Off to tartan country

Travel days are often quite busy and exciting, filled with last-minute packing and frantic emails to resolve unfinished business. Our “off to the UK” travel day was particularly fun-filled as I had still had testing out at UBC to finish a few hours before my flight. Through some unfortunate cancellations, I was forced to schedule my last participant about an hour before our check-in time. Thankfully, testing went off without a hitch, and we were soon off to the airport.

We breezed through check-in with relative ease (thank goodness for online check-in), and security was mercifully brief. YVR, it seems, rarely has lengthy security line-ups, and I can’t complain. We trundled around the terminal, ultimately deciding that a beer and spinach dip were the best ways to pass the time. After fueling up, we wandered over to our gate to wait. When we finally boarded, several facts became apparent: 1) for all our intellectual achievements, people seem to be quite incapable of forming a single-file line, 2) there seemed to be a disproportionate number of senior citizens and babies. Unfortunately, David and I were seated across an aisle from each other; apparently a booking fail on my part. The flight itself was relatively uneventful, with a bountiful selection in-flight movies to choose from. I watched Coco Before Chanel with Audrey Tatou, which I’d been hoping to see at some point, as well as Star Trek (again). The aforementioned facts, however, reared their ugly wailing heads, not long into the flight. We seemed to have at least three babies within earshot, all of whom which wailed in a dissonant harmony. Furthermore, there also seemed to be a large number of people standing in the aisles, we could only assume waiting for the bathrooms. But they would just stand, loom rather, over you, leaning against the seat back in front of you and just generally be in the way. It was very odd. In all of my trans-oceanic flights, even ones significantly longer than this one, I’d never seen so many people loitering in the aisles. I managed to catch a few hours of sleep; unfortunately, David couldn’t seem to fall asleep, so he amused himself by playing Doom on his laptop (until his battery died, which is no mean feat considering how long his battery lasts).

We finally landed in Amsterdam. I discovered my feet had swollen and had a difficult time putting my boots back on. After an hour lay-over of me waddling around in overly tight shoes, we boarded onto a smaller plane and were off to Edinburgh. Thankfully, the seats next to me weren’t taken, so D was able to sit next to me. The flight was only an hour, so we were soon passing over a quilted landscape of pastures and small farming towns. After landing, we quickly grabbed our bags and caught a city centre express bus. D and I were both feeling the wear of the flights, nodding off between stops; although, a part of me was desperately trying to stay awake to look at all the stately architecture. We got off at the last stop and grabbed a cab for the rest of journey. Our cabbie was kind enough to give us a head-first introduction into a true Scottish accent. As linguists, we perhaps delusionally believed that we are equipped with the tools necessary to decipher any manner of language, let alone a dialect of English. But my goodness it was challenging! He was very congenial, chatting about never having been to Canada and sights in town, but you really had to concentrate to catch even the gist what he was saying.

It wasn’t long before we arrived at Chung-hye’s apartment and were hauling our bags up several flights of stairs. Their apartment is cute, with high ceilings and lots of character. After an evening of chatting and being amused by Mira’s antics, we called it a night, hoping for a jetlag-less morning.

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