Day 4 – Isle of Skye

The days need more than 24 hours. Or I need to not be so addicted to the story of Jamie & Claire *sigh* Anyway, here is the next round of photos. I will always remember day 4 as the most perfect day of this vacation and the photos don’t do the day justice at all. Some sights and views and feelings just can’t be captured with a camera. I will still remember it.

We started with driving out to the most western point of the Isle of Skye. Neist Point Lighthouse. It’s not in operation anymore and it’s not much to look at in the sense of picturesque lighthouses, which disappointed me a wee bit. [Notice, that this is the first time I use 'wee' in my Scotland posts? Why didn't I use it before? *wonders*] I just have a thing for lighthouses, if you haven’t known that yet.

So this was the path to the lighthouse, we started in the right corner of this picture…

Day 3 – Inverness to Isle of Skye

My mom will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow. Yay! As it turned out there is nothing wrong with her heart, nothing new anyway. It were the usual arrhythmia. But in her case you just never know. Anyway, I’ll be taken off work tomorrow to pick her up and maybe I will also find some time to post more photos. And take care of a lot of stuff for job #2. And to start ironing lots of laundry. And to work on some stuff for the local Greens. And maybe to read a bit more of book 4 of the Outlander series. I already know that I will have a hard time to not spent hours immersed in the story. I hardly find time to watch the daily Grey’s episode for the marathon *g* But that’s where I will turn to now and leave you with a new round of photos…

Day 3 started with the visit to yet another waterfall and here’s a photo even though I don’t remember the name or the exact location.

New Lanark, Loch Lomond, Stirling Castle

During my stay in Glasgow I did 2 day trips to other location, the first one by train on my own, the second one with a travel company in a minivan. The first trip was to New Lanark, which is a former industrial site from the 18th century, beautifully restored and a world heritage site. Interesting is not just the industrial heritage, but also the social issues, the mills manager took to his heart 200 years ago. There were schools for the children and cheap housing for the workers, free health care and a lot more extraordinary things for this time. New Lanark is situated on the river Clye, and there were a few waterfalls close by, but I just walked to the first one, because it was so warm. And I brought my jacket along, because there were possible thunderstorms on the forecast. No rain all day and rather the opposite I was sweating. But I’m not complaining.

The second day trip took my to the well known Loch Lomond and through the Trossachs, which is a beautiful area, with lots of forest and green hills and lakes. Our last stop was Stirling Castle. Stirling has been the capital of Scotland in the mediavel times, because of it’s location. It’s up on a hill with lots of plains all around so you could see your enemies regardless from where they wanted to attack you. Enough talk, here are a few photos…

New Lanark

Hello From Sunny Scotland

This entry is brought to you with courtesy of the Belgrave Hotel, Glasgow, which provides computers and free internet access in every room. At least I think it’s in every room. There is one in my room anyway. But its keyboard is a nuisance, because some keys have to be pressed very firmly, which slows down typing quite a bit. I decided to try an update anyway as long as I have internet so easy available.

The trip by train to London last Friday didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped, but for once this was no fault of German Rail, but due to some track problems in Belgium. I freaked out a bit, when it was clear, that I’d miss the EuroStar train I was booked for. But it was no problem at all to take the next one, and I wasn’t the only passenger headed to London on the delayed train. So I got there an hour later as planned, but I got there after all :-)
And my first thing was to buy an Oyster Card for the tube and busses. Whoever invented that thing should get a medal, because it’s so much easier to use than the Travelcard. My hotel wasn’t close to the city center, which I didn’t mind. What I did mind, that I happen to get a room on the groundfloor, next to the 24 hour reception and on a rather loud street. Even with earplugs I obviously didn’t sleep too well, because I was pretty exhausted after four nights. Thank God this hotel in Glasgow is located in a rather quiet neighbourhood.

Signing Off For A While…

Everything’s packed, the apartement is cleaned, the mail is taken care of… Now I just have to sign off the blogosphere. I’ll be away on vacation (finally!) in London, Glasgow, the Highlands and Edinburgh until Monday, July 6th. I might drop by once or twice to give you an update, but I can’t promise anything.

I think after a short withdrawel I will enjoy the time offline without blogs and journals and news and gossip sites and even (or maybe especially) without the distracting twitterverse :-) As much fun as it is, it sometimes also can be stressful. Or maybe I’m just using twitter in a stressful way ? Anyway, I’ve got a little over two weeks to ponder about that… See you on July 7th.

What I’ve Been Up To…

The last few weeks proved that twitter has definitely changed my way of blogging. Before I started to use twitter I posted much more, because whenever I had to get some of the mundane, ordinary stuff off my chest, I sat down and wrote a blog post about it. Twitter gets things off my chest and thoughts out of my mind so much quicker and easier than a blog post. But add busy days and weeks into the mix and a lot of stories I usually would have written about remain untold, because I don’t find the time or am too tired to write a post about it. I don’t know yet how I feel about that development.

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I was – once again – pretty busy with work this week, but at least everything I had to work on or had to deal with, went well so far. My local Greens finally have a candidate for each electorial district, which wasn’t easy to accomplish and which actually troubled me a lot a few weeks ago. So this load is definitely off my mind. During the last couple of days I even managed to start working on the school assignment I have to repeat. I have to return some of the books soon, because they’d be due during my vacation, so I have to at least skim through them and copy relevent parts.

Scotland, Here I Come…

I should be working on my termpaper at the moment. And I will continue to do that later tonight, because I really really have to work on that. I started working on it yesterday and this afternoon and realized that it definitely will take quite some time to finish it. I’ve still got two weeks, which should be enough, but it won’t write itself.

Actually I had planned to write this blog post already yesterday, but then I decided to spend some time at the White House and the watching just the 2h season premiere of season 4 turned into watching the first four episodes in a row. I could go on and on about how much I enjoyed watching it and how much I love this show and it’s characters, but I’d risk boring most of you, so I won’t do it. Just some keywords for my fellow West Wing Fans: Donna in charge in Indiana, CJ on the Rock the Vote stage, Sam’s hockey talk with Mallory, Charlie being a “Big Brother” and even Debbie Fiderer. I liked her a lot when we first met her and I’m sure she’ll be a great addition to the staff. Oh, well there were so many things…

But back to the original purpose of this post. On Wednesday evening I booked aprox. 90% of my summer vacation. Rather spontaneously now, although its basic had been planned or been thought of for a while now. I wasn’t sure if I could actually go on vacation this summer or if it would clash with some work stuff and Greens stuff, because we’ve got elections at the end of August. A few weeks ago I also considered getting a bigger apartement and even started to look around and then I thought maybe I should spend my money (and time and thoughts) on moving and not on vacationing.
Until I realized that both ideas seem to have stalled each other. I suddenly wasn’t sure which one to pursue first and thus seemed to not really act on any one of them. When I realized that though I just spent a short time thinking about which was more important. Or better which could be carried out later this year as well. And that obviously was not the vacation. There will be suitable apartements available later this year. I don’t have to start looking now and miss out on a summer vacation because of that.

My trip to Canada – Part I: The Canadian people

Yesterday afternoon I was almost run over by a car which was speeding over the crosswalk. Well I wasn’t really in danger, but still, he (those drivers always are male) sped although he must have seen me standing there. It only took two days back in Germany to get into mortal danger while crossing a street. Thus this first entry has to be about the totally unbelievably wonderfully nice and friendly and welcoming Canadian people, which would never put a pedestrain crossing a street in mortal danger. The Haligonians at least wouldn’t…

I really felt so welcome in this country unlike anywhere else before. The Candians are warm and friendly and considerate and still keeping a distance without really keeping a distance. They’re not like for instance Italian who also are warm and friendly and caring but who also can be too cheerful and too loud and sometimes invade just a tidbit too much into your personal space, if you know what I mean. It’s part of the Italian culture, so I totally understand it, but it makes me feel a bit awkward sometimes. But Candians also aren’t as reserved as for instance the people in Sweden. In Sweden you can’t just strike up a conversation (even if it’s just small talk) with anyone you just meet on the street (or at a hockey game). Maybe the people in Halifax just went out of their way talking to us because of the hockey fever :-)? Whatever the reason, I really really liked meeting and talking to them.

I felt welcome everywhere. Which might have something to do with the way we were greeted with “Hi, How are you today?” everywhere. It might be the usual ordinary greeting and the person might not really be interested in how I was doing, but it still felt nice. Although I still haven’t figured out what to reply really. Just “I’m fine, thanks”? Or “I’m fine, thanks. How are you?” Anyway it felt really welcoming.