It takes nearly 10 hours to get there and when I arrive, only a bleak concrete jungle and miserable rain greets me. Welcome to Scotland…
Strangely enough, I’ve never been to Scotland before. Carlyle is the closest I’ve gotten. The riverside is a bit depressing. The M8 highway kinda splits the city in half and I’m pretty miffed the next morning trying to navigate across the damn bridge in order to reach the conference venue by subway. Locating the subway station is easy, getting there obviously isn’t. If I had a car (and a driver’s licence) I’d be on the other side already but have to wander aimlessly for a while before finally spotting a pedestrian bridge. I get even more miffed after hearing we missed the visit to Auchentoshan distillery due to our late arrival last evening.
The subway is great though. Small narrow platforms and the train is a miniature bastard child of TfL and Helsinki tube/metro trains. Don’t mind the gap, mind your head! Anyway, another orange tube spotted (last one was in Brussels)! And the Glasgow university does look quite grand. The main building is like a miniature castle and if those oldish buildings are researcher hideouts I’m a bit jealous.
The conference programme is fortunately above average but the usual social corruption drags us to Glasgow city chambers reception where I politely try to guzzle a glass of urine like substance declared to be wine whilst admiring the (admittedly beautiful) premises. Torture. After a few pints in a pub next door we manage to stumble into a Persian-style restaurant (KoolBa). The food is gorgeous! No wonder it was voted the Scottish (?) restaurant of the year. A lucky and a totally accidental find which quite possibly saved the night.
Raindeer 0 – Scotland 1
Somehow me and the city just didn’t get along and at some point I realised I was comparing Glasgow to London, which one probably shouldn’t do. Or maybe it was just the weather, smothering congestion and the lack of time which made me feel a bit depressed about Glasgow. Too bad the powers to be didn’t deem it worthwhile to hold the conference in Edinburgh. I might have preferred that (and the fllight would have been direct). Oh well, maybe next time Anyway: Haggis – check, whiskey – check, umbrella – check (they actually gave us one with the conference proceedings, funny, and very thoughtful of them). And once again I barely make it to the connecting flight at Heathrow.
Raindeer spotted: 0 (forgot to look in the mirror I guess)