To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.
—Freya Stark

Most of the people in my hostel are Aussies or Kiwis on their walkabouts who are staying and maybe working in Edinburgh for several months. They say “Cheers” and “As you do,” and only a few of them can afford a plane ticket home.

At a whisky store on the Royal Mile I bought a bottle of Islay scotch called Caol Ila that tasted like smoke and seawater and shared it with a New Zealander named Paulie who said it was alright but that the smoothest whisky he had ever tasted a Scotsman doled out from a flask secreted in his belt and had made himself.

At an Irish bar, where someone ordered a pint of Guiness at 9:30 Sunday morning, I finally enjoyed a full English breakfast, with bacon, pork sausage, mushrooms, a potato scone, hash browns, baked beans, black pudding, tomato, eggs, and soda bread.

The hostel has a kitchen that always smells like exotic cooking, and it makes eating a lot cheaper. I ate a 50 pence can of baked beans with sausages. The sausages had the consistency of tofu only I knew they were made of some kind of meat. Now I’m sticking with pasta, which is universally cheaper.

On my third day there I took a tour of Edinburgh Castle, just up the rock from my hostel. It says something about Scotland when a military fortress is the center of their capital.

It’s an old city and a city in flux. Up through World War 2 the British Empire employed Scotsmen in making ships and fighting wars. Now tourism and whisky are the biggest industries, and the government is the largest employer. Most Scots have moved abroad, and the remnants are die hard nationalists.

Edinburgh is very modern. I saw indoor malls, something unheard of in Southern England, a gang of bikers on 4-wheel ATVs who revved their engines under the red lights, and another on mopeds. Everyone in a kilt was asking for change.

The most engaging sight on cold nights in Scotland and Northern England are the skinny British girls, who insist on wearing spaghetti straps and maybe a light cardigan in spite of the wintry 30 degree weather. Their high-heel sandals somehow find footing in all that snow and ice, and they don’t shiver or turn red.

Summer would be a much better time to visit, when the air is clearer and warmer and highland tours easier. Edinburgh holds a very California-like festival in August that fills the city with music, street performers, and hippy crafts.

People travel to faraway places to watch, in fascination, the kind of people they ignore at home.
—Dagobert D. Runes

I took to travel life pretty quickly. I live out of a backpack that I leave in the hostel under clothes hung up to dry. I wash clothes in the sink. I take my iPod, camera, and passport with me everywhere and aim for one meal a day, after eating breakfast in the hostel.

I wanted to start in the UK because I knew I would experience very little “culture shock.” It is very similar to the US, and the two-way cultural influence is obvious. Still, I’ve gotten used to looking the wrong way before I cross the street.

On my last night in London I went to Leicester (Lester) Square, where they had set up a reader board to tell drunks about bus services so none ended up sleeping in the gutter.

On Saturday I took the train from London to Leeds to visit a friend who is going to theuniversity there. The college is definitely the town’s biggest feature, but it also has a long history of industry and religion. Many of Leeds’ surplus old chapels have been converted into dorms and even nightclubs.

I took a bus from Leeds to Edinburgh. We drove through the snowy downs of Northeast England and had a one-hour layover in Newcastle, where I met an old man and couldn’t understand 90% of what he said. I had to pick out the words I could understand and respond to those, an awkward trade learned from conversing with people who speak English as a second language.

I think Edinburgh is the San Francisco of Great Britain. The city is not really a cultural hub, at least not in the winter, but it is proud of what it has, namely Scotch, tartan, and bagpipes.

It’s also very hilly. A big gash runs under Edinburgh Castle, itself on the crag of an inactive volcano, and right between Old Town and New Town in the city center. Steep roads run up and down away from these landmarks, down towards the bay to the north, and up around Blackford Hill and Hollyrood, with King Arthur’s seat on top and a gold course underneath.

My hostel, the Castle Rock, is right under Edinburgh Castle, just off the Royal Mile with all the tourist spots, haggis restaurants, ale pubs, and the Scotch Experience museum, complete with an It’s A Small World raft ride in a busted open whisky cask.

I’ve been in Edinburgh for a day and a half and haven’t seen much of that, but already I’ve encountered the last thing I expected to see here: a Scottish Hare Krishna.