So since I have unlimited internet, I will pick up my story where I left off in Edinburgh. The next day was Saturday and, after a huge breakfast, I went to another Festival event. It was the matinee concert of the Beaux Arts Trio (piano, violin, cello) playing Mendelssohn, Kurtag, and Beethoven. I decided that I like listening to small ensembles better than full orchestras, in some ways, because I can listen to all the voices at once, whereas I have to focus on the voice playing the melody in orchestras. I guess I don't think I'm very 'skilled' at listening to classical music and I'm certainly not one of those people who can say things like, 'Ah! Listen to how the composer is echoing his original theme in this countertheme, blah blah blah.' But I really enjoy it nevertheless. In fact, this trio made me think that classical music is the Platonic ideal of music because it's in such a pure form. Of course, it's probably ridiculous to classify one type of music as more 'pure' than another, but that's what I thought in my enraptured state in the middle of the concert.
After that, I went to the Palace of Holyroodhouse and the ruins of the Holyroodhouse Abbey. The palace is the Queen's official residence while in Scotland, so it's still a 'working palace,' which was pretty interesting. (I think I'm becoming one of those weird people who are unduly interested in the royal family.) I also toured the new Scottish Parliament building. The Scots had been ruled solely by the Parliament in Westminster (and Wales still is) from 1707 to 1999. Then some of the powers of the UK Parliament were 'devolved' to Scotland, and their Parliament reconvened. The new building was completed in 2004. It's a prime example of modern architecture, which I always think is interesting.
A lot of people complained about its appearance--and granted, it is quite different from the grand buildings that surround it. But I'm always pleased when people in the 21st century build something that isn't just economical or practical but something that is artistic and will be something people will find interesting in 200 years. The tour explained all the symbolism in the building; it's meant to physically represent the four pillars of the Scottish Parliament--accessibility, accountability, transparency, and equality. Some of the unique features of the building have no fixed meaning because the builders wanted to emphasize the power of the people; each person can decide for him- or herself what these features mean (hence, it's a postmodern building, not just modern!). Just as a sidenote, in the Scottish Parliament, each person who speaks must limit their remarks to four minutes in order to prevent filibustering. This seems like such a simple solution, and I don't understand why we haven't implemented it in America (or England, for that matter).
That evening, I went to a choir concert called 'A Child of Our Time.' It was written during World War II about Kristalnacht, when a Jewish boy shot a German officer for persecuting his family and then the Nazis retaliated by pillaging Jewish homes and businesses and killing a bunch of people. It had some really good ideas in it (Sir Michael Tippett, the writer/composer, drew heavily on Jungian ideas of the shadow, which was interesting), and the music was fabulously performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. He also inserted African American spirituals at key emotional points of he piece, which I thought was really powerful. However, the lyrics themselves were not the greatest, I didn't think. Unbeknownst to me when I chose to go to this event, Tippett was friends with T.S. Eliot and asked him to write the final lyrics for the piece. Eliot originally agreed, but then read Tippett's stuff and thought that his words would be too 'poetical' for what Tippett was trying to do. That might be true, but I think it would have been nice for them to sound a little bit more poetical. Maybe Robert Frost's type of poetry rather than Eliot's, but still. Eliot's ideas definitely influenced the piece a bit though. There was a particularly interesting line that said something like, "Beyond the desert lies the garden." This line further confirms one of the main points I was trying to make in my senior thesis, but I'm not going to go into that now.
On Sunday, I had a rather laidback day. I ate a leisurely breakfast and then went back to my room and slept some more. Then I went to the Balmoral Hotel and asked the concierge in a kilt if that was the hotel where J.K. Rowling had finished writing Harry Potter (as if I didn't already know that it was), and he confirmed that it was. I asked if they still had the bust she had signed which said, "J.K. Rowling completed Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows in this room (652) on this date (she wrote the actual date)." He said that they did and that it was in a glass case in the room where she stayed. I said, "Oh, so I suppose there's no way for the public to see it?" And he said there wasn't. So that was too bad, but oh well. Then I had a late lunch and then climbed the Walter Scott monument, the tallest memorial ever made for an author. It gave some really good views of the city, so it was worth climbing up another narrow spiral staircase. (This one got even narrower than the one leading up to the top of York Cathedral.)
After that, I just went back to my room, relaxed a little bit, and spent a while packing up. Then I went to the Bank of Scotland Fireworks Concert, the concluding event of the Festival. It was really fun because they coordinated the fireworks with classical dances (Brahms's Hungarian dances and Dvorak's Slavonic dances). So when there was an emphatic part of the music, there would be a few big fireworks. And when the music was fast, there would be a bunch of swirling fireworks or something. Best of all, the fireworks were shot off from the castle, which is up on a high promontory. This castle background distinguished these fireworks from any I've ever seen celebrating American Independence Day because, of course, we don't have any castles.
Then I had my awful travel day on Monday. I got up at 5:15 a.m. and was picked up by a taxi at 6:00 a.m. I got to the train station and paid my taxi driver. With the earliness of the hour and the preoccupied state of my mind (because I was ridiculously anxious about something going wrong in this lengthy day of travels), I managed to walk off with my purse and large suitcase, leaving my backpack behind. I hadn't put it on my back before paying the cab driver, but I must have thought I did. I got to my train platform rather early and moved to take my backpack off, only to realize that it wasn't there. Of course, I was freaking out but not letting myself fully freak out until I knew that my laptop and all my essentials had been irretrievably lost. I asked the first train worker I saw where my luggage would have gone if it had been found. He said the "left luggage" office, which I thought was incorrect because "left luggage" means luggage people have purposely left behind to store there for a while, not luggage that was accidentally left behind. Plus the office wasn't open. Of course, I went back to the taxi rank and, sure enough, the backpack wasn't there anymore. I asked someone else who worked there and they said, "Well, no one has turned anything in here, but maybe security..." and as he was talking, a security officer walked in with the bag. Of course, they had checked it to make sure it hadn't been left there with a bomb inside or something. When it was safe, they brought it to reception and I could have it back. So that was terrifying, but thankfully turned out just fine. I had to catch three trains (carting my huge heavy suitcase), each of which were only about an hour so I wasn't able to really relax or try to sleep.
Then I had to wait around for my ferry to Belfast. Once on the boat, it was a lot of fun! It must have been like a mini-cruise ship because it had shopping, restaurants, a place to get your nails done, lounges, coffee shops, video games, places for children to play, etc. Then I got to Belfast and took a taxi from the harbour to the train station. I couldn't believe I had taken two taxis in a day, but I was really glad for both of them. Sometimes it's worth it to pay a little extra money for something like that. I took the two-hour train from Belfast to Dublin. Upon arrival in Dublin (at around 8:30 pm), I had been planning to store my large suitcase in the left luggage facilities. Usually, these facilities are an actual office. In this case, they were just lockers right out in the open that didn't look that difficult to break into. And the large ones cost 6 Euros per day. I thought that was a bit steep for such shady facilities. So I decided to take my luggage to my hostel. I went out of the train station and could not get my bearings from the crappy map I had. A construction worker asked if I was lost and I said I was. I showed him my map and he couldn't figure it out either, but his friend knew the place I was talking about. They said, "Oh yeah, it's not that far, but since it's dark out, you should probably take taxi." I thought that was a little creepy because I'd gotten the same Dublin-is-a-shady-place song and dance from the Irish family I met in Wales. So I ended up taking a third taxi in one day! I was so exhausted, but my splitting headache (from all the stress) kept me up half the night.
Anyways, I was able to leave my large suitcase in that hostel's luggage room for the two nights that I'm in Sligo because I'm staying there again for one more night before flying back to the States. So that was a relief. The train to Sligo takes three hours, which was longer than I was expecting. After checking into my hostel, I ate a wonderful toasted tuna sandwich at a pub. Then I took a train to Drumcliffe and saw Yeats's grave and the famous mountain/plateau Benbulben. (Sligo's main claim to fame is that Yeats was from here.) Benbulben and the Bay of Sligo are really beautiful! I'm glad I came here, but some of my passionate enjoyment of my trip is wearing off due to exhaustion and stress. It's like I can't make the effort to really enjoy something right now, so I just enjoy it halfheartedly. That sounds depressing, but I don't mean it to. I'm still enjoying myself, but travelling solo is rather exhausting because there's just so many things to think about and so many problems to try to prevent. I'm really glad that I did this trip independently because I have gained confidence that I am able to do something like this on my own. But, like any challenge, it is tiring, and I'll be ready to go home when the time comes.
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