 4300-mile long voyage on a wooden raft by Thor Heyerdahl, and the other was the start of the Fringe Festival at Edinburgh. The story goes that the Edinburgh International Festival was created to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War. Eight theater groups who were not invited to this festival went ahead and did their own thing on the fringes of this event, thus establishing the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which now attracts millions of people from all over the world.  The festival organizers are committed to include anyone with a story to tell and a venue willing to host them. This makes August a crazy time to visit the city though, with streets packed with tourists, locals, and artists.

Street Performer at the Fringe Festival

The Royal Mile, connecting Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood House

We attended an hour of stand-up comedy where five performers took turns to come up on stage for ten minutes each, which was a lot of fun. We then went to KC Shornima's show at a bunker nearby, which we thoroughly enjoyed. I'd highly recommend checking her out - she's really good! The last was a rock show by this tribute band from Australia, called 27 Club. They play cover versions of songs from Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, and Amy Winehouse, all of whom died at 27. 

And Finally...

 I loved Scotland. The people were friendly and welcoming, the food was great, and the weather was just perfect during our visit. It's a very inclusive country, which actively invests in human rights. They were the first country in the world to protect, in law, the right to access free period products for everyone who needs them. I was pleasantly surprised to find tampons and pads in restrooms, marked as free. Their LGBTQI+ community seems vibrant and active, with a clear voice during the Fringe festival. They take pride in their heritage and culture without making a huge deal out of it. I'd visit again, in a heartbeat.

What To Expect When Expecting A Trip To Europe

Or How One Can Run Out of Funny Titles for Blog Posts

Anyway.

So you have your budget ironed out, your dates finalized, flight tickets booked and you are searching the Web for tips on how to make the most out of your European vacation. I'm not sure if this will help with all your questions, but here's what worked for me as an Indian traveling to Austria and Italy with two kids and one wife. Your mileage may vary.

Transport

A lot of people swear by renting a car and driving all over Europe, much like Shah Rukh Khan and other heroes from Bollywood movies. We didn't try it because we felt it could be expensive and would add an added complexity of finding parking, especially in big cities like Rome and Vienna. Moreover, we would be in Austria before April 14, the official start of spring, and all cars were required to have snow tires. Coming from Bangalore, where we hardly have tires, let alone snow, we decided to avoid renting a car.

We booked all our inter-city travel on trains, and used trams, subways, buses and Uber for getting around within cities. OBB is the site to use for all travel within Austria, and Italia Rail for Italy. I did try Trenitalia too, but the website chewed up my purchase and that was ₹5000 down the drain. I'm not going to link to their website, that should show them.

I would advise reserving your seats, if your booking does have that option. We made the mistake of not booking seats ahead of time for the fairly long journey from Salzburg to Venice, and had to stand for a while, with two tired children and four tiring bags in tow.

We bought metro passes in Rome and Vienna, and the card we got in Salzburg allowed us to not just get free rides in buses, but cheap entry to museums and other places of interest as well. Highly recommended.

And oh, all trains, buses, trams and bullock carts in Austria arrive on time. All the time.

Accommodation

Airbnb worked like a charm for us everywhere, apart from Salzburg and Hallstatt where I couldn't find homes we liked. Most houses were very well stocked up on basic groceries like bread, jam, coffee, Nutella, wine and beer. The time invested early on in looking at photos of the homes, reading reviews and interacting with the hosts over the Airbnb app was definitely worthwhile. The hosts were professional, welcoming and helpful. Special shout out to Thomas, Paolo and Giovanni, who went the extra mile to make us comfortable.

Connectivity

You have the option of picking up prepaid SIM cards from India based providers like Matrix and Roam1. I use this when I travel to the US, but thought I'd try out SIMs from local providers in Austria and Italy, as they seemed cheap - around €10 - and came with pretty good data plans. I did not have any problem with buying these in both countries, and setup was a breeze. 3G connectivity helped a lot as we could use Maps, look up places of interest on Wikipedia, check Trip Advisor reviews of restaurants and spam our family and friends on Whatsapp with pictures every five minutes. That said, quite a few places had free wifi, so connectivity really wasn't that big a deal apart from when we were on the road.

The Austria SIM card did not work in Italy, but the one I got in Italy worked in Austria, although I was told it would not. I'm still not sure why, but found it interesting.

