Glasgow City Crest

I just wanted to post something here today to celebrate my being in Glasgow for a month! St. Mungo is the patron saint of the city and founded a religious site here way back in the day. There are four emblems that are found on the City Crest that are also symbols associated with Glasgow elsewhere, including little logos on the bus stops. They are a fish, tree, bell, and bird. Each of these symbols are said to be related to miracles St. Mungo performed. What they are, I'll have to get back to you. There is also a little poem that children are taught in school growing up related to the symbols of St. Mungo and I've put it below the photo of the Crest.

Here is the bird that never flew.

Here is the tree that never grew.

Here is the bell that never rang.

Here is the fish that never swam.

Scotland Rugby!!

26 February 2012

Today was a fantastic day! After being knocked out cold with a cold the last few days, I made sure that I was healthy enough to enjoy my first live sporting event in Scotland. My officemate, Rebecca, used to play rugby at Glasgow Uni and though some of her friends, was able to get tickets to the Six Nations rugby match between Scotland and France in Edinburgh. The Six Nations, if I haven't mentioned this before, is a tournament where each of six countries (England, Wales, Ireland [Northern and the Republic of], Scotland, France, and Italy) plays each other team once. The tournament started just after I got to Glasgow and it was my real introduction to the sport. Today's game was going to be good. Even though Scotland lost their first two matches to England (a rival not unlike U of Michigan vs. Ohio State) and Wales, they were going to be good competition for France who killed Italy in the first round and hadn't played since because their game against Ireland was cancelled.

I met Rebecca, some of the other rugby girls, and another officemate, Heather, down at the Queen Street Station, right off of St. George's Square in Glasgow's city center at 11am and we soon caught a train to Edinburgh. Now, a train had left not more than 15 minutes earlier for Edinburgh, and our train was still packed to the gills by the time we boarded. Five or so stops later, with people cramming into the train at each stop, everyone piled out at the Haymarket stop and started a long progression down the road to Murrayfield Stadium on the west end of town. Before going into the stadium, we first found a picnic table at one of the numerous hotels and cafés and pubs that were hosting parties with beer tents and cook-out-style food. We were well enough early for the start of the game, so we stuck around our table and drank some beers before wandering over to the stadium.

Once we started toward the stadium, it was almost like I was back in Ann Arbor walking down Hoover Street toward the Big House. People were waving flags and singing chants and some locals were playing bagpipes along the way, and nearly every guy was wearing a kilt! I've been told people here normally don't pull out their kilts except for special occasions, and I've decided that this game was one of the most special occasions of the year. We quickly ducked into one of the tents where they were selling rugby kits (aka jerseys) and polo shirts and other items so Heather and I could get something to fit in with the rest of the crowd. And after another beer stop, we headed up to our seats.

The stadium is kind of lopsided in that the western side of the stadium rises higher than the east side, enough so that if you're sitting high enough, you can see over the stadium's east side overhang. The teams were both lining up for the national anthems when we walked in and we made it just in time to hear the end of the French anthem and then got goosebumps while a huge bagpipe and drum corps played the Scottish anthem. It was pretty amazing because for the French, Edinburgh is no more than a quick plane ride away, and so the stadium was not for want of crazy dressed up fans from either side. We found our seats in row RR, waaaaay up in the top of the west side, and only then do you realize why the west side of the stadium sits so high: The view over the east side to the skyline of the city is spectacular! It's like a picture-perfect encapsulation of Edinburgh with tall church spires, the prominent Castle, and buildings of the city center all shadowed by the peak of Arthur's Seat, a large hill right in the middle of town that is the frozen core of a magma plug that has since been exposed through years of erosion. It was almost hard to focus on the match with that scenery in view!

Panorama of Edinburgh from Murrayfield Stadium

Rugby was fairly easy enough for me to pick up on a few weeks ago when I was first introduced. Essentially, one team tries to touch the ball down in their opponent's end zone for a try, which is worth 5 points. If the team makes the try, they are then able to attempt a conversion by kicking the ball through the uprights for another 2 points. Any time during regular play, if a team is close enough to their opponent's uprights, they can drop kick the ball through the uprights for 3 points. The team with the ball cannot pass it forward, and so to move down the field, they have to pass it sideways or backward to a teammate who can then try to charge down the field with the ball in hand. The play doesn't stop unless there is an injury and each half lasts 40 minutes. Obviously, there is a lot more to the game than that, but you get the idea...

No sooner had we found our seats and sat down did we have to get back on our feet because Scotland made their first try and conversion, taking the lead 7-0. They played really well, but not well enough because France came back with a try and conversion and then a series of successful drop kicks. Scotland came back in the second half with another try, taking the lead to 17-13. But France came back with another successful try and drop goal, and held Scotland off for the rest of the match, winning 17-23. The mood of the crowd was palpable and even though the French were raucous and, well, French, they kept the party to themselves and the Scots all left the stadium peaceably. But the rugby wasn't the only excitement during the game. Sometime in the second half, a Frenchman decided to hop out onto the field with nothing but a flag flying above his head. He streaked from one end of the field to the other and halfway back again before security could catch him. It gave us all a good laugh!

Following the game, we went to a few different pubs for a few more beers and some food, and while some of our group stayed out a while longer, Heather and I headed back to the train station to get our ride back to Glasgow. It was a fantastically fun day and I'm glad I was healthy enough to go!

Glasgow: the dear green place

*I'm trying out a new way of sharing my photos. There is a link at the bottom to my photo album.*

This weekend was a fun one for me because it was really the first time I took the time to get out and see new parts of Glasgow. When I visited last December, everyone kept telling me that I had to visit the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Galleries. So after a quick haircut at a neighborhood barbershop (a very social place, and when I said I was from Michigan, the guy cutting my hair asked if it was in the South. We got a good laugh out of that and they liked how I could point to where I'm from on my hand), I made the short walk down to the Museum.

The Kelvingrove Museum is one of the city-owned and operated museums, which are regularly open and absolutely free to the public, which is fantastic because it's a beautiful museum! The old and ornate sandstone façade welcomes you into the main hall where right above your head, on the second floor, is a huge, breathtaking pipe organ in a carved wooden housing. There was a sign on the organ bench advertising a concert at 1 pm, and I got there with a few minutes to spare. What a surprise!

In the meantime, I headed upstairs and asked a docent where a good place to start my first tour of the museum would be. He gave me some advice and within seconds I was staring up at the original canvas painting of Christ of St. John on the Cross (thank you, Wikipedia). I followed the upstairs corridor around to a room full of Scottish artifacts and items belonging to such Scottish heroes as Robert Byrnes (Scotland's native poet and most renown national hero) and Mary Queen of Scots. One o'clock came around and and I picked out a good spot to watch the organ concert which aptly started off with Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (and it just shook the building!):



I wandered around a little while longer on Saturday at the museum, but soon went home. On Sunday, though, I got back out there and hopped onto one of those cheesy double-decker tour buses to get my official tour of Glasgow. I'd heard great things about the tour and was excited to learn a lot about the city. It was well worth it since you pay for your ticket, which is then valid for two days and you can hop on or off the bus at any of the 15-some stops. The morning was super sunny and warm-ish (6°C), so I dressed for that weather, but was later wishing I at least brought a hat since I sat outside the entire time to get some good photos without the smudges from the windows. Well, it eventually got really cold and I think I contracted either a chest-cold or pneumonia. The bus also went a little too fast for me to really absorb the info the audio tour was providing. An example went something like this (I'm going to paraphrase):

Look left as we pass through the intersection and you will see one of Glasgow's oldest buildings. It's architecture makes it one of a kind and when it was built it was beautiful and really cool.

So I had my camera ready and the bus just flew through the intersection and I have no idea what I was supposed to be looking for! This is all besides the point. The fact is that it's a great way to see the city.

I even hopped off at the Glasgow Green, which is the oldest park in Glasgow and took a little tour through the People's Palace, a city-run museum covering all facets of Glasgow living from the early industrial days, to the tenement housing and city history. The housing bit was interesting because Glasgow's population in the late 19th century grew to huge numbers and the city was quickly overcrowded. The renovation of many neighborhoods and clearing of the old city tenements was one of the first major crackdowns on crime, poor living conditions, and disease control in the world, and was met with anger by thousands of people who believed the real reason the tenements were being shut down was to make room for housing that was out of their budget. Finally, there was a little exhibit on World War II and I learned that Glasgow had been severely damaged by German air raids and parts of the West End of town (my neighborhood) were bombed beyond repair. Attached to the People's Palace is the Winter Gardens, a tropical greenhouse with a nice little café and tons of lush vegetation. The Greens themselves are beautiful and spacious and are used for public events throughout the year from sporting matches to fireworks displays.

I got back on the bus and we passed the oldest house in Glasgow (the oldest building is the Cathedral) and made our way along the River Clyde where we crossed over the Squinty Bridge, Glasgow's newest motorway across the River Clyde, and over to the Science Center which I will have to return to eventually because not only has an IMAX theater, but the tallest structure in Scotland - the Glasgow Tower - is also there. Not only is it the tallest structure in Scotland, but it is also the only free-standing structure in the world able to rotate a full 360°!

Right across from the Science Center is the Clyde Auditorium, a massive building designed to represent the hulls of ships, but is now cleverly nicknamed, The Armadillo. The Armadillo is built on reclaimed land that was once the Queen's Dock, one of over 62 ship-building facilities along the 20-mile stretch of the River Clyde. Adjacent to the Armadillo is the Finnieston Crane which was once used for ship-building, though is now just a landmark to days gone by in the city. But those days are not that far in the past because just downriver were some more cranes that are actively being used in the building of parts for two new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy, and it is also the dock where the majority of the Navy's destroyers are built. And not too far away from the Science Center, on the other side of the Clyde, is the new city-run Transportation Museum - a fantastic and fun getaway where you can explore all sorts of old trains, subways, trams, cars, and other modes of transportation from all periods of time. Though it's kind of disorganized (massive vehicles everywhere!), I'm looking forward to going back and focusing on one mode of transportation. It definitely reminded me of the Henry Ford Museum at Greenfield Village near Detroit!

By that time, I was cold and really ready to go home. Take a look at some of the photos I took below, but before I finish this post off, there were a few other fun facts I learned on my bus tour:

• Glasgow is the third largest city in the UK and in its heyday was the "2nd City of the Empire" next to London.
• The Glasgow Underground is the third oldest in the world and was originally pulled by an underground cable, which the driver had to clamp onto in order for the train to gain speed and the release the cable when it was going fast enough.
• At its peak, Glasgow was the main entry port for over half the tobacco coming to Europe from America because it took ships 20 fewer days to sail into Glasgow than into London. Tobacco magnates from Glasgow owned most of the land in tobacco growing states like Virginia.
• The Glasgow Cathedral is the only church to survive the Reformation and is the oldest building in the city.
• Glasgow has been cleaning up its buildings and image since smoke and soot poured down on the city during its industrial peak. Even the insides of buildings were covered in soot. Only after removing the soot and grime did many people realize that the stone buildings were of two main colors: a rose and a gold (see the photo below of Glasgow Uni and the Kelvingrove Museum for a good example!)

Anyway, I hope this fulfills the need for anyone wondering where I'm living to have a brief history of some of the sites of my new city. I'm excited to see more places, visit museums, and get to know it a little better in the next weeks.

Here are the photos:

It's the little things

Most things here in Scotland are not much different than home in the US. People speak english, the cuisine is not wildly exotic, and going to school here is the same as going to school at home. But there in lies the problem. If things were extremely different, I could use the, "What do I know? I'm just an ignorant foreigner," excuse, but because things are just slightly different, I get really really anxious when I'm out and about.

For example, the monetary system here is exactly the same as in the US: there are 100 pence in 1 pound, similar to 100 cents in 1 dollar. But here there are 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, and £2 coins and there are three major banks, each having their own designs for the various notes (£5, £10, £20, etc.). The £5 notes from one bank are worth the same as from the other two, but they just have a different design on them. Then, throw into the mix the fact that England produces their own notes - which are still the same value as the Scottish banks' notes. When I'm at a store or quick restaurant, it seems like everyone else just whips out exactly what they owe, but needless to say, it takes me a little bit longer to make sure that I'm paying the amount I should be. And that makes me a little anxious.

Even walking around is just different enough that I really have to pay attention to what's going on! In the US the traffic at a stoplight usually allows one direction of traffic (let's say east) to move at the same time as the oncoming traffic (west). And, simultaneously, pedestrians walking parallel to the traffic motion can cross the street. This continues until the moving traffic gets a red light and then the stopped traffic can start moving in the north and south directions. Here in Scotland, traffic moves in one direction at a time. For example, first all the northbound traffic gets the green light, then the eastbound traffic gets their turn, then the southbound, and westbound traffic. Only after all cars have their turn at the green light do pedestrians get to cross the street. But since all directions of traffic are stopped when pedestrians cross, you are allowed to walk diagonally across the intersection. Of course, this isn't the case at all intersections, so I need to watch out for that. Add into all of this the fact that traffic drives on the left-hand side of the road so sometimes I'm not entirely sure which way to look before crossing a street! I grew up always looking left before crossing a street first and then right because the immediate traffic comes from the left when you drive on the right-hand side of the road. So it's amazing how unnatural it feels having to make that conscious effort to look to my right first if I don't want to get hit by bus driving by!

And then there are gelatinous foods. Yes, while most of the food is similar to what is in the States, things here are just called something different, but I remember getting confused looks when once I mentioned peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. You see, jelly in the US is not jelly here. When I say jelly, the Scots picture jell-o. So our jell-o is their jelly; our jelly is their jam; our jam is their jam-with-bits. And even when I get things right and say peanut butter and jam, they still think I'm kind of crazy! But they love ice cream and jelly (the jell-o/jelly), which I think is intriguing and will have to try. I've mentioned that I like my jelly (the jell-o/jelly) with bits of fruit in it or marshmallows and they like the idea of bits of fruit, but don't quite understand the marshmallow piece of it. I also mentioned that Jell-O and Bill Cosby are frequently associated with one another, but apparently he was not a spokesperson for jelly over here, so that association is met with blank stares. What we call pudding in the US is also definitely not a common snack over here; yet, they eat pudding all the time. It's just that the word "pudding" is used to classify any type of dessert food. Thus, restaurants will have a pudding menu but there will be no pudding (US-kind) on it!

So what all this boils down to, really, is that I'm getting along fine with the big changes of moving far away from anything immediately familiar and into a big city where you kind of have to keep an eye out for suspicious behavior while walking down the street. The little things, however, slow me down just enough for me to notice and feel like I'm inconveniencing the native Glaswegians. So if I do, well...just give me some time and I'll come around!

Starting from scratch in a new land

Trip Date: January 30, 2012

I've done it! A few months ago, I took the opportunity to make an exploratory trip to the University of Glasgow in Scotland to think about starting my PhD in the geosciences. After my first day here back in December, there really wasn't too much convincing that needed to be done. Even in the pouring rain and chilly temperatures, I thought Glasgow was the natural next step on my life's journey.

Fast forward two months, and after waiting weeks for my new passport, getting my student visa, selling my car, and making the painstaking decision to use 60,000 of my frequent flyer miles to buy a ticket, my bags were packed and I was on my way here, to Glasgow, where I am now writing this blog post from my bedroom in the city's West End.

I have to apologize for not writing anything sooner (I've been here for almost two weeks now), but there has been a lot going on. Not being one to live an unplanned and disorganized, I agonized about not being able to set up a bank account, or find an apartment, or get a mobile phone before coming over. Finding a flat before coming here was difficult, mainly because I will only be here for a few months before moving to Australia for a year for school, and no one really wants to agree on such a short-term lease agreement. And you can't do much else, like buy a phone or get a bank account without a mailing address, so on my first night in town, I met up with a nice guy, Craig, to view a room in an apartment he owned.

From photos I saw online, the room looked really nice, but walking over to it was sort of my first glimpse of my new city and I was unsure of how a room that looked nice could be in what seemed to be a dodgy part of town. It's just amazing the types of misconceptions and cozy perfect little worlds we become familiar with. Glasgow is not a neat and pristine city; after all, it got its start as an industrial merchant and maritime city that was second only to London in the British Empire. Like all industrial cities, Glasgow has fallen on hard times, but has been making a comeback in recent years. The people who live here love it and like in cities such as Detroit or New Orleans, that love for the city forces you to enjoy the personality and people of a city rather than its outward appearance. Back to me looking for an apartment, it was a great space and not wanting to wait and look for other places to live, I told Craig that I'd love to rent the room, so we negotiated and came to an agreement.

I didn't stay there that night, as all of my things were at another postgrad's and her husband's apartment - they were so hospitable to allow me to stay with them until I had some other living arrangement figured out. So the next day, my goal was to shop for a bank account and get a mobile phone. The bank situation really wasn't too difficult, and within a few hours my first morning in Glasgow, I was all set with a basic current account (aka a checking account).

I met with my advisor that morning to go over a few other details and he helped get me situated in my desk which is one of twelve in a communal office space in the Gregory Building on campus. The School of Geographical and Earth Sciences is fairly large at the University and comprised of human and physical geographers and earth scientists. The School's main offices are in the main University building, in the East Quad - built in 1860.

The central focus of the main University building is the tower overlooking the cloisters of the East and West Quads

Unfortunately for me, historical preservation of the building required that no laboratory space requiring fume hoods could be put into the East Quad, so that's where all the physical and human geographers have their offices while the earth scientists' offices are in a much more boring (architecturally) building. But it's a good work space. When I need to get work done, I can; but it's not like a dead zone where no one talks. Very conducive to studying! I then finished registering with the University to make sure that they know I am here and that my living stipend will actually be deposited into my current account (which it did!).

Later that evening, I moved all of my things into my new flat, which really didn't take long. It's kind of amazing/sad to know that I was able to pack so little. On one hand, it's nice that I am not weighed down by tons of useless little knick-knacks. On the other hand, I did have to leave some things back in Michigan like photos of family and books. But most of the important photos are on my computer anyway, and once I get a more permanent place to stay either in Australia or when I return to Glasgow, I will be able to set up my life a little more.

