Scotland, Day 4

I woke up at 6 am. I never wake up at 6 am. It was still dark outside, but my body was saying “Hey Ken!!! In Oregon, it’s only 10 pm!!! Let’s hang out w/ the guys of Diakonos and raid Charis (for those of you that don’t understand the context…it’s safer that you remain that way).”

I was awake for 2.5 hours before either parent awoke and was dinking around on my laptop (until my battery died) or was reading. I got a lot finished on my book (The Canterbury Tales). Finally the parents awoke and we decided that we needed groceries if we were going to stay in this little cottage. So we went to Costco.
Yeah, Costco has stores in Europe; who knew? The only problem is, Costco was 80 miles away. We said “No problem,” until the round-abouts nearly turned father into a nervous wreck. The trip lasted 2.5 hours both ways. Though I may complain about a LOT of things, don’t underestimate the beauty of the Scottish countryside. It is like the Oregon Willamette Valley, but kinda squished together so that you see mountains and hillsides everywhere you travel. There is nothing that even comes close to the size of Mt. Hood, but the sheer volume of hills and mountains and foothills more than makes up for their size.
On every mountain lies one of three things: heather, trees, or grazing land. Heather is a scraggly little flower that grows…everywhere. It is purple. It kinda looks…well, I have nothing to compare it to, so it kinda looks like heather. As for the trees, it is easy to imagine that there are about as many trees in Scotland as there are in Oregon, only, since environmentalism is so strong over in Scotland, they cannot log as much as we do in Oregon. For once, I did not mind the anal retentiveness of the environmentalist (it may be because I do not live in Scotland).
The grazing fields are quite a sight to see. In every city and in every shire (county) you’ll find that much of the acreage is devoted to grazing land for sheep, horses, cows (weird looking cows. No horns and furry. They make up the Angus burger that you are eating right now) and goats. I’m used to seeing animals eat stuff, but I was shocked (I’m shocked by a lot of things over here) to see animals grazing in the middle of a large city. Yeah. Go figure.
In the north-eastern part of Scotland (the Highlands), it is not uncommon to see ginormous wind turbines. These things have to be at least 150 ft with 3, 100 ft long tines. To put that in perspective, each turbine is as tall as a 15 story building (probably taller). We took several pictures (most of them came out poorly) of these turbines.
Eventually (after getting lost for a LONG TIME), we got to Costco. It was the first familiar thing we had seen (I am not counting the Burger King or Pizza Hut we saw when we first got to Scotland). It was our North Star; our point of reference. After seeing Costco, we knew that everything would be alright. Until we saw the prices.
The first thing you need to know about UK pricing is that the British pound is roughly twice as valuable as the US dollar. In other words, take anything you see that is priced in pounds and double it and that’s how much it costs in the U.S. Well, when we went into Costco, we saw things that were priced the exact same as they were in the States, but, since they were priced in pounds, cost twice as much. We were flabbergasted. Where do the Scots make all of this money?!?! It’s not like there is a booming entertainment industry in the U.K. (trust me. I’ve watched BBC television. It sucks.)!!!
We purchased some familiar looking food (hamburgers, chips, sodas, eggs, bacon) at unfamiliar prices and then went home, this time with the journey taking 3 hours. Not because we stopped to admire the countryside; at this point, we had SEEN the countryside, we just wanted to get back “home” so that we didn’t have to sit in the car anymore. No, we got lost for about 1 whole hour. Awesome.
We came home, ate ham sandwiches and potato chips (and some frozen chocolate-chip cookie dough…Heaven) and watched Agatha Christie murder mysteries. And a bit of “The Notebook.” That is, until Dad agreed with me that it was boring tripe (save for the bits with James Garner, the old dude talking to his wife in the Alzheimer’s Ward.) In fact, irony of ironies, my Dad and I both guessed the “big shocking moment” at the very beginning of the movie: the old people in the clinic are the two kids that Garner is talking about and the woman has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember any of it. I’m arrogant enough to put that in here so that you’ll realize that my Dad and I are so much cooler than anyone else that had to sit through the entire movie to reach that revelation. ;)
I went to bed – exhausted – at 10 pm…I think it’s because there is nothing to do here at night. The nearest town is 13 miles away, all the neighbors are old, there’s nothing on the television (seriously. British TV sucks.), and I cannot surf the internet. In fact, the reason I have been incommunicado since I reached Scotland is I cannot find a single place with wireless internet access. Go figure.