bullet-points: glasgow edition
November 17th, 2008 § 2 Comments
there are so many things that i really love about glasgow. i keep telling people that it’s because glasgow really reminds me of home (which is very true), but the truth is, glasgow is much like cincinnati, only better in so many ways. below are a few of the ways that glasgow reminds me of home:
- glasgow is a mid-sized city; it isn’t louisville, kentucky, but it also isn’t new york city. glasgow’s not so big that you get lost in the crowd, and, it has a lot of things that can also be found in larger cities: museums, orchestras, a great music scene (hey, the fratellis are from glasgow, as are mogwai!), fine dining, an international airport, i could go on.
- during the 4 1/2 years that i worked for delta air lines, i spoke with many, many passengers who were surprised and delighted at the level of friendliness of cincinnatians. granted, the majority of them were from much larger cities, but still. one of the things that i really like about cincinnati is that (with rare exception) people are very “real” – there is a lack of pretension or high-handedness…and this is one of the things that i find to hold true to glaswegians as well.
- the weather! okay, so it rains much more in glasgow than it does in cincinnati, and it kinda sucks. but the fact that at 10am the sun is shining with barely a cloud in the sky, and at 11am it’s pissing it down, and at noon it’s hailing, well…let’s just say that cincinnati weather prepared me well for glasgow.
but there are so many things that glasgow does better than cincinnati:
- public transportation! in cincinnati, you have your choice of walking, a bike, a bus, or a car for your commute to work. but, because cincinnati is so spread out, walking and biking are completely out of the question for most cincinnatians, and the bus system is unreliable, buses are sparse, and the timetables are a joke, which essentially makes having a car a necessity for the majority of the city. by contrast, glasgow has buses running on regular intervals, trains going every-which-way, taxis all over the place, and biking to work is definitely an option (as long as you have a shower at work, which sam uses when he rides his bike).
- perhaps this was sam just using his noggin when he picked the location of his flat, but i love (LOVE) the fact that i can run down the street and get fresh meat or seafood from the butchers, fresh produce from the greengrocers, and anything else at the co-op that i might need. fantastic. also, he lives across the street from a pub and a chippie, and there are many more of both down the street. and now there’s a balbir’s! which leads me to…
- indian food (which i covered in my previous post).
- diversity of fashion styles! since i’ve been here, i’ve seen some of the most outrageous clothes on people, and i’ve also seen the mundane jeans-and-a-t-shirt dressage (which is normally what i’m wearing). as anyone who knows me well can tell you, i am hardly a clotheshorse, but i buy clothes that i like, regardless of what other people might wear, and sometimes they might be what others would consider “strange.” i’ve worn outfits in cincinnati that have literally made people laugh, but if i wore them here? people wouldn’t bat an eye.
and of course, the fact that glasgow is a short plane ride from about 20 other countries makes it all the more appealing.
the thing that got me thinking about this is the fact that there’s a proposition in cincinnati for a streetcar system, and i think it’s a STELLAR idea (hence the badge to the right). powered by electricity! more reliable! permanence! and, it’s so much cheaper than the light-rail system that was proposed back in (2000? 2001?). anyway, thanks to urbancincy for keeping me up to date on my city. i feel like we’re finally starting to catch up with the rest of the world. mark twain might even retract his oft-attributed quote from the grave. 
Some of the most memorable times during the six months I lived in Scotland (in St. Andrews) were spent in Glasgow!
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