August 4th and 5th, 2010 - Arrival in Glasgow and my 1st day here

Hi everyone,

I've finally gotten around to creating a blog for my Glasgow adventure... because I am now in Glasgow AND I have internet access! Yesteraday started out alright. I had spent several hours packing my suitcase, till maybe 2 am, ...guess I started a little late by any means... went to sleep, got up again at 6:30, wrote an e-mail to my future flatmate so she'd know I'd arrive today. I'd told her the time of my departure and arrival several weeks ago, so I thought it should be alright. I also wrote messages to those couchsurfers who'd assured me months ago that I'd be welcome to crash at their place or to be shown around the city once I'd arrived in Scotland. Had no time to check out their answers, of course. All happened a little late. That's because I'd been busy seeing friends and moving out of my former apartment every day of the past two weeks.

So, this is what happened when I got to the airport: my flight was supposed to depart at 11:20, but it was delayed by one hour, for security reasons. There'd been one piece of luggage that hadn't been recognised by the system, so it seemed like there was without owner - could have been a bomb. Due to the delay I missed my connecting flight by a split second and my flight had to be rebooked. Thanks to the nice lady at the service desk at Heathrow, I got a £5 coupon for lunch and I could choose where to eat. There were three restaurants: Giraffe, Gordon Ramsay's Plane Food



and Wagamama.

Wagamama served Japanese food which sounded interesting and I thought I'd get the most out of my money there from looking at the menu, so I ordered the Tori Kara Age , (that's what it looked like - haven't taken a pic in the restaurant) which was great, and got three glasses of still water (which tasted like chlorine) for free (btw, the water here seems to have that taste anywhere, ...my tea this morning tasted a bit like that as well). The waiters were all nice, one greeted me with "Hi, how are you?"- unusual for German standards.


Here some pics of Heathrow Airport, London:


Harrods (below, super expensive fashion)

The next flight was delayed by another hour because of the weather conditions. So I arrived in Glasgow at 7 pm. I was supposed to arrive at 3 pm - and the shift due to the different time zone is already included here, so in Germany it was 8pm. Food on a British Airways flight: - Cookies (with fruit, nuts n chocolate), black tea, potatoe crisps.


I like flying...all those happy, fluffy, cotton candy clouds. Sometimes they look like beds of foam, sometimes like waterfalls...*dreamy*



London is HUGE compared to Glasgow, when you look at it from above. I could see the Thames and Big Ben + the Parliament n stuff. Really cool - I'm so easily impressed.

Glasgow, on the other hand, is really lovely. A little industrial, yes, but around there are beautiful mountains and so much green. And I love the way the sun shines on the landscape. You can even see mountains from the airport. The airport, btw, is very small, compared to Heathrow, very cozy and unpretentious, with carpet on the floor and some cool extras like a Ben'n'Jerry's Ice Cream vending machine.






I was exhausted and had a heavy suitcase (luckily it was 22 kilos only - maximum weight allowed for my luggage was 23 kg), so I ordered a taxi, though I actually didn't want to spend too much money on my first day. I paid £27 and didn't find my address right away, because I had put down 278 Onslow Drive though it was actually 287. And 278 apparently didn't exist. I wasn't able to reach my flatmate Eunice on the phone. It was constantly occupied.I'd almost panicked, being alone in a foreign city, not having anyone I could ask for help. So I called my family to check my mails for messages by couchsurfers and my flatmate. However, in the meantime my flatmate had texted me. I texted back and in the end we managed to find each other. It turned out she actually hadn't expected me to be coming anymore. Probably, because we'd only been in contact online and I'd been writing from Germany (you never know with foreigners, right? ^^). Anyhow, she told me she had checked her mailbox around 3 pm, before going out, and that she hadn't received my mail from this morning. She was probably also unsure whether the information on my flight that I gave her last time was still up to date.


The flat is really big, light and pretty actually. There's strange beep noises coming from the living room from time to time, but one can get used to that and I'm gonna find out what it is. This is my room (sorry I took the video in a weird perspective, I didn't know the camera captured it like that - next time I'll tidy up my room and make a better one when I'm done):

Strangely enough, I even got the biggest room (apart from the living room). Got my keys for the apartment now, paid the rent and deposit and getting a written agreement as a security to get my deposit back when I leave. Eunice is very nice. She's from Kenya, very sporty and studies accounting. She's going to show me around the place today. I also have another flatmate, her name is Anabel or Anna Belle, dunno how its spelt, but she's half Argentinian, half Italian, plays the guitar in a punk band (cool, this means I can borrow the guitar and pracitce^^) , has a lot of tatoos and piercings. Really interesting. She's lived in France for some time too. Moved to Glasgow for a man and stayed because she loves Glasgow. Now she's working in a call centre. She's studied something as well, just can't remember what right now - I'll have to ask again. I think we're gonna get along well.

Hope this stay is going to be fun. But I'm sure it's going to be at least interesting. Had a good night's sleep, got up early this morning and it was freakin' cold, but when I got out it was much warmer and I realised quickly that I'd put on too many clothes. Thank goodness I have a heating, window blinds and I can open the window just in case.

I'm watching "Jennifer's Body" while I'm writing this. The film is so crappy that it's almost funny. Best quote so far: "Rumor? It's true! It's on the Wikipedia." Best song on the soundtrack: Florence and the Machine "Kiss with a fist"


UPDATE:
So, I've now come back from a short trip to a bigger supermarket called Tesco.
That's Eunice in the front.



The first supermarket I'd seen when we got off the bus, though, was LIDL - of all supermarkets there could have been :-).



