Birthday / London

This past week contained a couple of exciting happenings – my birthday on Thursday, and a trip to London to see Rosalind at Kings College who was also celebrating her birthday. The week was somewhat defined by things having frustrating beginnings that turned out well in the end – my birthday began with a failed attempt to book a train to the island of Arran for when Miguel comes to visit, after which I battled it out with Finale for a few hours in a frantic effort to finish my Bach Society piece for an upcoming rehearsal. I finally did finish around 4PM (woot – at least that is finally done), and round about 6PM Jack, Annabel, Katie, Anna, Cindy, Rachel, and myself departed for Kushi’s – a posh but not overly expensive Indian place that was recommended to me by Anna 2 and Corinne. Kushi’s was a pretty nice treat – it is set in an old converted church, and is adorned with ridiculously big chandeliers and large potted plants. The food was quite nice as well – a little heavy (the Housewife’s cookbook keeps things lite) – but very satisfying. Afterwards we retreated back to Warrender where we decided to rent a movie and drink some materials. It being my birthday, it was my movie choice, and on a whim I decided on “Sideways.” My dad had been rambling about “Sideways” for a while after it came out (“it caused a big spike in the price of Pinot!”), and Paul Giamatti reminds me of my cool older cousin Tim, who is a pro violinist. Not very good reasons to watch it perhaps, but it was a decent movie. The characters were funny enough, and it makes California look absolutely beautiful. Anyways, the plan was eventually to go out clubbing, but it got rather late and most everyone decided to head off. Jack and I, however, decided to continue the night, and met up with Courtney and Hannah at a club called Medina near the uni. We drank perhaps a little too much, and did a little dancing (Medina is a hip hop oriented club), until the club closed at 3. 5 Hours later I was up again and on my way to Edinburgh station, where I had to catch the 10:30 train to London. Aside from feeling pretty woozy at the outset of the journey, everything was going well, until I realized that I had forgotten my Young Person’s Railcard and I had accidently brought “Sideways” with me (it was rented from an hourly movie place). Things only got worse when the train arrived in Peterborough (1 hour north of London) where we were told that there were electrical problems on the railway, and that there was another train heading back north if we wanted to catch it. This did not bode well – 2 hours later I boarded a bus, where I sat next to some very entertaining girls from northern England who were very nice but also very difficult to understand – they were fond of saying that things were “fab,” or “mint,” and used “me’ in place of “my” and “lad” for “guy” and other such things. Anyways I finally got to London after about 4 hours, met Rosalind, Ashley, and Kendall at Kings, and promptly accompanied them and some British friends of Rosalind’s to a club somewhat like Medina in another part of London. The next day Ashley, Ros, Kendall and I went and had lunch at a delicious tea and sandwich shop in a sort of indie-ish neighborhood called Camdentown, and then went to walk around Regents Park. My friend Max, who is spending the year at Cambridge, also met us up. We dropped by the British Museum briefly (got to see the wonderful Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles), but it was closing, so we were soon headed back to Rosalind’s for her birthday celebrations, which were to be held at the small and friendly student run bar located in the King’s College dorms. The bar did not disappoint, and Rosalind was subjected to a slightly watered down version of a Kings College birthday tradition in which the birthday guy / girl has to down an obscene amount of gin in very short period of time, while onlookers sing a traditional “gin song.” Anyways it was good times (and Ros did very well), and the next day we woke up late, went to lunch, and then I headed off to catch the 3PM train back to Edinburgh. It was really good to see Ros, Ashley, and Max again – everyone seems to be doing quite well, and being abroad has certainly given all of us new perspectives (some favorable and others not) on Columbia and the past few years of school. The general sentiment seems to be that Columbia is better academically, but worse socially than the UK. Although I wasn’t in London long, my impression was positive – it resembles New York in its size, multiculturalism (although there seems to be more of an African and Arab presence there than in NYC), and hustle and bustle, but it is also more spread out and in some ways felt more livable than New York – perhaps that is a function of the reduced density. I hope to go back before I leave.

Happy Birthday to Rosalind!

The English country side from the GNER train.

