King’s Cross Station. Another part of London that isn’t too far away but was still something I had yet to see. I never seem to get out anywhere, but maybe that will change now that I have my monthly tube pass. But London isn’t a concern at the moment, Edinburgh is. I’ve been out of the city a couple times since I’ve gotten here, but never been out of England proper. That’s a lie, I was briefly in Wales, but that was fairly uninteresting and I was only there for a few hours.

But this would prove to be an interesting trip. I was going to Edinburgh, Scotland for the time span of one week. A different country within the same nation, quite the paradox indeed. My elation wasn’t at absorbing the history, though. It sounds stupid, almost like star worship, but the real reason I wanted to be in Scotland was Irvine Welsh, the brilliant author behind Trainspotting, The Acid House, Porno, and the list goes on. His stories tend to focus around Edinburgh, with the characters of Trainspotting and Porno deeply rooted in the Port of Leith.

This was why I had planned the trip in the first place. I’d read Trainspotting more times than I could remember, and had just finished with Porno, the latest story of the skag boys. I had become determined to see the city that was the home base for these colorful characters. No matter how talented a writer is, a description of a place is no substitute for being there, and I hadn’t been there. Even the film version couldn’t possibly do justice to Edinburgh. There’s something different about actually breathing the air, feeling the stones under your feet, and fearing roving gangs of drunken Scots to give you a true sense of a place.

But I wasn’t there yet, I was still at King’s Cross, and I would be for another half hour or more. The station was a buzz of people unlike anything I’d ever seen. Granted there weren’t nearly as many people in the train station as there are in the typical airport of a major city, but the action, the buzzing, is a little different in a place like this.

The disorganization is probably the biggest factor. There’s a giant board as you walk through the main doors, and it tells all the trains, the times of departure, the stops that they will make, but it doesn’t tell you where to get them. It’s not until ten minutes before your train leaves that you’re going to figure out what platform to go to. It adds to the adventure, though. From the minute you hit the station you have to be aware of your surroundings or else you might miss your train. But that would only happen if you were an idiot. I don’t think anyone could miss that giant board in the center of the station.

And so we sat, all of us, waiting to find out where to go. Most of us were tourists, some were pros, and others, like myself, pretended to be a pro but knew deep down that we were just a bunch of tourists.. I was sticking out like a sore thumb, hoping I didn’t get pick-pocketed.

"God damn it," I thought to myself, "there’s a Burger King here." I wanted beef so bad. In this respect, beef is a lot like heroin, and I hadn’t had a fix in ages. Not since coming over to the isles. The parents, the grandparents, and my girlfriend, had been sending care packages to provide me with some beef-like food, but it’s just not the same as a greasy fast-food burger.

Everyone tells me that the beef here (in Britain) is safe, the safest it’s ever been, mainly because it’s been so well publicized and citizens have been demanding that the situation be resolved. So the government says that they’ve taken care of it and that beef is perfectly fine as of now.

Bullshit. The whole reason that there was such a problem in the first place was that the government never acknowledged it. If they can go for years without acknowledging something, then they could just as easily cover something up by saying that it’s fine. Trust no one, just like The X-Files, it’s the only way you’re going to survive. Admittedly, I’m weary of lamb too after the hoof and mouth disease, but I’m starting to think I’ll have to give in to have some form of red meat in my body.

And salmon, although pink and close to red, certainly does not count. It’s a tasty treat, and the British love it, but they shouldn’t be putting it on shitty bagels. If salmon is going to go on a bagel, which is perfectly acceptable, it should only go on good, authentic, or even semi-authentic bagels. They don’t know how to do bagels over here, they should leave it to the Americans. The little bagel chain store in the train station made me feel as a Mexican would if he was eating at Taco Bell in America. One would think that you can’t screw up a bagel, it’s simply bread dough in a ring, but somehow, the British have no idea how to make one come out right.

But, as it looked like it would be the easiest thing in the station on my stomach, I decided to indulge and shell out the cash for the sub-par bagel sandwich. I was halfway back to where I was standing before I realized that they didn’t put any napkins in my bag. I rolled my eyes at my own stupidity. They never put napkins in your bag in this country. I think I’ve been to one take-away shop where I was given a napkin with my food, but it seems so far off that I couldn’t name it if I tried.

I took a bite of the bagel and looked down at my notes. I’ve got maybe half a page. How the fuck did Thompson do this? Three days and he had a novel, and most of the time he was on drugs, too twisted to form complete sentences. Here I am, sober as a tack, and I’m finding it a struggle to write out my very simple surroundings. I ask myself again; How did he do this?

I thought for a second, and the answer is simple enough: He was a professional journalist and writer. I’m just a guy who’s hoping to spin a halfway decent yarn about his week in Edinburgh.

Speaking of Edinburgh, I thought that it might be a good time to check the board and see if my train’s platform has come up. No dice, but I decided to take a look at the details of my trip. I read off all of the stations we’re stopping at in between and start counting.

"Fuck me, nine stops," I thought to myself, "Nine fucking stops? I might as well start gouging my eyes out now. It’s going to be stop start, stop start, for five hours. