Glasgow and Taxis: Day 2 in Scotland

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There are two types of people in this world. The first are the people who have no problem ordering things like pizza and taxis over the phone, and the second are the people who would rather curl up into a ball and die rather than explain that you want a pepperoni pizza. I am the second type of person, and I think it was for this reason only that I was relegated throughout this entire trip to be the one who calls the taxi company.

I managed to call a taxi in Edinburgh with no problems at all, but on our second day in Glasgow I phoned the number Victoria had found and was told that, at eight in the morning, it would be an hour wait for a taxi.

Here was the thing about Glasgow: when you arrived at the bus station it gave you pamphlets on the bus system, the train system, maps of the city, and guides to all sorts of events, but there were no taxi numbers posted up anywhere. All we had was this one number Victoria had found on her iPod, and it was telling us there would be an hour wait for a taxi, goodbye.

We were standing in front of the Queen’s Park Hotel when I got off of my mobile, turned to the others, and told them the bad news. Hannah was in a daze, probably because she had had to sleep closest to the open window, but Victoria took this rather stoically and said, “All right. Then let’s start walking.”

Our first destination in Glasgow was going to be the Necropolis. It was the one thing that Hannah had been really excited to see, and since this was her birthday, I wanted it to be perfect. Walking two miles to a graveyard is not exactly my idea of a fun birthday, but what else was there to do? I readjusted my backpack and let Victoria lead the way.

It took us about two hours to make it to the City Centre on foot, and it was not the greatest walking area. We were passing through what was very probably the slums, and it was dirty and gray and I was extremely glad we were walking that way in the morning, when the sun was out. When we finally made it to the City Centre, we were greeted by an old man sitting in front of a shop, who smiled at us and said, “Are you all right there?”

By this time we had figured ourselves out, with the aid of our map and the handy signposts that frequent City Centres but not so much dirty backstreets, but it was nice to finally have someone check and make sure that none of us were on the verge of a mental breakdown. (I could actually feel one coming on.)

From the City Centre we walked to the Necropolis, which was in the middle of Cathedral Square. I was very impressed by the scenery, especially the trees, which still had most of their leaves.

The Necropolis was at the top of a small mound, and we climbed our way up. It was free to enter, which means that no one takes care of the grounds, so the pathways were slippery and slightly treacherous. The trip was worth it. Old headstones, tall and lovingly carved, are beautiful. The best gravesites were at the top of the mound. There was a wee church up there, although I do not think it is used anymore, and lots of Grecian urns, Celtic crosses, and Biblical quotes. My favorites, though, were the two mausoleums. The first was circular, with stone steps leading up to the grate. The second one was silver, with weathered angels standing guard on the domed roof, and when I climbed up to the grate I saw three more demonic-looking angels gazing out at me. Their eyes were bleached an unnatural white, and they seemed to be looking at me as if they were going to steal my soul. I squealed and backed off, and when I summoned my courage again, climbed up to the grate and saw the headstone of the dead man, and the ground beneath the sign was torn up, so that one concrete slab lay broken and a black hole looked out of the ground.

That was freaky enough for me, so I ran off to the safer Celtic crosses.

After we had had enough of the Necropolis, we walked back down to the main City Centre and stopped somewhere for pizza. We had had pizza the day before for lunch as well in Edinburgh, but we had eaten with our fingers, like American’s. That day we tried to eat like Europeans, but I had problems using the knife with my right and the fork with my left, and gave up and switched the utensils so I could eat more easily. Somehow, Hannah and Victoria ate neatly despite the unusual European way, and they laughed at the mess I had made.

With lunch over, we wandered around Saint George’s Square, where there was another large tribute to Sir Walter Scott. Then we wandered around City Centre, but I was not impressed by the shops. I was in Scotland to be a tourist, and I wanted tourist shops, and I wanted original, sweet shops, not chain stores. All of Glasgow was a giant strip mall overrun by Primarks and HMVs and Starbucks. We wandered in a few of the stores, spending most of our time in the HMV, where Hannah got an Ed Sheeran CD, but when that was over we found we were bored. None of us had come to shop for clothes—especially considering it’s cheaper to buy clothes in America anyway.

I expressed an interest in the Kelvingrove Museum, where there would be an Egyptian exhibit, and we debated calling a taxi to take us there. Eventually we decided to forgo the taxi and walk, which on the one hand was nice, because we saw some nicer shops than the ones in City Centre, but on the other hand, it started pouring when we were within ten minutes walking distance from the museum.

We did make it to the museum in one piece, albeit one wet piece, and we viewed the special Egyptian exhibit, which was actually rather small. I had been expecting an exhibit similar to the one I had gone to see in Chicago when I was in high school, which had spanned the length of several rooms, but this exhibit only took up a main hall and then two smaller rooms on either side. I found this extremely depressing.

Upstairs, we saw a lot of taxidermied animals, and a little bit of history, but we focused on the Floating Heads of Expression, which hung from the ceiling, and the art works on the top storey. They had a Dali painting, Christ of Saint John of the Cross, and a lot of sculptures. There was also a room dedicated to the history of warfare, which made me sigh and wonder if all Scots were so obsessed with war.

We wandered back to City Centre when the museum closed. It was dark out then, and we were all at our wit’s end, having walked over five miles that day, and then having walked a lot yesterday too. We got a fish dinner at a small pub, and I complained about it. My nagging did not help situations any more, and we all ate a sulky dinner before we wandered back to City Centre.

I suppose our plan had been to walk around and look at more shops, but even in big cities like Glasgow, everything closes down at 5, and there was nowhere to go. When we all came to this conclusion, at different points during the next hour, we decided to try and phone a taxi. I pulled out my mobile again, and was told again it would be an hour wait.