Expect the unexpected

Observe the snow, which fell early last week! It is the first snow I have seen fall in Edinburgh since I arrived. This is the view from my window. I spent the entire week in Edinburgh, which actually hasn’t been the case for a while. I have been out and about traveling around outside the city proper for the past 2 weekends, so it was nice just to stick around “old reeky” and take it easy. The week got off to a good start when American expatriate composer Frederick Rzewski gave a presentation to the university music students. He played a sprawling hour long piece for solo piano which requires the pianist (in this case, Rzewski himself, who is an impressive performer) to play, speak, and occasionally even hit the piano. The texts were also written by Rzewski, and consisted of a series of unrelated quasi – philosophical musings about creativity, art in politics, and war. Rzewski’s well known Leftist politics were made pretty clear by the texts he had written and his responses in the Q&A that followed, but he surprised me on a couple of points. From his reputation, I expected someone resembling musician activitists from the pop world – energetic, full of ideas about changing the world, and trying to get people excited about what they are going to accomplish. Instead, Rzewski declared that he believed that it was highly unlikely that political art would change anything at all. He spoke pessimistically about the role of art in politics, although he said briefly that he felt it was important to try and change things, because one never knows what might happen. I suppose it was his quiet pessimism, lack of flashiness, and nonchalance about the subject that surprised me, coming from a composer who is especially known for works that so often deal with charged political matters. It was as if the whole political element to his music was highly personal, and not much else – that isn’t something I am used to in politically minded art. Rzewski also had some interesting things to say about improvisation vs. composition. He spoke a lot about the immediate disappearance of spontaneity when a piece gets notated, and conversely the need for some sort of organizing principle to improvise effectively. I guess what ended up being most interesting about this was the idea that good music can provide people with something that we seek in our own personal lives – a balance of the expected and familiar and the new and novel. Anyways…enough musical rambling. On Friday Rachel, Cindy and I used our “historic Scotland” passes that Arcadia gave us to go up to Edinburgh Castle, which (again) wasn’t exactly what I had expected. The castle itself is pretty cool – an eclectic mix of buildings dating as far back as the 9th century, but it has been commercialized to the point of losing some of its atmosphere. My favorite example of this was the cheesy informative placards (or whatever they are called) that caps locked and bolded words like MURDERED and PERISHED whenever they needed to be written out for historical explanations. The gift shops and toilets that occupied many of the historic looking buildings didn’t help much either, nor did the pre-recorded lute music they had playing in one of the old castle rooms. Still, castles are pretty cool to begin with, and the view out over the city is impressive. On the way back we got dinner at an odd place called "Chocolate Soup," where the signature dish is - yes - a chocolate soup that resembles some kind of thick hot chocolate. On Saturday Jack, Anna, and I decided to get better acquainted with some parts of Edinburgh that we hadn’t yet visited, so we went down to the old port of the city in a neighborhood called Leith. Yet again, this wasn’t what I had exactly expected – the place actually reminded me a lot of Norfolk, VA. We ended up at a giant shopping mall alongside the waterfront (a grimy commercial shipping port) where there wasn’t too much to see besides shipping cranes and a rotting pier. There weren’t even any fisherman, or at least a burly Scottish longshoreman! Oh well – we walked around the neighborhood for a while, which was shabbier than the area we stay in (I think “Trainspotting” was filmed in Leith), and along the way happened upon the home of a “bagpipe maker,” which was awesome (see picture). That night I went with my friend from high school Mathieu (who I randomly ran into at a pub a few weeks ago, and who attends Edinburgh Uni after moving back to Europe my junior year) to his “second favorite pub in Edinburgh’ (his first favorite was too packed with rugby fans who had just finished watching the Wales vs. Scotland match) where I had a most tasty Steak and Ale pie. Next week I have off for reading week, and this coming weekend I am going to London!

Some shots of Edinburgh Castle and Leith.

Adventures, cont.

The past two weekends have largely been spent outdoors exploring the Scottish Countryside. Two weekends ago I went with people from my program to a place called Firbush – an outdoor center run by the University of Edinburgh located in the central Highlands (or “Trossacks,” I believe) on the shores of Loch Tay. This is the region of the fabled Rob Roy (whose grave we actually visited), and where the Scottish tribes battled it out against in the English in the days before the Brits completely gained the upper hand. The area certainly did have a palpable ambience – snow capped, rocky peaks, low, green fertile valleys, and dark mossy forests. We arrived Friday night, and spent Saturday on a hillwalk through the surrounding landscape. It was quite muddy, and it became very cold at higher elevations, but the scenery, complete with grazing sheep for good measure, made it all worth it. Saturday night we were treated to a proper “Burns Supper” – a special meal held to honor the national bard of Scotland, Robert “Rabbie” Burns, who penned such classic lines as “my love is like a red red rose,” “The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,” and the words to “Auld lang syne.” A Burns Night celebration consists of eating a tasty haggis along with mashed potatoes and turnips, complete with a ceremonious reading of his poem “To a Haggis.” The poem, addressed to the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race,” contains such lines as “trenching your gushing entrails bright…O what a glorious sight / warm, reekin, rich!” I lost my haggis virginity (it tastes better than it smells) on the actual Burns Night at a smaller celebration held by a friend from Chamber Choir, where I ended up reading “To a haggis” aloud in my awful American accent because non of the other people there (including 3 Scots) wanted to do it! Anyways…the Burns Supper at Firbush was done with far more pomp and circumstance, complete with a haggis rolled in on a platter and heralded by a startling loud performance on the Highland Pipes. The pipes are truly an awesome instrument – the sheer volume and force of the sound is really overwhelming – its not surprising that it was originally an instrument used in war. After the dinner, everyone from my program (about 30 of us) did some Ceilidh dancing – traditional Scottish dancing that is quite fun and seems to be designed to work better the drunker you are. The next day, I went on another hike to a hill closer to the center, and then biked around the small town of Killin nearby (see pictures).
This past weekend, some friends and I went on a day long hike in the nearby Pentland Hills sponsored by the Edinburgh University Student Festival. The Pentlands are very close to the city (a short ride on a Lothian bus from the center of town), but feel a world away. They are a low and rocky group of hills that rise up from the peaceful surrounding farmland, and afford great views of Edinburgh and its environs from their peaks. The fact that Edinburgh is a busy and fun city, but also has lots of good outdoorsy things nearby, is one of its primary virtues as a city. You can do lots of things in Edinburgh – go to concerts, clubs, etc., but its never too hard to take a break from the city for a day and spend some time out in the country.

The hills near Firbush, on Saturday.

Firbush itself.

A stream in the hills.

The Pentland Hills.

The church where Rob Roy is buried.