Weather

We had picked the shoulder season, the period when winter eases off into spring and tourists haven't yet swarmed all over the place. India having school holidays in April helps too, as most of the western world has their summer vacation two to three months later. Now the problem with traveling to Austria around the beginning of spring is that it still gets really, really cold.

We have one kind of weather, we Malayalees, even when we are from Bangalore. It's almost always hot, and the temperature does not change beyond a couple of degrees Celsius when it rains. We were just not prepared for the wild swings in temperature in places like Salzburg, where it was fifteen degrees at 3pm and two degrees by 5:45. We had jackets and sweaters to be sure, but had not thought to pack scarves, caps and mufflers. Sindha offered me a dupatta, but I wouldn't be caught dead wearing one, of course. Would have looked pretty silly.

Useful Sites

We wouldn't have had such a smooth trip without two amazing sites: the very practical and funny Reid's Italy and the exhaustive Rick Steve's Europe. Pay special attention to Reid's suggestions around booking online for Museum visits, as it saved us many hours of long wait times. We could not do this at all places though, the dome in Florence for instance had a two hour wait. Equipping your kids with essential travel supplements like iPads and phones will make your wait easier, of course.

Trip Advisor was a godsend for restaurant, hotel and museum reviews. We also read several blogs, some for couples traveling alone, some for single parents with kids and some for single dogs traveling without puppies. Also, as always, Google is your friend. 

David and the Taj

I was not prepared for the size. I had seen pictures, had read up articles which told me what to expect, I had had a similar experience before, but I just wasn't prepared. Wasn't prepared for the size, the beauty, the sheer perfection that is Michelangelo's David.

David stands tall at the Accademia Gallery in Florence. There is a replica available at the Piazza della Signoria, which is now largely ignored. Tourists make a beeline for the Accademia almost as soon as they land in Florence.








We had reserved tickets a couple of months in advance, which helped us avoid the line. It does cost €3 extra, but it definitely beats having to wait for an hour or more. We used the excellent Select Italy site for all our reservations for the various museums and other sites of interest in the country.



Almost everyone rushes past the other sculptures and paintings to view the star of the Accademia, but we wanted to take our time and savour the suspense a bit. We spent the first few minutes admiring the plaster study for The Rape of the Sabines, and the other paintings by Botticelli, Perugino, et al. A long hallway came up next, which featured four of Michelangelo's nonfiniti, or unfinished sculptures, titled Slaves. He had also started on a sculpture of St Matthew, which stands next to the four Slaves. Sindha took her time looking at these sculptures, but I couldn't control myself anymore. David was looming up ahead.

If you include the base, David stands at a colossal 15ft, towering over Goliaths in the crowd below. I was not prepared for the size, nor for the perfectionism of Michelangelo. Take a look at David's right hand for instance, at the veins standing out, fingers holding the stone for his sling. Look at the intensity in his eyes as he stares to his left, presumably at his enemy, later taken as staring towards Rome.

I spent forty minutes looking at David. I took over a hundred pictures. I walked around him multiple times. I watched other people looking at him, trying to find things that I hadn't spotted. I read up articles on Michelangelo and David, wanting to know more. I was awestruck. I was blown away. I cried.

I do not know why the sculpture moved me so much. The last time this happened was when I saw the Taj for the first time, almost twenty five years ago. I still do not know why I had cried when I saw that stunning monument. It was perhaps the most beautiful work of art I had ever seen. Up until this April morning in Florence, when I saw a masterpiece by one of the world's most famous artists.

Art is magical. Art is powerful. Art can move you to tears. I have learned that now.

Travel in Austria

Austria is a strange country. When the railway platform displays the arrival time of a train as 9:07, it arrives exactly at 9:07 and not anytime between 11 and 2, as it would in normal places.

They aren't content with just trains being on time, by the way. Cities like Vienna have buses, trams and five different subway lines apart from the regular inter-city trains. All this, but not a single autorickshaw charging oneandaff anywhere in sight. Weird.

We made use of all modes of transport in Austria. Buses, where you could either buy tickets from the driver after getting on board, or use a city card which entitles you to hop on to any bus, tram or subway train within the city. The Salzburg city card for instance worked really well for us, as it allowed us free use of buses, as well as entry to almost all the major tourist attractions.