We went to the Starbucks and found numbers for three other taxi services, none of which panned out, and finally I said, “Let’s go back to the bus station and get a taxi from there.”

And that’s what we did: We stole a taxi from the Buchanan Bus Station.

We still could not pronounce Balvicar Road correctly, but this time our cabbie was nice and corrected us gently. He was a soft-spoken, kind man, and he charged us a lot less to get to our hotel than our last cabbie had done. In the end, he gave me the number for his taxi company, which had not shown up on any of the websites Victoria checked—although a bastardized version had been passed onto me, lot of help that was, thanks people of the internets—and so I am just going to say now, if ANY of you ever find yourself in Glasgow, the phone number for the taxi company is 0141.429.7070.

But our lovely cabbie got us back to the hotel, saving us from having to walk two miles in the dark, and Victoria told us stories about Game of Thrones before we went to bed.

I woke up at six the next morning to phone the taxi company.

I swear that this is punishment for being shy, because it is really hard to force yourself up at six in the morning to run down the stairs of the hostel outside onto the main road (because you do not get service in the building) to order a taxi. But it had been agreed that I would do it, because I am the most perky in the mornings, and it had to be at six, because then they would not have that hour-wait excuse when we ordered a taxi for 7.30 a.m.

But thanks to the intercession of the Good Lord, the taxi company told us they would pick us up at 7.30 and take us to the bus station, and I climbed back upstairs, got ready, and climbed back into bed. I woke everyone up at 6.40, and by 7.20 we were standing ready in front of the hostel.

Our taxi pulled up, and we stared at it, and then he stared at us. Finally we went to him and said, “Is this the taxi for Rebekah Phillips?” and he said, “Yep.”

Then he said, “What’s the matter? Have you never seen a taxi before?” and laughed.

“We weren’t sure you’d come,” we all quavered. Possibly it was just me. Our cabbie joked with us and dropped us off, and we found we were basically an hour early for our bus.

This was all right with me. We were in City Centre. We were not abandoned in Queen’s Park. We were getting out of Glasgow, and good riddance to it. We were going home.

Whenever we travelled in Scotland, we went at night, and so on Sunday I was finally able to see what Scotland looked like, and it was beautiful. There are not so many patchwork quilt fields as in Ireland, but the hills are there, and the trees. Every city we passed through had a sign on the way out that read HASTE YE BACK, or WHIT’S YER HURY? I loved those signs. The best part was when we got to Loch Ryan, and on one side we were faced with a giant cliff face, and on the other, the sea. It was one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen, and I was sorry to see our ferry appear on the horizon.

The ride back was somberer. The waves did not rock the ship as much as it had the way there, but there was another aspect to the somber tone, too. It was Remembrance Sunday. Just as we got on the boat, the Captain got on the intercom and asked us to stand for two minutes silence, at the 11^th Hour of the 11^th Day of the 11^th Month. Then I did not realise what day it was, but once the ferry started moving, the news came on the T.V., I saw the footage. It explained all of the war memorials, all of the attention given to battles and soldiers, the white crosses I had seen, all of the people selling red poppies. I thought of Tom, who we met the night of the Presidential Election, talking about how when America goes to war, he follows, and I thought of all the Scotsmen who had died in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and the ones who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I realised suddenly just how awful it is, war. I might go to war because I believe in a cause—but what if my allies do not? Is the war we are in now worth the lives of our allies, to whom this entire endeavour means nothing?

Of course, now I am writing this on the second day of the Gaza Strike by Israel, which is an interesting perspective. But I will not write about politics on my Glasgow post.

The ferry ride seemed to take forever, with these thoughts and the sad television. But finally we arrived, and went through the cold tube to land, and we were greeted by a large sign that read, WELCOME TO NORTHERN IRELAND.

And then, when we came down to the ground floor, there were posters with taxi company numbers on them. Oh, bless Belfast, I thought, I have returned to civilisation.

We got on another bus, and went to the Europa Bus Centre, and then walked home. By then I was exhausted, and a little shell-shocked to see that Belfast was not exactly the same as I remembered it. Whilst we were gone, someone had come and cut down the growth in front of one of the abandoned houses. A building had been painted. Digestives were now a pound at the petrol station. I had expected Belfast to remain the same in the four days I was absent, but it had changed. But, then again, I thought, so had I.

I never thought that I would be so happy to arrive in Belfast.

I would leave it there, on a sentimental note, but I will not. Later, after we had settled in and I went to go get dinner, I met Chelsea and Jenny in the kitchenette. When Jenny saw me she cried, “You didn’t get stabbed!”

“What?” I said, because if it was a joke, I was totally not in the mood for it. My throat burned, and I had started on a cough.

“Oh, you know. Glasgow doesn’t have a very good reputation. In Edinburgh you have a one o’clock shot, but in Glasgow there’s too many to count…but hey, you’re back!”

“You didn’t tell me?” I managed to say.

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

I worried anyway! I wanted to say. We walked seven miles through Glasgow, through dirty backstreets! WE WERE IN A SCOTTISH VERSION OF DETROIT. And it was not important to tell me?!?!

But they cheered me up by talking about the legendary grumpiness of the Scottish people and asking what I had seen. We all agreed that Edinburgh is an amazing place, but only Jenny really liked Glasgow—for the shopping, she said.

One day I hope I get to go back to Scotland, and see the Highlands—and Loch Ness (because if I’m going to be a tourist, I might as well be the best tourist I can be). But for now, I’m glad to be back in Belfast, studying at Queen’s—and in a month, I’ll be glad to go back to the States and see my family for Christmas, and start work again at the Writing Center and seeing all of my friends.

But I am never, ever going to Glasgow again.