Jute, Jam and Journalism: Arrival and First Days in Dundee

We have all arrived safe and sound in Dundee, Scotland! After about 12 hours of travel and an interesting transfer in Amsterdam's airport, Schipnol, our first sights of Scotland were during our drive to Edinburgh to Dundee. And let me tell you, there are lots of sheep.

Omar hanging out in Schipnol Airport in Amsterdam

Upon our arrival, we were given the rest of the "afternoon" off. Even though it was approximately 5 in the morning in the States, as our poor exhausted bodies knew, we all stayed up until about 9pm to defeat jetlag.

Our first adventure in Dundee was lunch. We walked right down the cobblestone street to a bar/restaurant called "Tinsmith." Everything seemed pretty similar to the States - even some of the menu items. Yes, fries were referred to as "chips" and there were "bangers and mash," but plenty of things like burgers and sandwiches. A few interesting differences though were the Coca Cola, which many of us noticed tastes almost fruitier or sweeter somehow and my personal favorite, the condiment bottles had little British crowns on them and told us that this product was officially sanctioned by the Queen. How cool is that?

One of the Ketchups with the Queen's sanction on it - Oh, and Matt eating in the background

Where we ate our first meal in Scotland

After dinner, one might think the 10 of us would be too tired to hike up an enormous hill in the middle of Dundee, but we weren't! We headed at least a few miles to Dundee Law which had the most beautiful view at the top. Don't get me wrong, most things in Scotland have been beautiful, but the 360 degree view of Dundee from the top of Dundee Law was absolutely stunning. The group of us spent at least a half hour simply captivated by it.

The view of Dundee from Dundee Law

Omar and Nina admiring the view

Dundee Law also featured a gigantic memorial for soldiers who fought in World War II from Dundee. 

After our miles of hiking up and down a rather steep hill, I might add, we were about ready for bed. So, we all hit the hay after way too many consecutive hours of being awake.

The next morning, we met our student ambassador, Keegan, outside our flats and followed him to a University building. Inside, we were introduced to Scotland and the program in general by a couple lovely professors and Daria, our staff guide. The other participants and I were extremely excited to get a peek at our agenda for the next 5 weeks, but no spoilers, you will all find out in due time. We were also given an hour-long lecture about Scotland's general history, but also Dundee itself. The presentation was titled "Jute, Jam and Journalism" because these are the bases of Dundee's economic and urban development. For Jute, think the material potato sacks are usually made of (more on this later) and jam in the UK is actually what we in the States call jelly (I've already made the mistake of buying something labelled "Jam" here thinking it was jam, being excited about it, and then consequently disappointed when it was clearly jelly - oh well) and journalism is a rather big part of Dundee's culture. D.C. Thomson & Co. is headquartered here (it still is one of the largest employers!) which produces many newspapers and is very famous for comics as well.

After we finished our lecture and ran a few important errands, we were given some free time for lunch. We decided to try out the Student Union. Now, student unions here in Scotland are quite different than in the States. At least at the one in Dundee, they have barbecues on their back porch during the day and it basically shifts into a night club at night. We stopped in the cafe for lunch and it was extremely well priced, very tasty food, and we were all pleasantly surprised.

After the union, we headed to our tour of the McManus Museum and Art Gallery. Our tour guide was a rather quirky Scottish man who wore a plaid shirt and some cargo pants as he guided us throughout the museum. All of us immediately noticed how casual the atmosphere was. From our tour guide's outfit to picture-taking and even touching artifacts, everything was surprisingly lax. We learned an amazing amount of interesting things about Scotland and Dundee though, and it was all quite fascinating.

The first highlight of the museum, and probably my favorite was good old Winkie the pigeon. Winkie the pigeon was awarded one of the highest medals of honor during the second World War when a downed RAF plane and its crew were stranded in the ocean. Winkie was given a message by the soldiers with their rough coordinates and the bird flew about 150 km to deliver it. The soldiers were eventually rescued all thanks to this amazing pigeon, so they gave him a medal. It also reported winked once, and thus he was titled Winkie.

Winkie the Pigeon and his medal

We also learned more about this jute fabric we had been hearing all about. It's rather rough, but it was weaved by hand and mostly by women. Our tour guide certainly emphasized that it was "women's work" because they paid the women less. Classic history of industry. He also told us about how the jute weavers all wore a hat and had a bag they took to work with them that held a small instrument used to fix the loom when it was not working properly. Why? Because these women were essentially paid on commission, so any time they weren't weaving was lost money.

Our tour guide and the famous jute

One thing I've certainly noticed about Dundee so far is that there's a lot of pride in the city itself. People seem to know a lot about it. Later at dinner, we discussed Dundee a bit with one of our professors that's working with us while were here. He was telling us that Dundee is known as the "sunniest campus" in Scotland, and and he had numerous other fun facts about the city. This entire museum was essentially devoted to the city as well and we also later ate at a restaurant whose theme was a Dundee physicist, D'Arcy Thomson. We have also been told a few times already that there's a bit of a cultural divide between the East and West Coasts of Scotland. Perhaps our program has been exposing us to knowledgeable locals, but there seems to be a sense of identity in this city unlike I've seen in the States. I will report back to you all once I've gathered more data, though.

My favorite part of the museum might have been the room of paintings. The walls were specially designed in a curve so you could better see the paintings on the higher half of the wall. There were some really amusing paintings inside as well.

Note the curve in the wall

My favorite painting was appropriately titled "The Voltaire Painting" depicting the Voltaire storming back into a room at a party outside of which he had just been "horsewhipped." No context was provided, which was disappointing, but it was highly amusing to see such a famous and revered person in such a silly portrayal.

The Voltaire Painting

Another favorite was the first instance of football (soccer) depicted in Scotland. Our tour guide did note that it looked a bit more like rugby, but the description remains. He told us about how football used to be played on roads and that some people suggest that the circle in the center of the football "pitch" is the town's pond and the two boxes at the goals are the Church and a town hall or something similar. He didn't really seem to buy that though.

The First Football Game

We explored the museum for a bit after our tour guide left us and then headed back to the flats. On the way, we did stop at a local cemetery and explored, looking for ancestral names and such. It was beautiful. There were a lot of flowers and greenery. In the States, we don't see a lot of crazy-old graves, but there were a lot of them in this cemetery. Although the sign did tell us that the monastery that used to be there was burned down by Henry VIII upon his splitting with Rome (context provided by our own history major, Liam) so there weren't any extremely old dates.

The Scots do not mess around. Skulls and Crossbones were frequent designs on graves. 

Our amazing second day in Dundee was concluded by one of the best meals I've ever eaten in a restaurant called the D'arcy Thomson (based off that Dundee physicist), only about a 5 minute walk from our flats. We ate with Daria, Keegan, the two professors from Dundee we had met earlier in the day and a professor from Strathclyde. The food and the company were absolutely phenomenal, so much so that we stayed for 3 and a half hours.

That about sums it up for the first two days in Scotland, and I can't wait for more.

Until then, cheers!