Sunday 10 February 2013
8:14 AM
My Room, Dalkeith House
I awoke to the sickening sound of my brick of a phone vibrating on
the dresser beside me.
Jessica 8:14AM
Where are we meeting?
My groggy brain processed this for a minute before I realized I
had overslept. Today, I was going to the car boot sale in Edinburgh. Amber,
Jess, and I had agreed to leave at about 8:15ish. Now I needed to sound casual.
Me 8:16AM
No idea. How about the centre hall in 5?
Could I take a shower in five minutes? Well I was about to find
out.
For the record, I can’t take a shower in five minutes. I strode
into the centre hall at about 8:25, and was surprised to find that only Jess
was waiting for me. This made me feel a little bit better. Amber joined
shortly, and we caught Patty on the way out. She advised us to get some
shrapnel (small change), because the people wouldn’t have it early on.
We hopped on the 49, which conveniently took us less than a block
away from the parking garage. A “car boot sale” is the Scottish version of what
Wisconsinites might call a “flea market” or “meat swap.” The key difference
here is that a car boot sale takes place in a parking garage, where the people
unload their stuff from their car boot (what we would call a trunk) and they’ll
usually have a table too. In the case of Edinburgh, it takes place every Sunday
on floor -4 of a large parking garage a wee bit northeast of Prince’s Street.
Note: I think it is absolutely awesome how floors in the UK are labelled. The ground floor is labelled as G, which can be thought of as floor
“0.” From there, all floors up are in sequential order, as are all floors down.
In my opinion, this is infinitely simpler than skipping 0, and then having a
“B” floor, and then a “2B” and so on.
Moving back to the story, before we decided to go to the sale, we
stopped at the Starbucks adjacent to the parking garage to break up some of our
bills. To my knowledge, I have somehow never been in a Starbucks before.
Honestly, I’m not really sure how that happened, but I find it pretty funny
that my first Starbucks experience was in Scotland. All I got was a cinnamon
bun, having obviously missed breakfast.
When we were done in Starbucks, we went to the parking garage, and
took the lift down to floor -4. As the lift doors opened, my ears were filled
with the buzz of chatter that filled this damp, poorly lit parking garage. It
was immensely crowded, and as I dodged about the swarms of people I was filled
with two feelings. First, I more or less felt very comfortable maneuvering
about the people and examining the small booths of “treasure.” Culturally, I
could really feel the connection between this and a flea market back home.
However, at the same time there was an alien feeling to it. Every ounce of
familiarity was matched by the distinctly unfamiliar sensation of being in a
foreign market place.
One of the key differences I noticed, once I’d gotten past the
fact that it takes place in a dank underground parking garage, was that they
really aren’t big on bartering here. This kind of disappointed me, because one
of my favorite memories of Belizean marketplaces was that everything was
negotiable.
Regardless of this, I was still able to get a few deals. I found a
book that was printed in 1843 for £4, and I was able to get it for £2. This is
now the oldest book in my collection by 16 years. I also found an antique
nautical telescope which was selling for £12. The man was a bit harder to
negotiate with, and so I left for a wee bit, moved all my money out of my
wallet except for a tenner. This was a trick Cameron taught me, and since it
had served me well in Belize. I figured it would be worth a shot.
This time I walked up to him pulling out the tenner and saying,
“This is all I have left.”
The man sighed and then said, “I guess that’ll have to do. I
actually bought that for £12. Now I’ve lost money.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, honestly feeling bad. Not bad enough to fork
over two extra quid, but certainly bad enough that my apology was sincere.
“It’s alright,” he said giving me a smile. “Win some you lose
some.”
Shortly after I purchased my telescope, Jess and Amber were ready
to leave. They had each gotten a hand full of old coins from various
international origins, and Amber had also gotten a very nice tea set. It came
in a sturdy looking box, and would likely make the return flight.
When we returned to the surface, the air had become bitter cold
and windy. None of us were hungry enough for lunch yet, and so we decided to
walk around a bit. The temperature wasn’t exactly suitable for exploring, and
so we only made it to the southern part of Lieth by the time we decided to turn
around.