So, as I said, Eunice was going to show me around and she decided to take me to the supermarket first, so I could buy anything I needed. And for that purpose a bigger supermarket seemed the better idea. There is a smaller one called co-operative food to which I can easily walk from my apartment, but Tesco is where Eunice works and she knew where everything was, so that was really helpful and she helped me carrying. Since we went by bus, She even paid the additional 75 pence for my bus ticket, because you need to pay the EXACT amount of money for each ticket and I only had 1 pound coins. I still need to get used to buses driving on the left side of the street, by the way.

Ah, fyi, you need to hold out that ticket when you want to get on the bus and show it to the driver all the time before entering.

So here's what I need to remember so far: I can take pretty much any bus that goes from the bus stop near my apartment (Alexandra Parade close to co-operative food) to Castle Street. From there I need to cross a street to get to another bus stop where I can take the 56 or 12. I can get off the bus almost immediately after one station to get to the super market, but it drives over a longer distance and crosses some streets that are not particularly pedestrian-friendly, so it's generally worth taking the bus.

There's a nice cemetery right next to the supermarkets, by the way. I love cemeteries, always been very agreeable places to me. Ziran, my boyfriend, will probably agree. Miss him.


I've bought a whole lot of food (mainly fruit, veggies, cereals, milk, noodles and rice) for £18 something, I think. That's really okay for the amount of food, because it should help me survive at least one week, if I use it right. Luckily I'd exchanged enough money. £480 (that's the rent plus deposit) in Germany and another £60 pounds at Heathrow.

Oh yeah, and there is a pharmacy right next to our place, and a swimming pool and fitness centre and a park where I can go jogging in the morning. That's really cool, more than I could've hoped for. But it's 30 minutes away from university, by bus! So I hope I won't have to get up too early. So that's that. I was hoping I could go to Glasgow Uni today using my all-day-ticket (£3,75) and get my student ID right away, but that may not be possible. I wrote an e-mail to Ms Antoli from the ERASMUS office, asking her to call me or reply to my mail, in case I can come and she's available, but she hasn't called yet. Hopefully she replies to my mail soon. Guess, I will just drive to the city centre and check out some more of Glasgow and then tidy up and organise my room when I'm back. I already have an appointment for Saturday. It's a couchsurfing meeting. Two of the couchsurfers I've mailed to have already replied and one asked me to come to the meeting on Saturday. Eunice offered to show me the street where the CCA (the restaurant we're meeting at) is. So I'm hoping to get to see at least a bit of the fringe festival and the Highland games this month, but it's so much to organise and I hope I'll have enough money left to do that.

New Vocabs of the day:
-duvet cover
-cleavage
-bedclothes
-coat hook
-furnishing (not furniture)
-can opener
-magpie (Elster, Plappermaul)
-sanitation facilities
-shopping trolley (not cart, AE)
-emit (actually knew the word, but had been looking for it all day)

I know it's not very reader-friendly to write this much, it's probably too much information for you guys anyway, but it helps me remember things when I need them. So I'm writing this blog for myself as well. Besides, I probably won't have that much time to write such long blog entries all the time and take pictures of everything, so I do it right now and we'll see how things develop over time.

I need to remember to ask which doorbell to ring to get in - our apartment is the ground floor, so this shouldn't be too difficult.

Cheers!

2nd UPDATE:


I thought I'd better use the bus ticket once more. Eunice had gone out earlier and still hasn't returned, so there was no use waiting for her to show me the city centre today. So I went back to the supermarket. Yay! Managed to do it all by myself. And though I was in a hurry, because I was worried it'd have closed once I'd arrived, it turned out Tesco is open 24/7... you'd never have this in Germersheim... I love this place! Especially, becaue there's such a great selection of things I've never tried before. I will try as many new things as I can over time. By the way, at Tesco you needn't pay a deposit to take a shopping trolley. They simply stand around and you can suit yourself to one.

Anyway, so I went there, because I'd figured we didn't have any can opener and I'd bought 3 cans. So I bought one (and some other stuff, which added up to £10.64). I now hardly have any cash left to buy another bus ticket, which means I will have to figure out how to find a bank or where to get cash from in the near surroundings. Or I'll have to borrow some money to get into the city centre and exchange money. So far there's been lots of good things about living in a shared flat. I couldn't even have thought about borrowing even small amounts of money just like that if I'd lived alone. And I can use all their dishes and other important stuff that I wasn't able to bring along with me and that would've been useless and expensive to buy, like cooking pots.

Bought the selection of Twinings Tea: very good advice, Rebecca, thanks! I liked the Lady Grey. Cooked Chicken Masala and added fresh Zucchini, Onions, CHICKPEAS (ooh, new word, that's good!) and rice.



Very delicious and inexpensive, because the Chicken Masala was reduced to £1.35 and I wouldn't have gotten a better one in any Indian Restaurant I know in Germany.

There've been so many people speaking Glaswegian in the streets and the supermarket that I've finally realised where I am and I feel really good about it and keep smiling. Seen a mum play peek-a-boo with her baby and even saying "Peek-a-boo!", sooo cool, English children's games. In my kitchen there's a small book by Roald Dahl. I'm in the UK! Finally!!!

Ah and I found out that, in the busses,there are stop-buttons for normal and for disabled people, the latters are placed lower on the bars to which you can hold on to, and when pushing the ones for disabled people, it makes a different sound than for those with normal stop buttons. Unfortunately, I found out by accidentally pushing it myself. Luckily the bus driver seemed to have known there was no disabled person on the bus, so he ignored it and didn't lower the ramp for wheel chairs.

Going to finish watching Shaun of the Dead now (Finally, I hope, after 3 failed tries!)

Nighty night!