A Trip to Europe

One week removed from my return to the US. For Dad’s 60th, we traveled to Scotland, Munich, and Copenhagen. Trip of a lifetime. The first stop was in Isle of Islay. My journey started in Washington DC. I walked from my apartment on 16th and R St to the DuPont red line station and metro’d to Union Station to catch a bus to Richmond. I flew from Richmond to JFK and then JFK onto Edinburgh. The whole Richmond detour was pretty stupid but the short of it is that I wanted to fly Delta to get the points and given that constraint, it was much cheaper to fly out of Richmond. Landing at Edinburgh, I took an uber into the city to pick up a rental car. This was my first experience ever driving in the UK and it was difficult. The steering wheel being on the right side of the car threw me off more than driving on the left. Totally threw off my spatial awareness. I drove from Edinburgh to Glasgow, picked up Carson, and we were on our way to the Isles of Scotland. We stopped before it got really remote to have lunch. Wanting to immediately ingratiate ourselves in the local culture, Carson and I ordered Haggis with Neeps and Tatties. We both thought the dish was delicious and really weren’t bothered after we discovered what constituted Haggis. We walked into this restaurant located inside of an Inn about an hour north of Glasgow. Immediately, the hostess knew we were Americans and I’m convinced that’s why she seated us in the corner of the backroom when there were plenty of open tables in the front room where all the rest of the lunch patrons were. After lunch, we continued on to the ferry that departed from Kennacraig and went on to Port Askaig. Islay is rural and remote enough that there aren’t any ubers there so the for the last hour of the car ride, I called around trying to hire a taxi to take us to Port Ellen where Mom and Dad and Uncle Dan and Aunt MB were staying. That proved to not be a trivial task, but eventually I found a number of a guy who was willing to take us the last 30 minutes of our journey. He worked at the ferry office on Port Askaig so we would need to wait 30 minutes after our boat landed for him to close up and then drive us. We made it to our destination in Port Ellen around 11pm. What a good sleep that was.

Touring distilleries is very different than touring wineries, or breweries. It’s hard to spend an entire day drinking whiskey. My and Carson’s first and only full day in Islay started with a flight of different whiskeys at Bowmore distillery. About 3,000 people living on Islay - 1,000 in Port Ellen, 1000 in Bowmore, and another 1000 scattered throughout the sheep-covered hills. I’d bet the sheep outnumber the people 10 to 1. By the end of our short time at Bowmore, I was a bit drunk. By the 2nd and 3rd distilleries of the day, I had slowed down a lot. I wish I liked Scotch more. Maybe in time. Islay was beautiful and being inside the distillery, even without drinking the whiskey, easily justified the long trip.

We stopped in Edinburgh next to rendezvous with more of the Miller contingent. Dad, Carson, and I woke up early that morning to try to get 9 holes of golf in. We drove about 40 minutes west of the city to what seemed to be some semi-private course. No one manned the “clubhouse”. We didn’t have clubs and we needed to rent some, but that was not to be. Prior to finding the place, we rolled up on some castle. Not knowing exactly where to go, as I went to make a U-turn, we spotted some old lady outside of the castle smoking a cigarette. It was about 8 in the morning. This lady could’ve been a prostitute. She was about 60 years old and wore pajamas. Her eyes were red and she looked as if she had just had a long day. Certainly a curious site so early in the morning. Anyway, she had no idea where the golf course was which ended up being weird in hindsight because the course was maybe a quarter mile away across a short wooded area. Edinburgh was somewhat bland but it was nice to see all the cousins finally together.

Everyone then flew to Munich. I was the straggler of the group, booking a somewhat later flight. I knew I’d get my fill of Oktoberfest so I opted for a couple extra hours of sleep. Flying in Europe feels very much like flying in the states. I’ve heard flying in the Middle East is quite different, that economy is like entering a zoo exhibit. The one time I flew in the Middle East I sat business class on Anduril’s dime.

The difference between Germany and Scotland felt much bigger than the difference between Scotland and the US. There are actually spots in Munich where everything is written in German and NOT English. In many instances, text would be duplicated, once written in German, once in English. I arrived at the hotel about a 10 minute walk from Oktoberfest and thus began 5 days straight of consumption. I drank an average of 4 liters of beer each day. The beer is really quite good and it feels much different drinking beer in a beer hall where everyone else is drinking the same thing. At bars, there are a million beers and cocktails and wine. In the beer hall, everyone drinks beer. Everyone drinks the same beer. There is something very exciting about being in communion with such a large and varied population all under one tent. Everyone in the tents wore lederhosen for the most part. Live music sprung out in short spurts periodically. Usually, the band just played the “mein prosit” song which roughly translates to “drink beer now”. The other thing that’s cool about Oktoberfest is that it really is just a huge state fair. There are fair rides and fair food like you see in the US. There are also these massive semi-permanent tents that you need to buy tickets to get a seat in. The tents are basically parties of various flavors. Certain tents are known as the party tents. Some are more casual. We went to a casual tent (the Paulaner one) with everyone on Wednesday. On Friday night, we went to the Haufbrauhaus tent and it was certainly higher energy.

Carson and I left Munich very early on Sunday morning. Saturday was our last day in Munich. It was Ethan’s birthday and Jackie had reached out to me and Carson ahead of time, imploring us to stay a couple extra days to celebrate Ethan’s 20th. By Saturday, my tank was empty and I really had to white-knuckle my way through the afternoon as we drank and drank and drank. This time, we went to different beer halls outside of Oktoberfest. By nighttime, everyone was drunk enough to forget about the tiredness. The last beer hall we went to was pretty packed. At the entrance, Jackie negotiated with the host. Then suddenly, the host whisked us away to a table in the corner with 3 german girls already sitting there drinking wine. The host winked at me and we sat down. Now as a recently coupled up man, I knew it was my turn to take the lead with these girls as wingman. The irony is that when you’re single, you don’t have nearly the confidence you do when you’re not single. One of the girls was pretty cute. Her name was Kim and she spoke broken english. The girl next to me was not nearly as cute and she was pretty forward with me. All harmless. At one point, I decided it was time to go and I left. By that point, the girls started getting a little more forward, which made me decide it was time to go. What a city!