The Open and The Highlands

On Friday, me and four other girls went to the west coast of Scotland to watch the 138th Open Championship. Getting there was bit more involved than I had assumed, but still everyone here is so helpful, it doesn't matter that you have no clue where you are or where you're going. To start, we took a bus from the university to the train station in town. From Stirling we went to Glasgow, where we had to take another bus to switch train stations. From the second Glasgow train station we went to Ayr. We had thought there was a shuttle in Ayr to the resort where the actual golfing was taking place. That was not the case. We had to take another train to Girvin, where we hopped on another bus which took us to the course. The Turnberry resort is beautiful, and I could have taken at least 300 pictures, if only you didn't have to check your cameras at the gate. I understand the reasoning behind it, but that still stop me from being royally pissed. The weather was so funny yesterday and from what I understand, is a typical Scottish day. It was sunny and in the 70's when we arrived. Once we picked a hole and found a spot to settle in the clouds had rolled in a bit and I needed to put on my sweatshirt. About twenty minutes after that it started to drizzle, so I put on my rain coat. After we saw Tiger Woods on one of his better shots of the day (and he didn't have many), the rain started to come down in buckets, so I pulled out the umbrella. Once we ate and moved to one of the last holes to watch Tiger again, the gale force freezing winds off the coast were at full effect. My face felt like it would freeze solid then fall off. It probably would've been less painful. Once we left the tournament we took two more buses, three more trains and a cab in order to get home about 13 hours after we left.

Two interesting things. We went to a Championship golf tournament where history was made. Tiger Woods hasn't been cut from a tournament since the death of his father three years ago, which happened a month before the tournament. Maybe we were bad luck, but I still believe someone else was. The second thing happened on the train from Girvin to Ayr. I was facing the back of the train when I saw two men grappling and trying to punch each other. The man doing the punching's wife intervened and tried to explain to the train a B.S. reason for why her husband was trying to beat up a man. The men continued to fight and when we stopped in Ayr, the police came and took statements from the key players. The things you see on the public transportation system.

Today I went on a twenty person tour of Loch Ness, Glencoe and The Highlands. Admittedly we were only at Loch Ness for an hour, and for half of that I was eating. But the loch is beautiful no matter how long you stay there. I recommend doing the Loch Ness boat tour. It was pretty busy when we were there, so unfortunately I didn't get to do it. Loch Ness is about 24 miles long, and is 750 feet deep, making it the largest loch in Scotland by volume. Because we couldn't go on the boat tour our guide took us to the sights of two places in Scotland where the Harry Potter films were shot. Because he did this when he wasn't supposed to, I won't name him or his company, but if you email me, I will personally recommend his service. I have done a fair share of tours and this man not only knew his home and the land, but also his history and he didn't bore me to death. I was very happy. So went to some Harry Potter sights then he took us to a waterfall in the Highlands where we climbed a path to get to them. While there we saw three young men cliff diving off of a thirty foot lip over the water. They didn't seem bothered that the air was in the 60's, probably making the water about ten or fifteen degrees colder if not more. Our tour guide is a man who loves mountaineering and asked that we spread out on the path away from the waterfall and take a moment of silence to enjoy the noises of the Scottish Highlands. It was great and very relaxing to just stop and listen. My life and most everyone else's is all about finishing one task in order to get a start on the next. We never just enjoy anymore. The sounds of the birds and of the rushing water were unexplainable. I can't even begin to explain what I was feeling standing in the rugged land of my ancestors. Its something that I'll never forget.

On the way back to the University, our guide told us stories about his country's history. He had told us stories throughout the day, but this story was supposed to be the one we remembered and listened to most aptly. The story was about why Great Britain is not so great. It was about the British effectively cleansing Scotland of the Scots, and this lasted until 1939. It was about the British making an example of the Scots by killing them, desecrating their bodies, raping the women, and sometimes the men, beating and killing the children. The reason they didn't kill all the women and "only" raped them was because they needed to breed the English in and the Scottish out. There were stories of brutality, vengence and such horrible things I almost started crying at one point. I knew there was no pretty history when it came to Scotland and England, but to hear all the details in the country, among the people versus a classroom across the ocean...that's a whole different experiece.

For the next three days I will be working on various things for my classes, doing nothing of interest until next Thursday, when we go to Glasgow. Glasgow is Scotland's largest city, but Edinburugh is the capital. Now I need to catch up on some much needed sleep.