Vienna had trams too, which were Spider-Man approved:

We used the Austrian Federal Railways portal to book tickets for inter city travel, like getting from Vienna to Hallstatt. Like pretty much everything else in Austria, the site is efficient and works well all the time.

These trains have a catered dining service called Henry, which serves coffee and sandwiches. No samosas though.

We hopped on to a ferry as well, connecting the Hallstatt railway station to the city center.

The only problem we faced was on the train from Salzburg to Venice, where we hadn't reserved seats in advance. We had to walk across carriages with our luggage looking for unallocated seats, which could have been avoided if I had the presence of mind to book seats as well. No one really makes room for you either, unlike our trains in India. Again, efficient and effective, but not really the friendliest place in the world.

But it is one of the most beautiful. More on that later.

Mohan Lal's Favourite City

I blame Sai Kumar. I don't think I'd have wanted to visit Vienna if not for that one line remark from Aaram Thamburan, where he reminds Mohan Lal of his favorite city. Of all the places in all the world, why Vienna? Eighteen years later, a wife, two kids and a couple of weeks away from work, I decided to find out.

Planning for a European holiday starts at least a year in advance. I wanted to do this the right way, so I spent a few months googling for 'Vacation in Europe'. I then took a couple of months trying to create a Google Map with those nice red pin thingummys spread over Europe, indicating where we planned to visit. Another month was spent in trying to locate the right travel planning site which would take those red pins and give me a detailed travel itinerary, including costs of tickets, coffee and samosas. I spent hours on sites that provided detailed information on the weather, what to wear, food, drink and traveling with children.

Armed with all this, I was ready for the board meeting with my wife and kids. I outlined the principles I had come up with, spoke about the areas we would cover, and was about to get into the do's and don'ts when my six year old promptly vetoed the whole plan as it did not include Paris. Why Paris? Because his best friend has been there and he needs to go too. Not to be outdone, my eleven year old daughter jumped in and asked for Athens. Because Percy Jackson. I was wondering how to include Vienna, Paris and Athens in my proposed tour of the Scottish distilleries art museums of Scotland, when my wife, the Chairperson of the board, declared that we will visit Italy and Austria. Because Chairperson.

And that was that.

How to get to heaven and what to do there (Part 4)

You spend a good part of the next morning applying suntan lotion, as you discover you've turned a very dark shade of brown overnight. Of course, it would have helped to do this before your trip to the sunny, snow covered hills of Sonamarg, but you go ahead and apply it anyway. Better late than never, as you always say.

You spend the day dutifully visiting the Mughal gardens in Srinagar, as you've been instructed to by friends. You ooh and ah at the first garden, Shalimar, privately thinking that Lalbagh was better. The second, Nishat, does have its charm, though. Tulip, the third garden is surprisingly enough, all about tulips. You find red tulips, yellow tulips, orange, pink and a few other shades you never believed existed. You find that you've covered only a tenth of the park, but by then you have seen enough tulips to last you a lifetime.

Call me maybe

Travelers from India to the US frequently struggle with getting an inexpensive phone connection that works. I have tried various options over the years:

• Rented a prepaid phone from India which gets activated in the US: too expensive, no data plan.
• Used my India phone in the US: wound up with a phone bill higher than the cost of my smartphone.
• Used Google voice linked to my hotel phone: helpful only if you work out of the hotel all day, which sort of defeats the purpose of traveling to the US on work.

Thanks to a colleague at work, I think I have now stumbled upon an option that works best. Your mileage may vary, of course. This is what you do:

First, purchase a GoPhone from AT&T. There are two ways of doing this - one is to find a local AT&T store and purchase a SIM (or microsim if you prefer), or walk into any general store and pick up a $20 Samsung GoPhone (I tried Walgreens as it was the closest). You might also want to buy a $50 recharge card from the store while you are at it - will save you another trip.

I removed the SIM from the GoPhone and put it into my trusty Android phone. Followed instructions at the website and activated the number. Used the $50 recharge card and bought the monthly unlimited plan. Used the APN settings from this post,  restarted my phone and I was all set! I didn't get 3G, but EDGE is good enough for email, twitter and the occasional gchat with friends and family while on the road. The rate plan expires after a month, but the account should be active for another quarter and the phone number for another five months, which should help the next time I travel. Fingers crossed.

