Scotland, first impressions, back to 2009

It was a cloudy but relatively warm winter day in January of 2009 when I first stepped on the Scottish soil, the homeland for Robert Burns, John Adam Smith, Golf and Irn Bru.

Though I was already 24 by that moment (thus in some senses mature) I still felt great curiosity about the new environment. And this came as no surprise for a person who has spent most of his life in post soviet country called Georgia, a country where west dominantly existed on TV screens and music videos.

And it was late 90ties that my country got closest it could get to west by opening first McDonald’s  restaurant in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital.

Though I had previously visited McDonald’s in Istanbul a year before that, the Georgian one was truly a phenomena. The very first weeks of the new fast food restaurant would be marked with rich people dressed in fancy suits  queuing up for a hamburger in posh cars.

That was comic, but at the same time true, as post soviet block’s perceptions about west were very different from the reality.

But despite obvious differences, soon enough I discovered that people in UK also breath, walk, smile, feel sad, drive cars and watch football, thus behaving the exact same way as anywhere in the world.

I also discovered that it was very wise from me to come to Scotland to improve my language. This impression seemed to be very right especially after I first heard the confusing affirmative word “aye”.

To be honest it took me a while not to question everything three times until I could understand very proud Scottish accent.

Glasgow turned out to have a very strong character and spirit as well. Unlike Edinburgh, which I was to visit later, Glasgow was not a fake city trying to please all of these fancy European bohemian tourists, no, it was and is a truly working class city with its unique Scottish soul, which made me love it from the very first moment I saw it.

When locals got to know I was from Georgia it was normal to hear “Russia?” from them.  In the beginning I would start explaining that “no, Georgia is not Russia, it has long history before the Soviet Union, we are different ethnically and so on,” later I could not be bothered anymore and developed different strategies.

Once I even was questioned by a Slovak girl whom I met in London, she smiled and said quite rhetorically, “oh Georgia, Russia?” I smiled in reply and also posed a similar sentence, “Yeah, just like Slovakia is Czech republic.” This brought us down to same levels and made us enjoy a conversation in next half an hour or so.

Sometimes I would also hear in reply, “Georgia? Bastards. You beat us two zero.” To be honest Georgia rarely ever beats anyone in football, so I enjoyed this reply much more than “Russian” one.

First months in Glasgow were filled with curiosity leading me to end up in different corners of  the city or Scottish culture in general, this would lead to interesting places, experiences and friendships.

And it was much more than just Irn Bru, Scottish accent or portion of chips and cheese to come later…