Scotland, getting started

The first half-term at Ashville wasn't that hard, but I had to face some difficulties, eventually. As you might have read in the last article. So half-term break came at the right time. I was preparing for it almost for a month. Of course, just because booking tickets is much cheaper when you do it in advance. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to spend it entirely by travelling – well, you know that's my passion! I didn't waste a minute and went straight to Scotland, precisely Perth, where Katalin and Bogdan were already waiting for me. Katalin is Slovak HMC teacher, she was located somewhere south of London and Bogdan is Romania HMC teacher, he is at school close to Perth. I met both of them at the Cambridge orientation at the beginning of the school year.Our adventure was just about to begin. Right that evening we went for a small refreshment into local bar, where we saw England loosing worlds final in rugby - which is here probably the most popular sport. They have been beaten by South Africa, but anyway rugby wasn't the attraction. The aim was to discuss the plan for following week, because so far we were only worried about how to get to Bogdan's place. We decided to rent a car, as it sounded as the most sensible way how to explore (more less) vast Scotland within few days (exactly 4).The next day - it was Sunday - started very slowly, well what do you expect from tree teachers having first holidays? But we managed to do everything as planned, after good English breakfast (surprisingly after 2 months, I have no problem eating bacon and eggs in the morning!) we went to town and rent new Vauxhall Corsa (in Europe known as Opel) for quite decent £35/day with full insurance - which we gladly welcomed, because none of us drew a car on the left side of route. Actually, it is not that difficult, you just need to switch into left hand gear shifting -at the beginning the right hand seems to pop out accidentally, looking for the stick, but finding nothing but drivers door! And sometimes you get terrified that the stupid idiot in front of you is driving straight into you, it only after he miss you, that you realize that you are the one who should be called stupid for not knowing that here it is the other way around. All of these "hindrances" can be over come within one day, or so. But what takes longer, is to adjust into the tiny narrow streets and routes they have here! The main routes are like American sidewalks (here they call it pavement, but anyway they are rather to vast in America!) and the local routes are almost like one way streets! Well, but they fit well good together with the whole landscape, as the American do with American countryside. We get used to them... eventually.For the first day we went only to nearby St. Andrews, which was meant to be a students town. Except of the fact that we didn't meet any students, it was lovely little Scottish town. Few pictures should give you the picture... It wasn't bad, but nothing really spectacular - the great fact was that I was finally spending my time with fine people. I understood them and they looked like they understand me, even though we were all but different. The only common characteristic was our stubborness, but it didn't cause any problems at all! Actually we had lot of fun and ended up as a good team for longer journey.

But this will come in the following article.