An Amble Through Edinburgh

Our time is up in the Schengen Zone, so back to the UK we go. We had a day in Edinburgh before heading out to the countryside, so we hit the streets. After a month in central Europe, it was a bit of an adjustment to remember which way to look before crossing the road; I’d also forgotten the terrible timing of the lights, which means that everyone just jaywalks all the time.

Breakfast was at a little coffee/toastie shop where the man behind the counter knew the orders of all the regulars. While waiting on what looked like an old church pew for my coffee, I saw a book about the Cold War in Scotland, with a handwritten dedication to “the best coffee shop in the world.” Turns out the book was from an exhibit at the National Museum of Scotland, which happened to be across the street. Presumably some of its employees were regulars at the coffee place.

Having been going down all sorts of Cold War rabbit holes while in Berlin, I decided we had to head across the street. Though the exhibit was small, it was a comprehensive look at how Scotland’s unique geography made it a key location for American bases, nuclear research, and missle sites. In response to all of these military installations, there was a large anti-nuclear movement — a joining of both peace and environmental activists — in Scotland, especially in the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibit also contained a model nuclear power plant for kids (given what I know about the safety of children’s toys from the 1950s, I wondered if it had some uranium in it too).

Baby’s first nuclear reactor

We decided to take a peek at the rest of the museum, which turned out to be a sprawling, labyrinth of Scottish history - like they took all of the Smithsonian museums and smooshed them into one building. Everything from parts of a church to a locomotive to a model of an offshore oil derrick to Dolly the Sheep (yes, the corpse of the first cloned mammal was on display). This was not a collection you could merely peek at.

Dolly and me

But we had things to do, so kept moving through the sandy grey streets to carry out some important errands, including new hiking shoes for me. While passing through a park, we saw a comically tall column with a little statue of a man on top. Turns out the man was Henry Dundas, an extremely powerful Scottish politician in the 1700s. A sign near the statue explained that he was a controversial figure who was “instrumental in deferring the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade. As a result of this delay, more than half a million enslaved Africans crossed the Atlantic.” He was also impeached during his lifetime for misappropriation of public funds when he was treasurer of the Navy. The sign I saw was the result of the worldwide protests after the murder of George Floyd; some believe that instead of posting a new sign, the statue should just be removed. I’d tend to agree with that view - isn’t there someone a bit more worthy from Edinburgh who deserves to be up there?

We pressed on. After walking through the beautiful University of Edinburgh campus, we made a stop at one of my favorite bookstores in the world — Lighthouse Bookshop — where I got too many books because I have a problem.

My haul from Lighthouse

After dropping the books at our hotel, I set off for a solo wander around the city. I stopped to buy an ice cream cone for the walk, because going on a walk in 30 degree winter weather as the sun sets at 4pm is the perfect occasion for ice cream. Honestly it felt positively balmy compared to some of our days in Berlin, which is weird since we’re farther North. Then again, Minneapolis is south of both Edinburgh and Berlin and the high there was -11F (-23 for your Celsius-heads) so how does weather even work.

As dusk turned to night, I climbed up to the Castle and took in the city, before slowly making my way through the alleys and down wonky flights of stairs and back to the hotel.

Speaking of Books…

I’ve had the time and mental energy to read over four dozen books during these last few months and thought I’d share some of my favorites:

• How to Catch a Mole by Marc Hamer
  A beautiful mediation on nature, getting older, and art, written by a poet/molecathcher.

• A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution by Raquel Varela
  A detailed history of the popular uprising that brought democracy to Portugal 50 years ago.

• Blood in the Machine by Brian Merchant
  A history of the Luddites, who’ve been smeared as anti-technology but in reality just didn’t want technology that devalued labor and made everyone’s lives worse. Still quite relevant today!

• The Book of Trespass by Nick Hayes
  I’ve mentioned this book in a previous post. A great book about public access to nature and so much more.

• Landlines by Rayner Winn
  A beautiful memoir about Winn and her husband, who has a serious neurological illness, walking one thousand miles across the UK.

• You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian
  Queer romance about a baseball player and a reporter who fall in love in the 1960s. Delightful.

• Stasiland by Anna Funder
  A history of the Stasi, told through the personal stories of people who were members of the Stasi and its victims.

• Beyond the Wall by Katja Hoyer
  A history of the GDR that shows the complexity of East Germany. While it’s now known for its political repression and intense Stasi surveillance, East Germany also had cheap housing, high participation of women in the workforce, and access to higher education for working class people. Hoyer complicates the West’s narrative of the GDR and helps explain the divisions between the former East and West Germany that still exist today.

• We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
  If you loved the Thursday Murder Club series, you’ll love Osman’s new cast of characters in a book that will hopefull be the first of a new series, featuring a retired police detective and his assassin daugher-in-law.