Happy Solstice, Merry Christmas! (Part One)

Happy Holiday Greetings, all of our dear and far-away friends and family! We miss you!

We hope that as 2015 draws to a close you have time to reflect on the past year and all it had brought to you - good and bad - and appreciate what's most dear to you. 

We've had a great year - though not without some rough spots - and are grateful for all the experiences it has brought our way. It's pretty wonderful and exciting to be alive in these times and to have the ability to do all the things we do. 

Here's some of what we've been up to....

Visiting the Peoples' Palace, in Glasgow, on a rare sunny day! A fabulous museum, it tells the story of the common Glaswegian people through the centuries. As you can see from the photo, it also has a huge greenhouse, and we spent a good while in the sunny warmth that day! Its lovely botanical exhibit provides a sense of the brightness of summer in the dreary months of winter. 

 This beautiful Asian-looking building was originally a rug factory!

The Duke of Wellington, outside of the Museum of Modern Art. He always has a safety cone on his head, no matter how frequently the council send a crew to remove it! It has become a Glaswegian icon.

The Christmas Fair in George Square downtown.

We've also been dancing a bit, and here are some dance-related pics:

Above is our dance instructor John Johnson, and button accordionist David. We had live music every week at dance class - that's pretty nice! We are grateful to have had some top notch dance experiences while here in Glasgow.

We also attended a few Advanced classes, and they were quite challenging. Here's one of the warm-up figures that we danced just to get the blood flowing. See if you can follow along:

Here are pics from one of the dances we attended:

Above is Melinda at the Helensburgh Christmas Dance (can you find her in there?). This was our second dance in a week, and we were practically celebrities at the dance once it was announced that a couple "all the way from Montana, USA, came to dance with us." Everyone wanted to dance with us after that!

Bob at the Helensburgh dance. We had an absolutely fantastic time dancing with all these wonderful folks! We even had a Scottish Country dance to a medley of Christmas carols- which was a novel and fun experience! At the break, there were more homemade cakes and sweets than we had seen all year. Scottish people know how to celebrate the season! Here's a wee video - Scottish Country Dancing in motion!

Riding around Glasgow on a daily basis...

Street upon street of tenement housing. Built in the Victorian era, there are pretty nice places. These days, the demographics of the neighborhood have shifted significantly- now many Asian grocers and Islamic bookstores line the storefront.  

More rows and rows and blocks and blocks of tenement housing. 

And in our own neighborhood of Pollokshields, some mighty fancy places can be seen:

Some are even mini-castles!

The Sherbrooke Castle (now a hotel) just down the road from us. 

And the motorway... It has taken a bit to adjust to city living after months of camping in more remote locations.

A super cool cafe not too far from our place. We found out a little too late in our stay that they have a really fun and intimate session on Thursday nights. Next time we come to Glasgow we'll know the best places to go!

And more signs that we're as yet unable to interpret...?

At Richard and Marion's place. We met Richard dancing in Helensburgh, and he invited us to their home to try his Smallpipes. Marion plays recorder, so we had a go at that, as well!

Richard is fine tuning the drones while Melinda concentrates on holding a steady tone...well, trying to!

You can see the concentration necessary to pump the bellows with one arm, maintain bag pressure with the other arm, and operate the fingers to make a tune. It's not easy!! We both did quite well considering we've never done so before, but it still sounded a bit rough. If you don't apply enough pressure to the bag it sounds like geese are dying in droves. If you apply too much pressure then it sounds like a riot of Tom cats breaking free. If your pressure is variable it swaps between the two!

The recorders Marion plays are beautiful, and sound wonderful, too! We had a go on the recorders, just to expand our musical horizons a wee. What fun! We previously had no idea that recorders came in so many sizes. Marion is playing the bass recorder which has a rich deep tone.

The Glasgow Fiddle Workshop term is now ended, and we had a great time with them. On the last night if the term we had a HUGE session on the ground floor of the college. Each class played a couple tunes to share what they'd been working on, and then everyone played a few common tunes together. 

Melinda took two classes each week, one guitar class and one fiddle class. Her guitar teacher is one of Scotland's top guitar players- Jenn Butterworth. We went out one night to a pub to hear her and Rua MacMillan from Blazin' Fiddles. These two musicians are elite players in Scotland, and Glasgow is the kind of place where one can pal around in a pub with such talent (and Ross Couper was in the pub listening, as well; he and Tom Oakes are another of Scotland's hottest fiddle-guitar duos). This is an amazing place!

And we had a fantastic time at the GFW Christmas dinner, where we sat with our German friends, Ulrike and Wolfgang. 

