Scotland!

I have just returned from a long weekend in St. Andrews, Scotland, where I visited a friend of mine from high school currently studying at the University there, who very graciously allowed me to sleep on the couch.

The experience of arrival was surprisingly jarring, as I felt like I had stepped into something very familiar and yet very different in important ways. It felt like a quasi-America with people driving on the wrong side of the road and with completely different scenery. Britain is still only half-metricized as far as I can tell: road signs were in miles and yards. It was also very odd to be in a country where English is the primary language again. Even stranger was the fact that I have an easier time understanding Polish than I do in understanding a Scotsman speaking at full speed and enthusiasm. I also had to work very consciously at not slowing down while speaking. When speaking English in Poland my reflex is to speak like Mr. Rodgers: slow, deliberate, clearly enunciated. Do that to a native speaker of English and they'll think you're a patronizing jerk.

All of my time was spent either in Edinburgh or in Fife, as I did not have time to go to the Highlands. I think a lot of people don't realize that Scotland is both relatively big and hard to get around. Edinburgh to Inverness is 150 miles (around 270 KM, and yes, they still use miles in Scotland), and is 3 hours and 18 minutes by train as the terrain is rough and the trains are slow. Edinburgh to St. Andrews is 50 miles or 1 hour 30 minutes by bus and only slightly less by train. Because the population is relatively sparse, and dispersed in small villages every 10 miles or so, buses are not particularly frequent. Further to the north, the terrain gets difficult to move through. Just ask the English Army, for instance. Driving is faster, but as gas is around $8 a gallon, very expensive, and having not driven for 7 months I was not about to try to do so in a rented car, on the left side of the road, having to work the stick-shift with my left hand. St. Andrews is a sort of secondary hub for the bus network, but the connections were such that day trips were very difficult to plan. While transport might be slow, I will say that it seems to be quite reliable. It is also not too badly priced if you know what you're doing. If not, you pay through the nose for tickets!

I did get to see the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, a town of about 3,500 located on the North Sea coast. It was actually a very interesting museum, provided that you like maritime topics. I also stopped by the lifeboat station, and I think the ladies there were very glad to talk to somebody as the guestbook seemed to log a couple of visitors a day, tops. I then took a brief hike down the Fife Coastal Trail to Pittenweem, probably the wildest and most windswept mile I've walked in a long time. The wind actually sounded a lot like those wind sound effects one often hears, it was that strong. The Coastal Trail winds from Edinburgh to Dundee, and I think that if I go back I would like to hike it. In general, I think I'd like to go hiking there if I could.

I was a little disappointed in Edinburgh. We walked a bit around both the Old and New Cities, and it seemed like there were two sorts of neighborhoods: touristy and residential. It was also surprising that on a beautiful Sunday in April the streets felt somewhat deserted. In Krakow such streets would be packed with people walking around, not particularly going anywhere, just kind of wandering around. I also had no desire to shop in Edinburgh. Something in the air of Scotland creates in those that breathe it an irresistible urge to not spend money. Also, goods and services were very expensive.

St. Andrews is a cute town, and is very much golf and student-oriented. It is also full of Americans and other such folks from overseas. The Old Course at the golf club didn't actually look all that impressive, but I'm not a golfer so what do I know.

I think a lot of Americans don't realize just how different the UK is, particularly considering how some things that are controversial in America are either not at all controversial or otherwise taken for granted over there. For example, CCTV monitoring is absolutely everywhere. Advertisements can be banned if they are deemed offensive or misleading, and those that place ads face fines and other sanctions in some situations. So, there's censorship. I saw a no smoking sign that said you could be ticketed for smoking in a bus shelter or for failing to report somebody else doing so. Abortion is widely available and uncontroversial. While the churches are certainly elaborate, they felt a bit more like museums than active places of worship. Part of the reason goods and services are expensive is that the rate of VAT is something like 30%. My host said that salaries aren't especially higher in Scotland than they are in the States, so people simply have to make do with less. Housing can only be expensive as the result of government policy. Edinburgh does not sprawl. It is very much centered on a central core, and as I mentioned before, there are miles of yawning empty space between towns. The buses on which I rode were never more than half-full with the exception of the airport bus. So, even if the UK government doesn't want to build Levittowns and interstates, it should still be possible to build lots of new houses supportable by currently-existing transportation infrastructure.

There is also the matter of Scottish Independence, perhaps the stupidest idea Sean Connery has ever personally endorsed. The Scottish National Party wants to break Scotland off from the rest of the UK, and there will be a referendum on this question in 2014. So, Scotland is gearing up for a startlingly American-style political campaign, particularly in terms of its length. As far as I can tell, the Nationalists are playing up the fact that Scottish identity is separate, Scotland should be able to decide its own future, the North Sea oilfields are taps full of money that currently just gets sent to Westminster, and nobody asked the Scots if they wanted the Act of Union in 1707 anyway. Now, these guys rather breezily assert that an independent Scotland will be able to enter the EU immediately, with exactly the same kinds of opt-outs the rest of the UK has. The First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, breezily assumes England will cheerfully allow Scotland to remain on the Pound. They get startlingly silent when it comes to things like border control with England and who will end up controlling the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed.

I'm going to preempt the counterargument that Scottish independence is workable because, hey, just look at how the Commonwealth of Independent States is doing in Eastern Europe. The fact of the matter is, the creation of a bunch of independent countries after the fall of the Berlin Wall is entirely different than that of a potential UK breakup. In the former case, a failing state (the USSR) fell apart under its own weight. Scottish independence would rend asunder a functioning, functional state. In the Eastern Bloc, a lot of countries run by puppet governments, such as in Poland, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, already had agreements with their neighbors of some kind and were recognized as their own countries even when they really weren't. Scotland would be an entirely new country and be faced with a number of new, entirely unexpected questions. Finally, when one considers how Belarus and Ukraine are doing, it's sort of hard to use them as sterling examples of why breaking up a large country is a good idea.

What makes UK disunion such a resoundingly stupid idea is that 1) there's no guarantee that Scotland will be able to continue using the Pound, 2) there's no guarantee that Scotland will be able to join the Euro, or that the Euro will be worth joining in a few years, 3) there's no guarantee that financial markets will treat a new Scottish currency as worth more than Scotts-brand toilet paper, 4) the European Union has huffily said that Scotland should not assume admittance, and considering that the EU is not happy about the exemptions granted to the UK in the first place I doubt Scotland would be able to carve out those same exemptions. Also, 5) there would have to be extensive and unpredictable negotiations between England and Scotland over just about everything from tariffs to immigration to border control to, hello, what to do with British nuclear missiles in Scotland. Ultimately, if breaking up large, viable countries into little ones was a good idea, Serbia and Croatia should be mighty economic powers by now. The Balkans are a testament to short-sighted nationalism stoked by self-aggrandizing politicians, and while the breakup of the UK would not be as bloody as the breakup of Yugoslavia, the long-term consequences would be dire.