Without waiting for a bus, we continued through the bitter cold
until we made our way to Gurka’s on Cockburn Street. Amber and Jess had eaten
there before, and sung it such praises that they insisted I try it too. I had
never had Indian food before, and so I was more than willing to try something
new.
It was a little after noon when we got there, and so they were
just opening up. When the waiter asked what we wanted, the girls went first and
after they told our waiter what they wanted (I forgot what each of them
ordered), the waiter asked each of them if they wanted their food to be mild or
medium. When it came to my turn, I ordered the spicy garlic chicken, which was
in the curry section. The waiter replied that’s already very medium. I smiled
at this and then we proceeded to wait.
After about twenty minutes, the waiter returned apologizing that
the kitchen was still setting up when we arrived. To make up for it, he gave us
some crisps with three different dipping sauces on the house. I’m not sure what
they were called, but they were very good.
We were mostly done with our crisps when, our food arrived. Mine
was very medium. I loved it. We all tried each other’s food, and I was happy
that I liked mine the best, but it was a wee bit spicy for Amber and Jess.
Afterwards, Jess and Amber wanted to go home. However, I wanted to
explore a wee bit more. So I headed off to the Museum, which I was pleased to
see had free admissions. It had been my plan all along to visit here, and see
their Viking exhibit which they happened to be featuring.
Truth be told, I really don’t like museums. Please hold all gasps
of shock until the end. As a general rule of thumb, you always get a mummy
exhibit and a T-Rex. This is followed by some form of Polynesian exhibit, a
technology exhibit, and something about rocks. And every one of these exhibits
gives only a tiny relatively uninformative blurb about what the object is or
what it was used for. The Edinburgh Museum proved to be no exception to any of
these rules.
Eventually, I did find the Viking exhibit, but was disappointed to
see that since it was the featured exhibit, it would cost £9 to get in. That
wasn’t going to happen, and so I continued on looking for an exit. I wasn’t
particularly eager to get back outside, and so I took several detours on my way
to the exit and here’s where I hit the jackpot.
The one thing that the Edinburgh Museum has that say the Field
museum in Chicago wouldn’t is a multi-floored area dedicated to Scottish
history. This was precisely what I was looking for. I was on G, but on floor
-1, they had a whole section on Pre-history Scotland.
I wandered around a wee bit,
and then began to feel rather sleepy. I didn’t really feel like spending any
more money today on something like Coffee, and so I decided to head home. I
felt confident that their section on Scottish history wouldn’t be moved before
I could come back.
I ran to catch the 49, which was so crowded that I was nearly out
of Edinburgh by the time a seat opened up. Once I had a seat, I nodded off
periodically, and contemplated riding the bus all the way to Tesco just to get
a wee bit more rest. I decided against it, and instead stopped at Lidl’s in
Dalkieth on the way back. I knew my friend Terry had some extra bread, and so I
bought some Peanut butter and Jam. It’s amusing that they only have one type of
Peanut butter. It was a brand I’d never heard of before, but there was a statue
of liberty on the jar, and so I assumed it was American. The US is a big place;
I can’t be expected to know all regional peanut butters.
When I got back to the
house at about 3:30, I crashed on my bed. Waking about four hours later, I felt
like I had wasted a lot of my day. Trying not to kick myself too hard, I went
to the library to check on my email. When I got there, I ended up having a
wonderful Skype chat with my friend Kasey.
At about 8:30, I decided it was time I tried Scottish Peanut
butter and Jelly. Ohh was it good. However, what made it was the bread. It’s
doughier here, so you can tell you’re actually eating bread rather than a flaky
container for air.
While I was in the servery making my sandwich, Niki and a hand
full of others were making an assortment of baked goods. Brownies were in the
oven, and chocolate chips and banana bread were being mixed up. I helped them
out in exchange for a few baked treats.
After a little while, I began to hear the piano playing in the Marble
hall. Not being able to resist the way piano fills the Marble Hall, I wandered
out to see Britt playing. She was good, and so I sat on the Tartan covered
stairs admiring the music. After a short while I was joined by Terry, Mike, and
Andy. Mike could also play, and so he and Brit would take turn doing songs, as
Andy and I sang along.
It was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. We’re going to do it every
Sunday.
I can’t wait.
Cheers!
-Anth
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