Rotary Trip to Scotland

Monday 18 September
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Today was a vocational day. We dropped Bill off at a local school to learn about the community model they used there, then it was off to Glasgow. I had an appointment with some folks at the RSAMD (Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama) at 2, so we had lunch and I was shown how to find the train station so I could get home after, then it was off to the RSAMD.
I met with Jackie, the HR director, and got a nice tour of the place from Dee. Then I met with Sharon, who currently works with the Youth Outreach program, but was a recent grad of the Scottish Music program at the Academy. She gave me a brief explanation of Scottish music, then told me some place I should try to get to to hear some live music. I hope to get to one next week.
Unfortunately none of the digital media/film department was there. I left a copy of the DVD with Jackie, and hopefully someone will surface when I’m still close enough to go visit. We shall see.

The train ride home was fun. A bit of an adventure since it had started raining pretty hard, and I was never totally sure if I was on the correct platform (see “Scottish language note” below), but I made it OK.

We had a presentation to do for the Strathendrick Rotary this evening, at the Black Bull Hotel, which was right next to where they held the Ceili. First they had a very good speaker from the bird preservation organisation they have in Great Britain. We almost didn’t want to follow him, but kept ours short and to the point and acquited ourselves well.

One of the bartenders at the hotel was the most beautiful Scottish woman I have seen in Scotland so far, and I even got up the nerve to tell her that. She kind of giggled and said “hardly”, but seemed to appreciate it. Was I with it enough to get her name or take a picture? Of course not. Baby steps. And at least I know where she works.

When I was in Glasgow, I saw something I really appreciated: they have these kiosks that used to be used as shelter for the police when they were on patrol. About the size of two phone booths. Some enterprising soul has converted the one I saw into a mini coffee shop. Called “Copuccino”. That’s brilliant! There’s a picture in the “Glasgow” section of the pictures page linked on the right.

Scottish word of the day: “Milngavie” n. - the station farthest northwest on the downtown Glasgow run. Unfortunately for any foreign visitors, it is not pronounced even close to how it is spelled.
“Mil-guy” is how an articulate Scot will pronounce it, so you can only imagine what you’ll hear train announcers saying. Fortunately Scots are very polite and helpful, and I was able to get confirmation that I was on the right train from numerous people.

Scottish travel note for the day: make sure you know how your destination is both spelled and pronounced before you attempt to get there.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 18th, 2006 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Jason's trip updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.