Day — what, two? Is it only day two? — of our UK sojourn, and I still can’t say I’m “excited about going to Scotland,” but I have some moments of being amused. One of them was going to the Braehead Center mall, and finding… Claire’s jewelry. (Of course, it’s ‘jewellery’ ’round these parts.) Tatty, tacky, plastic and gilt Claire’s … some things are exactly the same. As we rode by on the bus, we saw the waving flags of Ikea — so we know for sure as soon as we get a flat, we can have a bed!
Speaking of beds… We’ve had a heckuva time getting a decent hotel. We booked through Expedia, just as the hotel we were staying in went through a major computer overhaul. Their system dumped our reservation, but since we had a copy, they apologized for giving our room away, and sent us to their sister hotel — a place with a hot tub, spa and pool, thank-you. (Boy, aren’t some things just MEANT?!) Granted, we can see the Erskine Bridge from our window, and we’re in the back of beyond, but it’s nice, affordable, and has some really great food. What’s annoying is that tomorrow we are being moved back to the first hotel… and we still haven’t found a flat. We were hoping!
Some of you have wondered how the vegetarians are eating in the UK — well, rest assured, we’ve had some really good food! For lunch today we had grilled veggies – onions, bells, and the like — seasoned and wrapped in a tortilla. That with a salad made me smile and think, “Yeah, who said people in the UK didn’t eat vegetables!?” We had risotto stuffed bell peppers last night. Tasty, tasty. And Scottish breakfasts… WHOA. Sautéed mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, baked beans, potato scones (basically fried mashed potatoes), hash browns, oat porridge, and plain yogurt with toppings of melons, prunes and oranges (!), assorted cold cereals, toast, and then the blood puddings, bacon back, sausages, and other unidentifiable meats. Unbelievable. I’m pretty sure once we have our own place, we won’t be eating like this, but for now, we can say we’re on vacation… kinda… *ahem*. (We found rhubarb yogurt at the grocery store, by the way. It’s excellent!)
I have high hopes for what we will be able to eat and create here — which brings me to a question for our UK friends: do any of you buy soy products, like tofu, soy beans and/or milk? We can make our own ‘tofeta’ as we did awhile back, and our own tofu, but wondered where even to get the beans… this far out of “town,” we visited the Morrison’s and saw only one carton of soy milk… next to the goat’s milk. No tofu or anything else so far, which means I need to locate an Asian market soon… Granted, grocery shopping is different here — and we ARE at the back of beyond, away from the city center… but I do hope I can find something once we get settled… and figure out the labeling on the backs of packages (sometimes they list kJ – joules – instead of kC, which are the kilo calories. We have much to discover before we bake!)
Boy, you never know how much time everything takes when you need to depend on buses and trains. Granted, the buses are all over town, and the trains seem to appear every five to ten minutes — we haven’t had to wait for long — but just walking between stops and everywhere takes awhile. We were astonished to map it on Google Earth and discover that today we’ve walked SIX miles. Six. We got lost on our way to see a flat, and — well, what do you do? You keep walking and phone the Realtor until you can get one last set of directions. You arrive rain spattered and perspiration drenched… and you get on with seeing the flat. ‘Cause there’s nothing else to do.
Quite a few of our friends felt like we were making a political statement by leaving behind our cars. As they rolled out of the drive, we both felt a little pang – for various reasons, but neither of us really realized the full extent of our decision. Not just because we are now having to walk (until our bikes arrive), but because I don’t think we ever realized how isolated we were in cars, how self-possessed in our little pods, whizzing through the world -arriving at whatever destination or appointment picture perfect, everything under our control, as far as controllable appearance goes — having yet one more layer pulled away is even more immensely challenging than we even knew. People told us we wouldn’t always be happy, living abroad. Well, no one is always happy, but if this is as bad as it gets… maybe we’ll be all right.
With so many people staring at us (and you find the weirdest questions running through our minds as to why: is it the hat? The hair? The coat? Is it because of my orange shoes? Is my button gapped? Standing out in a crowd is the nightmare of the extrovert, let me tell you), listening to our accents, and …sort of observing us, the need for a Hobbithole is stronger than ever. We really hope to find our own little home soon…
Our Bank of Scotland PIN numbers are …in the mail in NY. Our desks and books are… in the ocean on a ship, having been bumped from the order of shipping — AGAIN — and now on schedule to arrive at the END of September. But we’ve walked through the center of the city, seen gorgeous old buildings and soon will have the opportunity to meet with some of our UK acquaintances face to face —
And tomorrow is another day of the adventure…
– D & T
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
I frequently buy organic tofu – and tofu ‘yoghurts’ etc.
I am still roflmao about the ‘vegetables’ comment. It is SO easy to be vegetarian here – and we have the same image of the US – LAnd of Carnivores ;0)
India
yay! you’re there! is it raining? that is the generalization i have of the u.k. vegetarian food was never a problem when we visited. i felt there were ample options. and once you get the lay of the land (pretty u.s. statement, huh?) i am sure you will find what you need/crave. have fun exploring!
COULD be the orange shoes…;0)
India
Glad you arrived safe and sound and are enjoying things so far.
I find the vegetables thing hysterical too – there are plenty of veggies in the UK.
I can only speak for southern England as far as UK food shopping goes, but soya milk is in most supermarkets, and tofu occasionally too. Otherwise tofu can be found in health food shops pretty easily. Sainsburys has a ‘free from’ range of specialised foods, and they do dairy free cream cheese and all that sort of thing. Tescos do their own brand of soya milk.
It’ll just take a while to sort out what to buy where.
Oh! And the walking thing too – was just talking to friends back from the US after the summer who are both enjoying all the incidental walking you do this side of the pond. Much better than sitting in a car (says the person who drives to work every day)
Oh my, poor stuff in the middle of the ocean. I hope you find your hobbit hole soon.
‘Land of the Carnivores’ can probably be true for any country… but our market at home had four aisles dedicated to organic goods; vegetarian choices are starting to be more mainstream simply because there’s the market for it — (anything for a buck) and we had gotten out of the habit of having to go to a separate store. I think we’ll get used to it just fine — it’s just a disconnect mentally, as so many things are!
And just for THAT, Ms. India… the orange shoes are coming to a coffee shop near you…
Looking forward to your continued updates.
Watch out for those Scottish breakfasts 🙂 Sometimes you can’t beat a good fry-up, but there is a reason why most Scottish folk die of heart attacks/old age at 45 or so.
I may be exaggerating a little there.
Nah, it’s not the breakfasts, it’s the smoking. Check out this article & you’ll get an idea of what they’re dealing with here in Scotland. It’s a bit rough, everybody having to be out on the street to smoke … and it makes it rather awful to walk by them, I’ll give ’em that. It’ll eventually make them live longer, though.