Apartment? Check. Bank? Check. Office? Check. There was just one last item on my list of things I wanted to do: get my phone.

I love my iPhone. There is no getting around that. In fact, last February, after I had my iPhone pick-pocketed on my way to the Berlin airport, and even though I was feeling wretched from food poisoning on my return flight, I stopped at AT&T just to get a new one. But it's more than a phone to me; it's a camera, access to e-mails, iPod, and my mobile life-line back to my family and friends in the states. So I figured that since numerous cellular companies carry the iPhone, it would not be a problem getting a SIM card for it. Well, I think I was on one of the wildest goose chases of my life!

The problem with my phone is that it is "locked" - I can't use it to access the cellular networks over here unless I got it unlocked. But before a phone can be unlocked, it's internal computer code must be altered through a process called jailbreaking (which, by the way, is all perfectly legal if doing this for personal use). The first store I went to said he couldn't unlock my phone because it is a 4G and apparently he could only unlock 3Gs. I thought that was wrong, so I brought it to a mobile phone store and they said it was possible to have my phone unlocked, but that they could not legally do it. So feeling a little defeated, I went home that night and browsed Reddit for a while until I found what seemed to be the most reputable method of unlocking my phone. An hour later, it seemed like I was successful. Now I just needed to wait until the next day to buy a SIM card and plug it in.

The next day came around and I stopped back at the cell phone store and bought my SIM card, which the clerk advised may take anywhere from 2-24 hours to pick up the signal from the network. Needless to say, every hour for the next 24 hours, I was checking my phone and turning it on and off to see if my unlocking was successful. I was not in luck. I did a little more research online and found something that said that my network carrier back in the states were the only people who could successfully unlock my phone. So I bought some Skype credits and called AT&T, explained my new living situation, and asked if they had the capabilities to unlock my phone, to which they replied, "No, I'm sorry. We can't do that, but Apple can." Luckily for me, Glasgow has an Apple store downtown, so half an hour later, after buying an Underground ticket, I found myself at the Apple store being told, "No, I'm sorry. We can't do that, but your US network provider can."

I was outraged. Everyone kept telling me that it could be done, but that they could not do it for me! Furious and frustrated, the next day I went to the O2 store near campus (O2 is the network provider for the SIM card I bought). I asked the guy behind the counter if he knew anything about unlocking iPhones. The guy was very nice and took a look at my phone, tried using a different SIM card to see if the one I bought was faulty, but it was not. He then told me of a phone shop downtown (a hole-in-the-wall place where mobile phones and pay-as-you-go phone plans were sold). I was told that if the folks at the downtown phone store couldn't help me out, no one in Glasgow would be able to. And soon I found myself back on the Tube going downtown, trying to find this phone shop. Much to my chagrin, it turns out the phone shop I was looking for closed down about a month ago. Again, out of luck.

I turned back to the internet that night trying to find a solution to my problem. And then it came to me; the answer was as clear as day. Different iPhones, operating on different versions of the iOS operating system, are programmed with different "base codes." Hackers have found ways to unlock iPhone 4Gs with some base codes, but not others, and lo and behold, my phone's base code is one that has not yet been unlcocked. I would not be able to use my iPhone here in the UK. Still upset, I decided it would be best for me to trade in the phone I have for an earlier version with less memory, get that phone unlocked, and then put the SIM card I bought into the "new" phone. I found myself back at the mobile phone store, and was ready to pay another £150 for a downgraded version of my phone. I asked them, "When I go to Australia in a few months, will I be able to get a SIM card there and use their cell network?" And they told me, "No, as soon as you put a new SIM card in your phone here, it sets the base code and won't work down there." Dead end. Fine. End of Story. I realized it was just going to be too much of a hassle to continue this quest (not to mention expensive), and I was sick of not being able to get in touch with people I met because I didn't have a phone.

So really, what this all boils down to is that I spent a good three or four days trying to make the impossible happen and ended up just getting a cheap brick-of-a-phone that will have to suffice until hackers successfully unlock my phone's base code. Only then will I be able to use my beloved iPhone to keep in touch with the world.

Life has been a bit simpler since I ended that quest, and I'm learning to live back in the dark ages without a smartphone in my pocket all the time. As I near the first two week mark of my new life outside the US, routine is settling back into my life, and even though I've had to start from scratch, my life is slowly returning to a state of normalcy.

I haven't really taken too many photos yet, mostly because I haven't had the time to really go out and do anything worth photographing. But I promise, they'll come. Sooner or later, they will come. I have more stories from these first two weeks, too, but I'll update those in the next few days. Until then...