It has been a hectic few weeks at ESN Plymouth what with one thing and another, but this weekend just past saw 40 of us trek up to Edinburgh in Scotland (the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland- to explain the title) for an ESN UK national event attended by 15 other sections from across the country.
With so many groups from lots of universities and cultural eccentricities (mainly those from Norwich let’s be honest…) they looked set to make the trip an amazing fun weekend away from the stresses and strains of university scholarship.
The journey for our 40 strong contingent from Plymouth set off at 10pm (22:00 for those on army time) from the university on Thursday night, due to arrive in sunny Edinburgh at 8:30 am on Friday morning. In much the same way as any organised trip anywhere in the world, we set off late… Although not by much it was enough to make our driver and the rep a little nervous.
‘Oh no! What an unlucky start’ I hear you say, but actually once we got on the road all was well and remarkably most of the guys and gals on the bus soon fell asleep and went peacefully quiet, allowing a bit of respite from the usual form of student bus journeys that tend to involve 6 forms of competing music blasting out and singing in various languages, all trying to overpower the other in some kind of tribal power play for coach trip noise dominance. On every journey I took by coach in Spain while abroad I found the noise to be rather off-putting when one was trying to sleep, and found myself incapable of voicing my concerns, what with being British and embarrassed and whatnot. However we all dozed away merrily most of the way to Edinburgh ready to see the sights and hear the sounds that a Friday morning in a city full of bagpipes and shortbread has to offer.
Upon our arrival in Edinburgh we set about checking into our hostels for the weekend and sorting out who would be sharing with who and why such and such a person didn’t want to share with so and so because of whatever reason… You get the picture.
The hostel staff were all very accommodating and welcoming, with one amazingly chirpy South African guy called Alan who owned one hostel (book a room here) who never once had anything but a smile on his face. I cannot recommend his hospitality enough. Once the rigmarole of check in to the two hostels was done and everyone was satisfied with their situations, we set off to find the start point of our weekends festivities, a walking orientation tour of the city setting off from Grassmarket street at the foot of the castle hill. After I had figured out which way to go and what road led where we eventually made it to the start point and had an hour to spare before we were due to set off, so we bomburst off to different cafes and breakfast places to wake our sleepy brains up after the mind and butt numbing 11 hour bumble up the motorway.
I decided, along with three of our hearty Italians (yes that was indeed a reference to a subway sandwich) to indulge in a traditional Scottish breakfast, basically a full English but with added haggis and washed down with a rather large glass of liquid jock (see below)
While finishing the food I decided to take a look at the map of the guided orientation walk we would soon be embarking on. The plan originally was for each ESN section to set off from a different point at a different time so as to avoid the inevitable bottlenecking of the city that 900 collective students would surely cause… But no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and sure enough it went pear shaped within 10 minutes. When I say pear shaped I mean out of hand, as in the original 40 people from Plymouth who were due to be coming arrived and got ready to go, only to be accosted by a large contingent of about 60-70 people from ESN Hertfordshire (whose rep and tour guide had vanished) and ESN Southampton (whose rep never even materialised). This left the only person there with the route map being our rep from Plymouth who stood looking at 110 expectant faces who all seemed to think he knew what the hell was going on.
But the show must go on and the tour must be done, so in his ever heroic fashion (yeah a bit self aggrandising I know, but I don’t care… There were lots of people staring at me, give me a break) the Plymouth rep steamed off into the city with naught but a map and dodgy internal compass for guidance. As with any ESN walking tour anywhere across the network people get lost or decide to leave and explore on their own, and this trip proved to be no expection. As the walk continued the group dwindled until it was merely a slack handful of Plymouth people left, and all was well with the world.
Once the enormous tour group has dispersed and I found myself some room to breathe we had free time until the first of our pre booked extra activities- a welcome dinner for one and all, so long as you had paid extra… As one of the section reps I was expected to be the early, but arrived 20 minutes late due to getting a tad lost on a straight one way road with big numbers of the doors to guide me along. Upon arrival I located my various section members dotted about munching and socialising with other sections and decided to get some scoff myself. After one bite of my dinner I was accosted by Spaniards from a different section asking where their rep was and if I knew them because we were all wearing blue t-shirts. (This kind of thing happened alot over the course of the weekend)
After coralling my section members out of the door we set off on a barcrawl with 2 other sections to drink our way through the cold wet streets of Edinburgh. Our first stop was a great little bar called Dropkick Murphy’s. An Irish bar (no sh*t sherlock) near Cowgate and the Unviersity (facebook) after about an hour of hearty chat and alcoholism we set off for our next bar, an obscure place near Waverley called The Banshee Labyrinth (this is their site) which has to be one of the strangest but coolest bars i’ve ever been to. A rock metal place spread over 3 basement floors with caved ceilings and really weird hologram pictures on the wall that would really mess with your head if you were stoned the whole place had a fantastic vibe to it, and our time there was rather short lived… It was quite unfortunate that I was too drunk by this point to remember where the place was the next day…
Our final bar stop of the evening was one known as Malones Irish Bar and hostel round the corner from the old cemetry and Grassmarket streets (see their site). It was here that I, along with a rather unfortunate one of our Amazing American companions encountered Edinburghs worst accented Casanova in the form of an enourmous bouncer with a liking for younger foreign women. After various attempts to ask her where she had been all his life and her looking at me confused as if he was speaking an alien language (which to her i’m sure he was) I translated his smooth talk into English and she got very embarrassed and ran away, much to the amusement of the other doormen and myself.
