Scottish Salad Bars and Crones – Edinburgh and Inverness, Scotland

By: Libby Batten

Scottish Salad Bars and Crones
Edinburgh/Inverness/Scotland

Ellen and I thankfully arrive in Edinburgh, amazed at how beautiful the town is. At first approach from the train station, the Royal Mile rises out of the ground with Edinburgh castle perching on its shoulder. Like an old man struggling to get up from a chair, the dark, gothic brownstones get taller and taller as we approach, and the view from the park stops me dead in my tracks.

Firth of Forth, view from Edinburgh Castle

There is a “Witchery Tour” advertised as having over 127 attacks-which they define as people passing out on the sidewalk. Wondering why this is considered an incentive to pay money to take part in, and how business is faring.

I found a new breed of women which I have defined as “Tanners”, scottish girls denying their roots by dying their hair and wearing fake tanning gel with cornrows.

A Greek girl in our hostel rails on the US for an hour. I don’t think she realizes that Ellen and I are American and I am relieved, for she is vigilant and unkempt. She says that every American carries flags on their clothes, cars and houses, then shuts up immediately when an episode of Friends comes on the TV and is entranced for thirty minutes.

Ate Haggis, Neeps and Mash with a wee dram’o whiskey. I tried to decline the scotch from the friendly bartender, but he said “Whad you wan’n gew n’ doo tha’ fa?” So I accepted. My first experience with sheep’s stomach went off quite pleasantly considering, and found that it is something that I even crave from time to time. Climbed to the Nelson Monument, gazed at the Firth of Forth, felt a brisk November wind stir up the blood in my cheeks and I can’t seem to wipe the stupid grin off of my face.

It is an uneventful stay, thank god, except for the fact that there is a girl of rather large girth residing in the bunk above mine. Every time she moves, breathes, or bats an eyelash the wood creaks like the dickens and my thoughts keep going back to the fact that if the wood breaks, my travel insurance will not cover my injuries.

Hop a bus to Inverness, through the Grampian Mountains. There is a mogul-esque quality to the lowland areas leading into the rounded snowcapped range. Glacial run-off seemed to form rivulets through geometric, black shiny mountain rock adorned with mossy ferns and firs. Waterfalls and black faced sheep everywhere. Family farms dot the roadside complete with scarecrows, and every town we come to contains a castle. I feel as if Mother Nature is flirting with me. A truck passes us from Thessaloniki, Greece.

Inverness itself is unimpressive at first view, but the houses lining the Ness are stone, hedge rowed, neat and comely. After walking the Great Glen Way over bridges and some of the islands that dot the river, we return to our domicile, the Ho-Ho Hostel.

The Ho’s lounge is a smoky sarcophagus with tall, floor to ceiling windows and permanent christmas lights blinking with saccharine optimism 24 hours a day. The Ho itself is a revolving door serving as home base for Fight Club beneath our bedroom window.

Met an assortment of characters on our first evening, including Simon, a Canadian philosophy grad student taking a stint off from school fishing; Jamie, Buddhist/Spiritualist Aussie who doesn’t eat tomatoes, onions or garlic for religious reasons and is hopping a bus to Ft. William because God told him to; Larry, ex-marine whose first words to me were, “Oh, you were in the states last week? Do you know if there are any tech jobs open in Birmingham?”; Jim, 54-year old New Zealand cow-herder tracing his Scottish “roots” by drinking Grolsch all day in the sarcophagus. “I am intelligent and lazy. Ask any of my friends,” he drawled.
“How do you afford to travel and do this?” I ask.
“I call my ex-wife (one of four by the way), and tell her to sell a cow. I’ve got about fifty left, so I figure I’ve got another six months or so to get to the bottom of my ancestors.” and with a strained gruff and a slap of two palms on the table to illustrate his pause, he arises to retrieve another Grolsch from the fridge.

I observed a withered, bleak figure in the corner, smoking incessantly. Unable to guess its gender, it made an impression on me, defeated, tired, searching for warmth and ready to give up on the futility of living. An ash about 6 cm hung in an arc off the cigarette’s end and she/he just gazed into space about a foot ahead.

We ate our Thanksgiving dinner at a greasy unorganized pizza parlor. Salad bar highlights: boiled can corn, chopped onions, cold tortilla chips, iceberg lettuce, and whole tomatoes cut in half.

Left the hostel to grab a bottle of wine from Tesco and got caught in a huge crowd milling about by the riverside. There was a big name Radio One DJ playing The Proclaimers, “I Would Walk 500 Miles” and The Darkness “I Believe In A Thing Called Love” over and over. Kids head-banged around me, parents with their kids on their shoulders were jumping up and down and burly, robust kilted men were dancing atop a double decker bus with Santa throwing their arms in the air and around each other. For the first time, I knew I was in a foreign country. Stuck in the midst of this rabble, I waited an hour to find out that it was due to a huge firework display put on in commemoration of turning on the christmas lights with the entire town in attendance. It was quite enjoyable.

The Museum of Inverness gave me two interesting facts…the town is built upon a fault, and one puma was found here in 1980. Never since.

I retired after a busy day to a red velvet-draped dorm room and nestled in bed to record the day’s events. I arose to greet a soft rap at the door and in bursted the androgynous, withered crone from the Sarcophagus. I screamed, and she (I guess the mystery is solved) slurred a mumbled thanks in my direction and toppled into the bunk next to mine. I was a bit off put and nervous. She demanded the lights be turned off, and I frighteningly obliged, drifting off serenaded by the shouts from Fight Club and the soft punching of human flesh. At some point in the middle of the night, I awoke with a start to her hovering above me, arms bent and twitchy, like a T. Rex that can’t decide which way to go. Upon her recognition that I was awake, she scrambled back to her bunk, like a troll-crab, hunch backed and sideways.

She disappeared in the morning, and no one knew her, where she came from, or where she went. Freaky.

It pretty much goes like this. Inverness is like that town in Arizona I heard about where compasses don’t work and you can’t seem to leave. No magnetic field exists in either place and my digital camera won’t work.

We spend our last night in relative peace, and awake to leave early the next morning, our friends rising to say good-bye. I must admit it was a bit emotional.

The androgynous crone was kind enough to see us off in the bus station at 6:30 am. I turned the corner to board the bus and there she was…just hanging out. She finished off a carton of milk, threw the carton down on the concrete like a football after a touchdown, and her face contorted into this sick smile reminiscent of Picasso’s The Scream.