As Promised, the Hoff

You wanted it, now you got it. Credit for this goes to the esteemed Mr. Leeroy Dunteman!

Scotland is Also Full of Dead People

The next day was Edinburg - great castle, old buildings, and, thanks again to the tingle of Travel Sense, a fantastic old churchyard, in the middle of the city, but sunken below street level, and completely silent. The oldest headstone we saw was dated 1717 - not too long after the Pilgrims came to America.

Scotland is Full of 15-Year-Olds

Glasgow has a good vibe. There is a certain feeling that just sort of permeates the air of a really great city - it's hard to describe exactly what it is, but it's what makes this whole travel thing worthwhile. And all my favorite cities have it, from San Francisco to Chiang Mai.

We arrived in Glasgow on a Saturday morning Ryanair flight (about 40 bucks, including all taxes), parked our bags at the hotel, and commenced with poking around. Glasgow, a former industrial center, does not have the sheer volume of historical buildings of a place like London or Edinburgh, so it is not instantly recognizable as a fun place for tourists. But the streets were full of people just strolling around and hanging out. We passed by an intersection and I felt my travel sense tingling. So we hung a left onto Buchannan Street.

Buchannan Street has been completely converted into a pedestrian-only zone, and it was packed of shops, local people, bagpipers and other buskers, and just a few scattered tourists like us. This was not Covent Garden, given completely over to the tourist business - it was alive, energetic, and living on its own terms. And as Saturday afternoon progressed into Saturday evening and eventually Saturday Night, it began to fill up. With 15-year-olds.

Glasgow has a club scene, a bar scene, and a live music scene (which gave the world Franz Ferdinand, amongst others), and they were all rocking on Saturday. But the bulk of the patrons, in their finest clubwear and hipster clothing, seemed to be mostly teenagers. Old people like Lee and myself, while present, were in the minority.

We had a few drinks at cowboy-themed bar, complete with potted cactus, and then caught a rocking show by a band from Dundee called Mercury Tilt Switch.

I Shit You Not, I Totally Saw David Hasslehoff

Yesterday was our final day in London, and it was a weird one. We went to a pub for our nightly pint (or three) and saw a small car accident occur across the street. Then, inside, there was thumping house music, and it was full of 19-year-olds, but outside the music was inaudible, and everywhere there were grown-ups hanging out, drinking beer, and talking. We leaned on lamposts to sip our ale and talk (no such thing as open-container laws here - when the pub fills up, people simply flow out into the street with their drinks).

We heard a small commotion, and looked up to see what appeared to be a man getting mauled by a Doberman Pinscher. The dog kept growling and leaping up to bite his arm, but he seemed strangely unperturbed. He definitely did not have the 'Holy shit, I'm being mauled by a dog' expression on his face, so everyone at the pub just watched as he nonchalantly walked away, the Doberman still biting the crap out his jacketed arm.

Then Lee took out his camera so we could look at the Greatest Picture in the World Ever.

Here's where the story cuts back to earlier that afternoon.

Lee and I had been walking around, trying to find the Egyptian embassy to work on visa issues for that leg of our trip, and had realized that we were near Harrods - London's classic uber-department store. We strolled around it for a bit, checked out the grand eating hall, and then walked out to continue our travel planning. But when we got to the corner, we saw a small mob of people gathered around the other entrance to Harrod's. A large red double-decker bus sat opposite the door. We were mildly interested and stepped a bit closer to see if anything exciting was going on. We had concluded that nothing interesting was happening, and were about to leave, when I noticed the banner on the side of the bus. It bore the tanned, dashing image of David Hasselhoff.

David Hasselhoff was in Harrod's signing his new autobiography. We checked the banner. It said he was signing from noon to 4pm. My watch read 3:57. Holy crap. We had to wait and take a picture of David Hasselhoff.

So we joined the crowd and waited. Everytime the doorman opened the door, we switched on our digital cameras and leaned forward. And every time, someone other than the star of Nightrider, Bay Watch, and countless German music videos stepped out. We waited some more.

I looked at my watch again and it showed 4:13pm. We had been waiting to see David Hasselhoff for over 15 minutes. I was not sure I liked what that said about me. How long is too long to wait for a glimpse of David Hasselhoff? I don't know.

But then a security guard came out, and then another, and then there he was. David Hasselhoff. His tan really was magnificent. He smiled and waved, and we snapped pictures. In my first one, his back was turned. I re-framed, and as he turned back, pushed the shutter button. But it was another picture of his back. Then he got on the bus. I snapped through the window, but the auto-focus chose the window instead of David, and his face was blurred. I focused carefully and snapped again, and his face was again obuscured, this time by a crack in the window. And then I realized two things:

1. David Hasselhoff is like Sasquatch - he is nearly impossible to capture on film.
2. I now had more pictures of blurry David Hasslehoff than I had of anything else from my 4 days in London.

And then like that - poof! - he was gone. But although I failed, Lee did not. Lee had some how managed to push to the front and snap the World's Great Picture of All Time Ever. And I swear to you, gentle reader, that I will post that picture just as soon as we figure out how to plug Lee's camera into a computer over here.

Out of the Groove

For the past few days, my intrepid traveling companion Lee and I have mostly wandered arouind the streets of London and battled jet lag. We have not yet hit our travel stride. We've enjoyed the pubs, yes. We had a good doner kebab. Saw the British Museum and the Tower of London - the medieval weapons collections were heaven for avowed geeks like ourselves. But we are still not really in the groove.

We have been spending like sailors, too, but living like hobos. My (considerable) travel skills were mainly honed in places like Thailand, India, and West Africa, which are, in some ways, difficult places to travel, but are, in others, really easy. The difficulties you can probably imagine, but the easy thing about traveling in the 'Third World' is that, quite simply, I'm rich there, and things are easier when you're rich. I can take taxis wherever I please. I eat at whatever restaurant I want. No national treasure requires such a steep admission that I think, 'I could miss that.' I just pay the four bucks and see the Emerald Buddha, or the Red Fort, or Ankor Wat. But the Tower of London - $30 to get in?! I'm not sure...

I'm also not quite sure how I feel about the fact that I love traveling in places where I'm rich. I feel like much tourism in poorer countries is grounded in a nostalgia for colonialism, where the foreigners lived like kings, and the natives existed to be their servants. Is that why I like traveling in Thailand, or in Ghana? I don't think so... I like those places because the people are so friendly, and the culture seems so much more accessible to a traveler like me. Right?

It's hard to say. All I know is that I'm looking forward to Morocco and Egypt. And I'm not completely sure why.

It's For Real

Well, now it's for real. I have tickets. I have a Eurail Pass. I have reservations. Fucking reservations! I never thought it would happen to me. My previous travel experience - Thailand, India, West Africa, Central America &c. - did not generally require such things. Well, the tickets, yes, but the other things seemed like the extravagant domain of bourgeois neo-colonial tourists. Not PomoBohoHobos like myself. But here I am, with two whole hotels reserved before my departure. I don't know about this.

I've never traveled in Europe. I went there as a kid with my family, and I spent three days in Paris en route to Benin, but I've never traveled there. This experience will be interesting. And goddamn expensive. But how can one claim to be a Traveler, an Adventurer, or a Man of the World if one is not intimately familiar with the backstreets of Pigalle or the tapas joints of San Sebastian in the Basque Country. Impossible.

So, on Monday I will set off. Wish me luck.