Meatspace

I have been doing a lot of traveling the past few weeks. Several train journeys, a couple of flights, long drives by car and a bus or two in between. As a result, I have also met a wide variety of people. For a person whose social life has been almost entirely on Twitter and Facebook lately, this was a refreshing change. 

 

The Twitterati are usually sarcastic, smart, clever with words and quick to take pot shots at all and sundry. Most of them work in IT or IT related industries. They usually think and tweet alike, most of the time anyway.  

 

My Facebook friends are mostly people I know in real life. We share family pictures, links to interesting websites and comment how much we have changed since we last met, which is usually a good twenty years back.

 

The people I met in meatspace the past few weeks came from all walks of life. An architect. A retired military man. An accountant. A business man who used to be a manual laborer. And I learnt something from each one of them.

 

The accountant taught me to smile at strangers, offer them food if you have some, share a joke with them and help them be comfortable during the journey. 

 

The retired military man showed me the value of being neat and tidy. Of holding your ground and getting people to do what's right. Helping your spouse and making her feel loved and cared for. Of enjoying life post retirement. 

 

The architect gave me tips on how to plan for the future. The laborer turned businessman helped me understand the power of determination, hard work and humility. 

 

I would not have learnt any of these online. The value of going out and meeting people, interacting with them, understanding them and ultimately learning from them, is immense. Even though the travel tired me out, I don't regret a minute of it. 

 

This is not to say there isn't value in being connected and active on the social networking sites. I enjoy that immensely. I have met some awesome people online, some of whom have turned into friends I will cherish for a lifetime. However, I do want to spend more time out in the sun talking to people who are from different walks of life, with different mindsets, different points of view. I am sure I will be richer by the experience. 

Posted via email from Mostly Charmless

Gold access

For the first time, I'm thankful to the credit card marketeers who sold me a Gold Mastercard a couple of years back. It got me admission into a neat little lounge at the Chennai Airport, where I could get a glass of beer, some excellent Chicken Kabab and much needed peace and quiet.

This entry has cleverly been filtered to prevent the you-know-whos of the world from advising me about airports and lounges and credit cards.

Man, I can be mean.

Over the weekend

* We really should have taken Mohd. Kaif. At least his family has experience in dealing with goons pelting stones at one's house.

* Sachin Tendulkar to appear in a comic book. About time.

* Phir Hera Pheri wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. They did manage to Indianise Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels quite well.

* Don't go for long drives in a non a/c car. Or at least, not during afternoons in summer

Hello, Delhi

Karol Bagh sucks. Found succour at Hotel Diplomat, in Chanakyapuri. Not a bad place, but the room rent is what you might pay at the Leela in Bangalore.

The voyage home

Over the atlantic again. Can't wait to get to Bangalore. Have a 2 day stopover at Chennai though - work! Damn.

Updates from the past few days

Yesterday was Wednesday. Nothing special. Opened a restroom door to find big lady inside, sitting on the throne. Lady yelled, I whoopsed and went into the other restroom. Was peeing when the door opened. Skinny lady this time. Lady went whoops, I went eeks. Have been carefully avoiding all unisex loos since.

Isn't-saying-much statement of the century, after watching The Da Vinci Code on Tuesday: The book was better.

Wednesday again. This lady does a presentation on the Change Management System used by the customer I'm visiting. Towards the end, she has a slide on the benefits of using the system, along with a picture of a cash register. I smile and say,"Oh, good one. Change management system, huh?". Lady blinks twice, doesn't get it. Smart boss lady to my right starts laughing. Joke explained to presenter lady, she says she is going to use that line in all her future presentations. I ask for royalties.

I am not a nice person. Fact. And that is unrelated to the above anecdotes.

Postcards From Greenville, SC

They close up part of Main Street on Friday evenings and put up stalls selling beer and hot dogs. A jazz band plays nearby, in front of the Hyatt hotel. I didn't quite see what the fuss was all about, really. Moreover, the beer was Budweiser Light, one of the most pathetic beers in the world. I just moved on after taking a few snaps.



Thought this was a mosque, at first glance. Interesting design. There are lots of churches here, just 100 metres apart. They don't call this the Bible Belt for nothing. 



Another church, thought the design was different enough to post about.



I had a couple of tacos here for dinner, washed down with a Mexican beer called Modelo. Not too bad, really.