A Glasgow funeral…
Some years ago, enjoying Munich for a weekend during the Oktoberfest, Joost and I started talking to some Glaswegians staying at the same hotel as us. According to them, a Glasgow funeral was more fun than an Edinburgh wedding. It only made sense to check this out for ourselves.
Together with our girlfriends, Betsy and Neha, we headed over to investigate. Right during the Edinburgh festival season, so I’m sure we didn’t get a proper idea of what Edinburgh’s like, but so be it. Our plan was to have a good time. And yes, it has happened, after struggling for 15 years, Joost finally has landed himself a girlfriend. What is the world coming to?
Joost had wanted to leave for Charlerois at eight in the morning. He showed up at ten. Heavy traffic on the way south meant we no longer had time to stop in Brussels for foood and we drove straight to the airport.
During the busy but uneventful flight, I made plans for dinner and drinks in Glasgow, where we would stay our first night. I had made reservations some four weeks before, which wasn’t a problem for Glasgow, but a pain for Edinburgh, where we would stay for the remaining two nights. That is, one night would be spent at a Formula1, some 25 miles out of Edinburgh, the other in Stirling, some 40 miles out of Edinburgh. It was the nearest available accomodation.
Glasgow turned out to be a nice, but not great, city. It is surprising the many curry shops manage to stay afloat, considering their very reasonable pricing. But that only worked to our advantage. We had dinner at a run-of-the-mill curry joint where the waiter had a stained tie, the food was delicious but the icecream terrible.
After that, we had coffee at a Beanscene, a Starbucks-like coffee shop with WiFi, for the punters who can’t go a minute without. And we ended the evening at Uisge Beatha, a whisky bar with lots of choice and reasonable prices. It was here that Joost ended up with one woman on each teat.
The next morning was spent rushing through Glasgow. We had to hurry to be in time for our first show in Edinburgh, but I still wanted to see some of the sights Glasgow had to offer. One of the things that struck me was that the city resembles so many of the downtown areas of the major South African cities Betsy and I had visited only weeks before.
Neha, who seemed to have a fetish for anything English (“coronation chicken is my *favorite*”), had her share of goodness with a full Scottish breakfast. However, it was Betsy who ended up enjoying the full range of typical Scottish foods: black pudding, square sausage and haggis.