Week of Chaos pt.2: Monday

We had ordered a taxi for 0530h; everyone was up, and we got into it and to the airport in good time. Coffee and Cornish Pasties were had, money was changed and we made our way to the departure gate, my anxiety levels rising steadily. Post-security I paused to put my earplugs in and purchase some fluids to take onboard. It was at this point that Helen realised we were due to be checking in NOW and so we made a break for it, pausing only to snatch some juice out of a passing vending machine.

Once on the plane, I settled in for a few hours of possible agony. I giggled at the staff when they were demonstrating emergency procedures, particularly the smirk they exchanged when doing the ‘emergency exits are located here, here and here’ section. All drugged up and ready to go, then! I love takeoff, I love landing, I like turbulence and anything that emphasises where you are and makes it feel less like a school bus. Sadly, my head doesn’t share my enthusiasm, though at least on this occasion the discomfort was less; I felt he need to jiggle my legs the whole way, no idea why, and managed to fall into a sleep-like state for a large part of the flight. Extreme ear-popping was the order of the day and I kept wondering if I was going to be singing with a ruptured eardrum. I was very relieved when we landed and I could take the earplugs out – which had started to hurt – and review the surprising lack of structural damage I had suffered.

While sitting bewildered on the bus into town Ollie befriended a local (with a Scottish accent) who was already helping a couple of Canadian girls find their way around. As a result we managed to get off at the right stop and get the connecting underground into the centre. Our new guide left us at Mustek and Ollie took over, stepping into a Tourist Information place where he got directions to our apartment. We set off (to Helen’s cries of “Ooh pipes, I want a pipe!!”), passing a Tesco on the way (Tesco, in this case, being a multi-level department store with the supermarket section hidden in the basement), with me squee-ing over the trams endlessly, yet somehow we found the place we were going – only to be sent on to the actual apartments a few blocks further away.

The apartment was lovely. Recently done up, filled with IKEA goodness and strange cupboards. Major failing? Poorly equipped kitchen. There are only the very basics as far as cutlery and crockery are concerned (literally – most of these things are Tesco Basics branded!), and nothing at all in the cupboards. I would expect at least salt and pepper, perhaps even some tea? Two large bedrooms with an array of windows (one of which is really a living room with a good sofabed and whose window/door thing sports a pigeon and two eggs on a few twigs); a bathroom, featuring a bizarrely raised bath, and a bidet, of course; kitchen, with small balcony lacking a view of anything other than the surrounding buildings and a corner of a hill and the tip of the castle in the distance; person-wide cupboard/room of the kitchen with a window and nothing else; cupboard in hall with window which opens onto the stair; further cupboard with a mattress; and finally the Other Room, which houses the boiler and looks like it should be a room-sized shower: it’s all tiles up and very smooth-edged but completely lacking in a shower. Pity.

On going a-wandering in the evening, a tramp approached Helen and spoke Czech to her. She looked blank and said ”Olliiiieeeee…”. He quickly told the tramp that we didn't speak Czech (Ollie has an unnerving ability to pick up the basics of a language very quickly), which should have defused the situation nicely; however, the tramp paused – looking thoughtful – and promptly started asking in quite comprehensible English for some money. Helen grinned in terror and thrust 20Kr (about 65p) on him before making a break for it. She then spent the rest of the evening hunting for a bathroom to wash the tramp off her hand.

While walking along the river we heard a cry of “Excuse me!” followed by some English chaps – two from Liverpool which amused Ollie muchly – asking us if we knew where "The Club" was. We’re still not sure which Club this might be and weren't a whole lot of help to them...

We paused momentarily, as Ollie and Helen inspected a peculiar object on the ground, wrapped in a tatty drinks cup. After some consideration there was a cry of “Ewwwww,” as they concluded that it was, indeed, a dead rat – rather the worse for it by the look of it!

Scattered across the city are doggie bags. I don’t mean bags to put your leftovers in, but bags for putting your dog’s waste into. They are in handy dispensers with cute pictures, all over the place! That’s surely a better use for the city’s waste-related money than a neverending stream of newly designed waste containers, all of which are in some way horribly flawed (this, btw, is a reference to the biannual relaunch of Edinburgh's litter bins, which unerringly don't do all of what they've been designed to do)?