Ulrike and Wolfgang had us over to their flat one afternoon and we played tunes together until late in the evening. They're visiting Scotland for a year or more, and are as amazed as we are by the musical opportunities in Glasgow! It truly is the land of milk and honey! 

We've had a great time with the GFW - learned lots of new tunes, pushed ourselves to refine our technique, and met lots of great people - and we are sorry to see the term end.

In our spare time, we've also toured a few Charles Renne MacKintosh museums and exhibits...

This is the fireplace in the music room at The House For An Art Lover.  It's quite an amazing structure, both inside and out. The house was built in the 1990s, based on drawings that MacKintosh submitted for a German architectural contest in 1901. 

Here's the cabinet in the dining room. It's all very beautifully done, with detailing executed as MacKintosh himself would have demanded.

The outside of The House For An Art Lover. The carvings above the patio, designed from tiny sketches in MacKintosh's original drawings, are intricately detailed. 

We'll leave it at that for the moment. We have lots more pictures to post, but we don't want to overwhelm you with too much at once! We'll put up another post before we leave Glasgow.

We hope you all have had a great Solstice and Christmas, and we're sending our wishes across The Pond for a happy and prosperous New Year to all of you. Stay in touch, and we'll do the same.

The Dead Brolly Blog

Greetings to all of our Far Away Friends!

It's been a while  since we've posted ... we've been busy! We'll write a bit more about our daily life in Glasgow in a short while, but in the meanwhile we wanted to fill you in on another aspect of life in Scotland in the winter: the weather. Generally, it's pretty Scottish out there!

A few days, there's wee bit o' sun. For a little while.
Every day, it's cloudy.
Most days, it's rainy.
Many days, it's windy.
Some days it's merely a wee zephyr.

Other days it's blowing a gale!!

We've made it through some genuinely blasting days on our bikes, riding to and frae our music classes and sessions, and those days bring back memories from some of our windiest cycle-touring days. We're always grateful when we make it safely home, and can dry out and have a cup of tea or a dram.

One side effect of the Gale-force-winds-combined-with-rain days... Dead Brollies.  Those are umbrellas, in case you're wondering. And they don't fare well in Glasgow in the winter!

It's sad to see them lying on the streets and pavements, spindly arms randomly pointing skyward like legs of a beetle on its back, fabric flapping gently (!) in the ever-present howling gale, or handles sticking forlornly from a litter bin. (Adding insult to injury, we've even seen dead Brolly handles sticking out of a litter bin that had been blown over in a gale.)

Often times several dead brollies are colocated within a very small area, and that's even more sad.

Here's our PictoMemorial To The Brave Brollies Of Glasgow, may they rest in pieces... ;-(

Poor dead brollies....

Where we are and where we are going

We haven't been in touch with some of you lately, so we figured we'd give a outline of what the future holds for us (assuming all goes according to plan!).

But first, a little about what we've been up to lately. This wee photo collection misses out a bunch of stuff, like where we take our Glasgow Fiddle Workshop classes, and museums we've been to, and our fish-and-chip excursions. But we'll try to fill in more about our lives here as we have time.

Here's a little of what we've been up to...

Riding around Glasgow, to and frae, across cool bridges by night and day!

Touristy sights:

This is a carving in a church that was designed by Glasgow-native Charles Renne MacKintosh. Beautiful!

Fall colors! And super-slick-when-wet dead leaves on all the roads and cycle paths! Be aware! (Also, wet granite pavers can be slick. boB had a crash a few nights ago because the pavement was so slick. Ouch!)

On cold nights we have beer-tasting experiences at home. Boddingtons, at £4 per four-pack, is on the left. In the middle is Morrison's "Traditional Best," at £2 for a four-pack. On the right is Morrison's Savers Bitter, at an outrageously screaming deal of £0.89 for a four-pack. Quite a deal, that stuff. And it can be used to strip paint, tan leather, and clean your carbeurator! 

bob is standing infront of Babbity Bowster- one of our favorite spots for traditional music sessions. 

Super friendly atmosphere, welcoming people & fantastic music!

Here is (was!) our favorite coffee shop - we stopped there once a week for a coffee and chat. Except that this week it CLOSED!! That's terrible! The proprietor is/was a hilarious fellow whose dry wit never ceased to entertain, and sometime left boB speechless to reply! Now THAT is quite a feat! But, sadly, they closed! We're crushed...!! 

The coffee shop is (was!) right across the street from one of our other favourite hang-outs ...

The College Of Piping! The Advil Highlanders are going to be a bagpipe band!  Well... Someday. 

