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   Pakistani bagpipers
Tuesday, August 14 2007

setting: 2nd Floor "Chill Out Room", Eurohostel, Glasgow, Scotland, UK

Gretchen and I got "free" breakfasts as part of the price of our "beds" at the Eurohostel, but these breakfasts were spartan by Scottish standards. The dozens of Eurohostel guests sat around the grim dining room, periodically going up to the kitchen to get more of what was on offer: milk, dry cereal, and bread that could be toasted in one of those conveyor belt toasting machines. There were no mushrooms, no toasted tomatoes; indeed, there was no hot food whatsoever. Thankfully, at least, there was coffee, which made made me cheerful at least. I was already happy I'd had the unpleasant experience with that apeman last night, if only to be able to tell Gretchen (and now, dear reader, you) all about it.
We had a whole day to kill in Glasgow before our flight back to Newark tomorrow, a day Gretchen could easily fill with last-minute activities if given half a chance. Since we wouldn't have a room until 3:00pm at the Eurohostel, we had to be out doing something anyway.
We found ourselves wandering south across a bridge over the River Clyde into a part of Glasgow we'd yet to visit. It was a desolate two-dimensional landscape or parking lots, warehouses, and businesses (many of them with signs in Arabic) punctuated by dreary highrise tenements. Then, strangely, off in the distance we could hear the familiar wail of a bagpipe. Indeed, it's wasn't just one bagpipe but a whole marching band of them, complete with drums and a baton twirler. As we drew closer we could see them marching slowly back and forth in a bank parking lot. They were all dressed up in traditional Scottish tartans, although they were wearing trousers and not kilts. The most puzzling thing about them was that they were all dark-skinned, either Arabs or South Asians. After a moment of cognitive dissonance, we joined the crowd of onlookers. Most of the gathered looked to be South Asian, although there were a few gawkers with evidently deeper Scottish roots, including one young man drinking shamelessly from a bottle labled "Buckfast." (That Wikipedia link is a must-follow, if only to see it referred to as "wreck-the-hoose juice.")
Eventually Gretchen asked one of the gathered what was going on and learned that today was Pakistan Independence Day, and that these practiced bagpipers would be performing later as part of the festivities. This performance here at the Habib Bank UK was just a warm up.
But it was a full-on warmup, complete with a reverent raising of the Pakistani flag on the comically-short bank flagpole. The whole performance was trance-inducing and I felt like I could have stood there all day watching, especially once I realized that the breathy imprecision and slight warble of a bagpipe is the perfect sound quality for the performance of Indian and Pakistani music. I'm sure one of the tunes performed while we stood there was Pakistan's national anthem, though it didn't sound very different from the three other songs in the complete Scottish bagpiping repertoire.
For lunch, we dined at the Wee Curry Shop, a tiny Indian food restaurant with a tiny menu. In such a small place, the rhythm of the kitchen was completely transparent. When the batch of pakora was done, it was broken into servings and given to everyone in the dining room. The same was true of the several main courses. As supplies were used up, the menu on the chalkboard was changed before our eyes. At some point in our meal, vegetables were delivered, coming in through the front door like everything else. The food was delicious. It was also cheap, but the same could not be said of the beer (Kingfisher being the only option). Having a beer with lunch appears to be the norm in Glasgow.
While Gretchen went off to further pack her day with activities, including a visit to the interior of the Glasgow Cathedral, which, she later told me, made a cathedral near the Eurohostel "look like a bathroom." Meanwhile I made my way back to the hostel and spent an hour or so in the attached bar (Osmosis) drinking a beer and taking advantage of the free WiFi. When 3pm came I checked in, went up to room 610, took a shower, and then fell asleep on the lumpy steel-ribbed mattress, undisturbed by the noisy street below. Had this not been our last night in Scotland I would have found a way to cleanly sever the power cord to the pay-to-use television and fashioned myself a better British adapter for my American electrical equipment.
At some point after Gretchen had shown up and we'd gone downstairs to within the range of the free WiFi, we were returning to our room and I saw Gretchen get into the elevator with, of all people, apeman from last night! I didn't was appalled and didn't want to be stuck in an elevator with him, so I went for the stairs instead. "Look, we have an elevator!" Gretchen shouted, and what could I say? So I got in with her and turned towards the apeman and said, "That's the Spanish guy from last night!" "Really?" said Gretchen in horror. We got out at the next floor and Gretchen had me go to the front desk to report the situation, but service was slow and I realized that they honestly didn't care. "It's not our problem," I told Gretchen, and she agreed.

We had dinner again tonight at the 13th Note, with Gretchen ordering (among other things) the vegetarian haggis done up in a loaf with tatties and neeps (mashed potatoes on the bottom, mashed turnips on the top, and haggis in between). We knew breakfast at the hostel wouldn't stick to our ribs and that we'd be hungry tomorrow morning at the airport, so Gretchen also ordered a double serving of hummus to go.

Back in our room, I drank the last of the whiskey we'd accumulated, knowing we wouldn't be able to carry it onto the airplane. Gretchen loves Irish whiskey but finds most scotch to be "too smoky."


Me this morning in the Eurohostel dining room.


Bagpipers celebrating Pakistan Independence Day.


Dreary high rises and a gloriously wild garden south of the River Clyde in Glasgow.

See more photographs from the Scotland trip.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?070814

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