Manchester, England

I’m sitting in the Red Café (rings a bell, Manchester United fans?) sipping on the worst cup of hot chocolate and finishing up my over-priced pre-packed blueberry muffin. It’s an interesting contrast. At this same moment, Talib’s shuttling around like a 5-year old, taking in the sights and sounds of Old Trafford Stadium—home to his much loved soccer team, Manchester United. Seems like déjà vu all over, as I did the same thing just a few months ago—sitting out from the Camp Nou Experience in Barcelona, just so I could use the time to finish a newly purchased Banana Yoshimoto novel. I stand firm when I say that I will not go for a stadium tour, even if it was paid for. It just has no bearing on my life.

A bit of explaining is required to answer why I’m in Manchester on this awfully chilly Sunday, and not slogging away in my tiny hostel cubicle and churning out my essays. Today marks the end of a 5-day trip. It begun on Wednesday—a three hour public coach ride from Nottingham to Manchester, followed by a 5-hour connection from Manchester up North to Edinburgh, Scotland. I guess our trip started on a pretty miserable note because our bus (damn you, Megabus!) was late for a whole 2 hours, which resulted in our arrival in Edinburgh at approximately 2am. Then from Edinburgh, we moved farther up North to Inverness—the capital of the Highlands—and made a quick visit to the Loch Ness and Urquhart Castle. I must admit that I wasn’t much impressed with the scenery than I was with my first experience with snow. What started with a few pathetic ice flakes falling on our noses on Thursday became a full-fledged snowfall over the next couple of days. Kilian’s right—snow’s fun for awhile, then when the numb extremities kick in and you have to struggle to climb the mildest of slopes to avoid falling, you realize it ain’t that much fun after all. Mind you, the numbing process is anything but pain-free. I had to bear with a searing pain in my toes with each step I trudged upslope from the village centre of Dumnadrochit to the Urquhart Castle. It didn’t help that we were under the false impression that the walk would take no more than 20 minutes—the waitress at the café misunderstood us and thought we were driving up instead of walking on our stumpy feet.

That aside, I did try my first taste of haggis. If not for Wikipedia, I would have had absolutely no clue what I was in for—minced kidneys, liver and all other innards of sheep stuffed into a sheep’s intestine skin if I’m not wrong. Haggis tastes much better than it looks, but the texture’s pretty disturbing initially. A little sticky and gooey—clumping at the roof of your mouth and leaving a thin surface of the “sausage meat” on your tongue. It’s a great experience, but not enough for me to want to try it a second time. Did I mention that the Scottish accent always cracks me up? I’m a failure at mastering the accent though… Talib, on the other hand, does it naturally.

I really wonder how one can live in such a cold environment for their entire lives. Our tour guide in Edinburgh told us that it rains almost 270 days a year, and the temperature only gets colder hereon. It’s worse in Canada! Come on, how do you deal with only 1.5weeks of summer a year!!! I know for sure I’m not going to be retiring to one of these cold-climate countries. It’s sad when the only source of heat you have is the diminishing warmth of your hot chocolate.