We're just playing on practice chanters for now, which is a good thing for our neighbors because it's HARD to make good sounds come out of just the practice chanter! And, someday, when we fire up a full set of Great Highland Bagpipes for the first time, the whole world will hear of the Advil Highlanders ... as they sonically simulate the slaying of a flock of geese by a herd of tone-deaf Tom cats!  

Seriously, though, we're having a great time learning basic techniques and tunes, and we are making great progress. Our tutor is Willie Morrison, South Uist-born and from a long line of pipers. He's an outstanding tutor, takes his work seriously and demands perfection, and is also easy-going and encouraging. When we have to leave Glasgow we'll sincerely miss Willie. 

This is a mural in the practice hall at the College.  The whole mural is about 15 feet long!

This is the garden at the Pollock House, an historic manor near where we live. We could go on for hours about the history of this place... But we have music to play!

Anyway ... Now a wee update on what's coming up next for the Advil Highlanders. This is a roughish outline, and subject to change when the wind blows something better in our direction. 

Next week is the Scot's Fiddle Fest in Edinburgh! We've got train tickets booked and plan on 3 full days of music workshops, lectures, sessions, and concepts. And.... PIES!!!! Lots of pies frae Auld Jock's Pie Shop. If we can fit it in we may also visit a bagpipe maker... Maybe? 

We will remain in Glasgow, taking music classes at the GFW (Glasgow Fiddle Workshop) and the College of Piping until early January, after which we have a wee trip to Ireland planned. We were able to book a flight to Dublin for a mere £40 - for both of us! Who could resist a 17-day Ireland adventure in the dead of winter??! Well, we couldn't!  We realized we could leave Scotland briefly in order not to use up the remainder of our precious 6 month visa.  With this wee Ireland diversion (Ireland is NOT part of the UK), we can extend our stay in the UK for another 2 weeks - allowing us to return to Glasgow for a real Scottish Burn's night celebration on January 25th (the birthday of the late Robert Burns, bard of Scotland) and the incredible 'Celtic Connections' festival occurring in late January. And we were lucky to catch two of the last tickets to the legendary Transatlantic Sessions at the Celtic Connections!! We are beyond excited!

After much research (turns out it is difficult to ferry with bikes internationally), we booked a ferry to the Netherlands for early February. We hope to stay in Amsterdam for two weeks visiting Melinda's Dutch friends and host family. After a terrific year abroad in high school,  she sadly hasn't seen these lovely people for nearly 20 years! It's high time to get reacquainted and show boB around her old stomping grounds in Amsterdam. 

In order to stay in Europe/elsewhere for as long as possible, we need to reduce our cash outflow. We can't really work to make money, but there is an alternative. Check out the website called HelpX.org, and you'll get an idea. Generally, if one volunteers time and effort (aka "work") then one can have free accommodation and possibly some allowance for food.  So we've been searching the interwebs like madmen in hopes of finding the perfect European work-stay opportunity. 

And winter in Ireland isn't so hot, so to speak, even though there is a lot of HelpX opportunity there. 

So ... where better to work in the winter than sunny Southern Spain? Winter in southern Spain? Sounds great! 

After a good bit of digging and emailing, we found a hostel in Seville to take us on for 7 weeks! We'll go there after Amsterdam, and "work" (don't call it that, cuz then the authorities get all up in a bunch about it... It's volunteering!)

We are currently organizing to meet up with boB's folks in April for a vacation in Spain and Morocco. We are even looking for potential work in Morocco afterwards. Lots of opportunities abound on HelpX, and we couldn't help but laugh at this outrageous ad-

We are a Berber family in a village on the edge of the Sahara desert. We have a bivouac with traditional Berber tents situated 8 km from Tamegroute, the village where we live.  We would like to find someone who wants to live in our Sahara Desert Bivouac for a while, take care of it and keep it clean and tidy for tourists. There is a well with water a 5 minutes walk from the bivouac but there is no electricity, only candles. We offer you accommodation in our typical nomad tents, but food isn't provided if no tourists are present. However, we can buy food and organise food transport for you by local people for a symbolic price or you can be independent and take care of your needs on your own, as you prefer. The Sahara Desert Bivouac is sometimes full of tourists, sometimes there is only Ali who takes care of the bivouac or cooks for tourists, but sometimes there is no one there for days. So we are looking for serious people who are flexible with rough conditions in the desert and who don't mind spending some time alone. It isn't easy to live there, and nights are sometimes very cold, so be prepared. Try not to have big expectations. It seems romantic to try to live in the desert but we have to remind that it is also very hard and if you're not well organised, it can be complicated. We are always ready to help you, give you advice or teach you how to live in the desert, however we try to find responsible and independent individuals who are able to take care of themselves and not to put themselves in danger (for example, a spontaneous walk by your own in the middle of the night in the desert isn't good idea at all no matter how much you enjoy silence and shiny stars). I am sure that you will remember this kind of experience for a long time, but it mostly depends on you if it will be pleasant or unpleasant one. People who already have similar experience of living in remote wild areas without water and electricity (desert, mountains, islands...) are more than welcome.  If you think that all this Sahara Desert Bivouac lifestyle is too much for you, we are also looking for a professional photographer and web designer who is able to improve and manage our current web page and create new web pages as needed. In that case you would be sleeping in our house in the village with all meals included. Don't hesitate to contact me for more information and hope to see you soon in our Sahara Desert Bivouac or in our village. You are welcome here anytime!

Tempting now, isn't it? Too bad boB and Melinda are not professional photographers and have no web design skills. 

Anyway, after Morocco, then perhaps to Ireland again. That's the idea at this point, anyway. 

Our ultimate desire is to return to the UK again next summer, once they will let us return again (after July 17, 2016). To make that possible we hope to work ...er, volunteer hard, live affordably, budget wisely, and thereby extend the adventure as long as we are able!

 

Our plans change as we find other grand opportunities and come up with even wilder ideas, and so the adventure continues!

We miss you all and will keep you posted on new developments in plans. Stay well! We hope you are all enjoying a lovely November!

13 to 31 October: Home in Glasgow

Although we miss the adventure of our life on the road, it has indeed been a pleasant adjustment to sedentary life indoors. 

Our small one bedroom apartment is in the posterior portion of the gorgeous Victorian home above. It is located in south Glasgow in a neighborhood called Pollokshields, which is one of the largest Victorian Suburbs in Britain. Glasgow had its heyday in the Victorian era, whereas Edinburgh's was in Georgian times, and this is reflected in the architecture.

Wow! A refrigerator, stove, and dishes! We are in heaven!

There's loads of stuff to do in Glasgow!  

The staircase leading up to the tower at Charles Renne Mackintosh's lighthouse in downtown Glasgow. We forgot to count the steps, but nonetheless the view was superb.

Suddenly we realized just how big Glasgow was!!! Sprawling out in every direction, the city is home to some 590,000 Glaswegians. We are proud to be joining their ranks, at least for a short while!

Ornate stonework over the door frame of The Lighthouse. 

The Scotland School, designed by Charles Renne Mackintosh, is just down the road from our home.

 It was constructed in 1903 and was actively used as a school until the 1980's. The grandmother of our landlord was a teacher here. It has since been turned into a museum that illustrates school life through the centuries. Featured above is the home economics room where young women learned to be home makers in the early 1900's.

Inspired immensely by designs in nature, Charles Renne Mackintosh was known for immaculately designing his buildings' interiors, down to the fireplaces, furniture and fixtures. 

Beautiful and ornate stonework on the exterior of the school building. 

The Mackintosh festival celebrating the life and works of this amazing architect and artist happens to be taking place in Glasgow for the entire month of October. We were lucky to find a tour of the willow tea rooms (another of Mackintosh's creations) complete with high tea for a mere 5 pounds!

The coffee and scones were fantastic! And the decore in the "room de luxe" was bedazzling. The ladies of high society Glasgow would pay a whole penny extra to have tea in this special room in the early 1900's.

We could have stared at the incredible stain glass doors for hours.  

The intricate details were mesmerizing....

And delightful. 

This lovely fountain in Kelvingrove park features Queen Victoria. We bike through Kelvingrove Park nearly every day on our way to piping lessons, or a museum, or the library, or somewhere else exciting!

We were on the pedestrian mall on Buchanan Street when suddenly there was this outrageous sound, a flash of light, and Whammo!!! 

Funnily, it was gone the next time we were on Buchanan Street, two days later. Wonder where it is now?

Walking along Buchanan street, you are bound to hear one street musician or another.... or several!

We made a terrible discovery: a most wonderful violin shop with a cello and viola room. We didn't let ourselves try any of the instruments on the wall for fear of what we may do if we were to fall in love with one of them!

Last view of the purple bikes- we are painting them with gold and gray spray paint to deter theives. We figure of our bikes are ugly they may not be such attractive targets. 

Stay tuned for future updates about life in Glasgow!!!

13 October-31 October:  out and about in Glascow. Visited many of our local sites in Polluckshields, as well as greater Glascow. Made friends at the College of Piping, the Glascow Fiddle Workshop, and several local tradional music sessions at pubs (namely the Islay Inn and Babbity Bowsters). Learned to navigate the city streets on bicycles. Joined a Scottish Country Dance class.