Malones was a fairly standard Irish bar with loud music and drunk people left right and centre. Once we managed to get all our ESNers out of the bar and back on the road to the exclusive club night ESN UK had organised for us the cold night air hit me and all of a sudden I felt extremely drunk… I remember getting to the club and such, but the whole rest of the night is a bit of a blur, about which the less said is probably the better… until I found myself back at the hostel at silly o’clock in the morning with people laughing and telling me they had a great time.
Despite being hammered I was proud that they were enjoying themselves and making the most of their time in Scotland, and couldnt help but feel a little self satisfied that maybe I helped them along the way.
Saturday morning saw one or two people wake up in time for breakfast, while the rest lay comatose till noon. The days activities were voluntary ones, like a tour of the Castle (website), a visit to the Scotch Whiskey Experience (book a visit here) which I chose to join, and a ghost tour in the evening to see the scary side of Edinburgh. I’m not sure if tales of poltergeists and strange bumps in the night are scarier than being propositioned by a Glaswegian bouncer with an accent as broad as his shoulders, so you’d have to ask our American friend for her take… However, back to the whiskey. Having not eaten breakfast nor drunk anything since the last beer the night before my throat was as dry as my dad’s sense of humour and in no fit state to be taking on 45% pure alcohol, regardless of how cute the woman offering free samples was. But, without wanting to be rude I gratefully accepted the wee dram on offer, and almost immediately regretted it once it sparked a coughing fit so loud it sounded like a car backfiring. Once I managed to recover I went shopping for presents for home and maybe some decent whiskey to sip later on once I came back to life properly.
That evening saw yet another club night laid on for us at a place called The Cav, which was fortunately right round the corner from our hostel, so much easier to stumble to in a stupor with the ever present haze of vodka vision and that strange sensation you get when you turn your head and the room catches up half a second later. (see here)
While the section members made their way to the dancefloor I was taken aside and told that reps were to be given free vodka all night and a private VIP bar to ourselves… So that was me for the night really… Its a hard life you know?
The next day we were due to check out at 10:00, but by 10:45 the keys still werent all back, but duty called and an enourmous group photo off all 900 ESN members was due at the standard tourist photo spot in Princes Street Gardens. With all my section there we waited for stragglers and late comers before snapping the pic and heading off for free time in the city before the coach journey home to Plymouth at 13:30.
While exploring the city a little and resting my weary feet I treated myself to a dram or three of different whiskeys in a nearby bar, which with hindsight wasnt the best idea ever but hey, YOLO. (I promise you’ll never hear me say that acronym ever again, in fact let me just go beat myself to death now for using it in the first place…)
With everyone on the coach and accounted for we set off back to Plymouth due to arrive at about 01:00 the next day. I promtly fell asleep on my mates shoulder and totally failed to remind everyone to get off the bus for a group photo of just us while we were still in Edinburgh and had nice scenery to see, so we ended up snapping the photo at a service station on the M6… Very attractive I know…
Once back in Plymouth after an eventful trip of sleeping, chatting, more sleeping and even some dancing from the fantastic four (Our Finnish girls, F for fantastic, F for Finnish, and there were 4 of them. hence the name fantastic four… Logic eh)
We went our separate ways to sleep in our own warm beds once again.
By all accounts so far everyone had a great time and a few plan to return to Edinburgh one day in the not too distant future to see the bits they missed due to hangovers and all those other pesky afflictions we students seem burdened with.
It was my pleasure to be with them all weekend, our guys behaved extremely well and had very very few issues at all, it made being a rep much easier and gave me more time for boozing… So I can’t complain.
We now look to our next national event, a trip to London in December to join our friends from ESN Kings, Imperial and City for a few days exploration and socialising.
So till the next time!
The Rain in Spain... 
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