Afore Ye Go...- My Travels in Scotland- Part 2

After sitting on a train for around an hour, and crossing two giant bodies of water on what can only be considered marvels of engineering [in the form of the Forth Bridge and the Tay Bridge, the latter of which, I found out afterwards, collapsed while a train was on it in the middle of a storm, leading me to make a pact where I’d never cross it again], I had arrived in Dundee- a place I’d always heard of, but never actually bothered to regard. As I said in part one, Eddie Izzard, in an interview with Craig Ferguson, once likened the place to jail. This, I thought, could break my newfound romance for Scotland.



After lugging our… err… luggage up the stairs, where the station voice-over system decided to play an annoying, constant loop of “Passengers are reminded to use the handrails on the stairs, and to not run in the station”, in a stern, female voice, we took our first breath of the Dundee air. My girlfriend suddenly leapt into the air and swivelled round faster than a table football player. She has a massive fear of boats [even though her favourite film is, confusingly, the Poseidon Adventure], and she had just seen the nautical equivalent of hell: docked right across the road from the station was a giant, archaic ship, sails removed, but still standing proud. Upon closer inspection, it was named ‘Discovery’; rather ironically for something that didn’t need much discovering. On the way to the hotel, I began to notice something- Dundee seemed to be a city where they hadn’t managed to work the sunroof, and where everything seemed to be in black and white. As I looked into every nook and cranny that I could; spotting more and more buildings that seemed to be maliciously spat out by a concrete mixer as fully formed, gargantuan, grey bricks, I was determined that I, myself, was the most colourful thing that existed in Dundee.

The hotel itself seemed to be a large dollop of grey, with the Hilton logo attempting to be blue, but only becoming a dark sepia tone. The strange thing is that the Firth of Tay, one of those giant bodies of water, the skies that were above it, and the hills that were in the distance, also seemed to give off a distinct grey hue. It was at this point that I began to get worried about my eyes, and decided to wander into the centre of the city. The city itself reminded me of Stockton-On-Tees, with cobbled sections of street, where pedestrian zones cohabitated perfectly with vehicle zones. In contrast to what I had seen in Edinburgh, Dundee seemed to have nothing remaining of its history, but seemed to be attempting to be a modern utopia. Sadly, they hadn’t got very far.

According to a hotel worker, the restaurant quarter was located along a road named “Nethergate”, and upon arrival there, I found that the choices were a bit sparse to be able to call it a “quarter”. While there was a big selection of greasy-pizza joints, actual restaurants were thin on the ground, with choices being limited to Turkish, Indian, or Chinese food, with a burger bar thrown in for good measure.

Seeing as “Ketchup” [the burger bar], seemed to be the haunt for the trendy, I decided to go to the Turkish restaurant. My girlfriend loves that kind of cuisine, and it’s always a cuisine that I’ve always wanted to delve into. This restaurant, however, seemed to be weird- not only were there not many people inside, but for a Turkish restaurant, the owner/waitress seemed to be quite Chinese. While I have no problem with ethnic diversity in the workplace, it seemed to set a rather foreboding atmosphere for the rest of the night. After ordering two diet cokes [which tasted so rank upon arrival that I likened them to tasting more like ‘diet cock’ than ‘diet coke’], we looked through the menu, which consisted of a massive thirty-something dishes for the more carnivorous human, and an absolutely whopping SIX for the vegetarian customer. Yay for being the minority. After ordering a starter and a main course, my girlfriend decided that it would be wise for us to get some pitta bread, something that I agreed with. The waitress, however, seemed to have a problem with this, somehow deciding that she’d give us pitta bread with both our starter and our main, and saying “Oh… okay…” In a tone that made her sound as if she was saying “Well, brace yourselves, foolish mortals!”

The waitress, in fact, seemed keen to display her unconventional style of customer-handling. As I had got almost no sleep the night before, I closed my eyes to refresh them after I finished my started. “Awwww, stah-tah no come, so he faul tooo sah-leep,” the waitress chirped at me randomly. Hilarious. The main course, wouldn’t have been worth waking up for, anyway, it seemed. It vaguely reminded me of a pasta sauce that my dad had made a few years ago, and even he had made it much better than the chef had. At the end of the night, the dinner came to 30 pounds, and to be honest, I wouldn’t have said it was worth 30 pence.

So Dundee, it has to be said, seemed quite disappointing. But after going to sleep on a king size bed [which the Hilton management had hand-crafted by shoving two single beds together and putting a king size bed frame around it], I was excited to leave the monochrome city and head to the once-Royal university town of St Andrews.