You guys, I just got back from a real neat little weekend trip. My friend Ryan and I got tickets to the Celtic-Inter Milan soccer game on Thursday night, so we took the train over to Glasgow Thursday afternoon, about a two hour ride from St. Andrews. Despite being pretty disorganized the trip went remarkably smooth logistics-wise. So I learned a valuable lesson; never plan anything in advance.
We got to Glasgow and dropped off our stuff at our hostel, the Tartan Lodge, aka the Dirty Tart. Then we walked to Celtic Park on the east side of town, joining the many other drunk chanting fans streaming towards the stadium. Everything was amazing; sold-out crowd, great atmosphere, and the game itself was incredibly exciting.
Inter Milan got off to a 2-0 lead in like the first ten minutes, which was a major bummer, especially for the die-hard fans sitting all around us. I’m guessing that I’m not allowed to relay the colorful language they used since this blog is on the school website, so you’ll just have to imagine the auditory glory of listening to contless Scotsmen berate Inter Milan with maximum volume and profanity. It was incredible. Even more incredibly, Celtic came back and tied it 2-2 before giving up another weak goal to go into halftime down 3-2.
The second half was competitive the whole way through, with Inter playing a bit more conservatively to try and preserve their lead. Celtic put a good deal of pressure on the Inter defense before finally scoring in stoppage time to end with a hard-fought tie, 3-3. I hugged the Scottish guy next to me and jumped up and down and pretended to know the words to the chants that resounded throughout the stadium. It was absolutely thrilling, and I think I will be happy for two weeks just because of that one moment.
On Friday, Ryan and I met up with a few more guys from school and walked around Glasgow. On our way to meet them, Ryan and I walked through the Necropolis and the Glasgow Cathedral, which was gorgeous. Then we met the guys at the bus station and visited the Hunterian Museum, which I loved because they had a couple full dinosaur skeletons. As a kid, I really wanted to be a paleontologist, and the skeletons reminded me why; dinosaurs are dope. We also hit up the Kelvingrove Museum, which was also pretty interesting one highlight being Salvador Dali’s Christ of Saint John the Cross. It’s famous and it looks cool.
From there, we headed into the center of the city and checked out the Lighthouse, which is a pretty funky museum largely devoted to the Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. I wish I had paid better attention at this museum but I was crazy tired from walking so much and the aching pains in my legs were melting my brain (I’m pretty sure that’s the medical explanation). To cap off a long day, we went to a comedy club, which was funny, but also kind of difficult because I couldn’t understand a couple of the comedians very well. Those accents are no joke.
So yeah, it was a very fun couple of days. I got back to St. Andrews yesterday and I’ve spent the time since working on the two essays I have due this week. This week is shaping up to be a little schoolwork-heavy, but I’m sure I’ll have some fun too. Go Celtic.