Tell me about a Scotland please!

[the_cube]

Hello there! Thank you for popping in here!

My name is Victoria and I'm a 23 year old girl from Sweden. Between the third and seventeenth of May I'll be in Edinburgh, rummaging through the streets in search of "Scottish" culture, while scoffing down Haggis and Scotch Whisky of course

I am looking for penpals, and/or kind souls who care to tell me a wee bit about Scotland and its many wonders. Perhaps you are Scottish yourself, or you have been there and can tell me about different places one should visit(or avoid). In return, I can tell you everything I know about Sweden.

In any case, please write to me! Ye won't regret it

Sincerely,
Vicky


(I hope this is more to your liking Celyn and Polwarth )

[kathyv]

You make Edinburgh sound like a flea market at a carnival. . .

My advice is to avoid massive amounts of haggis and whisky, or load up on the whisky, so you can stand a lot of the haggis, or just go straight for the shortbread.

In Edinburgh, I'd go to the castle, Calton Hill, walk up and down the Royal Mile, all the museums and the Princes Street garden. But that's just what I like.

[the_cube]

To Kathyv: Thank you for the good advice, I'll keep it in mind while I'm in Edinburgh

I'm sorry if it came out that way I certainly did not intend to make Edinburgh sound like a flea market (although I do love flea markets in general). I virtually know nothing about Scotland, that's why I'm advertising for information.




(I'm also not a native English-speaker, so forgive me if I sound weird or spell incorrectly)

[kathyv]

No worries! Your English is certainly better than my Sweedish! LOL

Just expect Edinburgh to be wonderful and dirty and old and modern and crowded and interesting and beautiful and wet and full of smells and lots of activity and interesting little out of the way places and people. . . like any city in the world.

I have a friend who is visiting Edinburgh right now and she says it reminds her of home!

[ANDY-J3]

I don't think Edinburgh is like any other city because really it's two seperate cities combined. The new town is like other cities but because of my interest in history I've always been more fascinated by the old town adjacent to the castle and Royal mile. It's eclectic mix of architecture and buildings of historical interest and closes etc. make it unique.

[Polwarth]

And, if you add in Leith.... that's three for the price of one!

[The Martians]

Are you insane?

"Hello, I'm a 23 year old Swedish girl coming to visit"

Do you have any idea how many horror films start that way? That's right, all of them. Add that to the fact that Edinburgh is a little....shall we say, "prone to the weird", and you've got a recipe for disaster.

Let us explain: Edinburgh is basically a grave. It started off, around four thousand years ago, with a body being dumped in a shallow pit between two big rocky outcrops. Nobody found that one, so more bodies were dumped there. Eventually a small body-dumping industry sprang up and "Dunedin", as Edinburgh was originally called, became a bit of an industry. Some of the body-dumpers got bored with the long commute and built themselves a small village.

Shops, city walls and a castle soon followed. The people who worked as body-dumpers eventually died, and their bodies were, in turn, dumped into the now bulging graveyards. The city's only fresh supply of drinking water was used to dump bodies, every available bit of ground around the city walls was used to dump bodies, extra people had to be shipped in to deal with the work.

These extra people, in their turn, died.

Guess what happened to the bodies?


In short, there are (by some estimates) around fifty million dead people in Edinburgh. One small graveyard, about the size of your average IKEA, contains a quarter of a million official burials, and is probably home to several times that number. It used to sit in a small valley, it's more of a hill now.


Now as the teachings of the Christian church, Joss Whedon, George Romero and Doctor Who teach us, there will come a day in the future when the dead will stand alongside us. The people of Edinburgh will be outnumbered 100-1 by zombies....or 50-1 if it happens to be during the Edinburgh Festival or at New Year.


There's a great whisky shop at the bottom of the Royal Mile, Arthurs Seat is well worth the climb, and you should definitely check out the live music scene, "Sandy Bells" and "The Royal Oak" are two particularly good pubs for that kind of thing.



Love,
The Martians
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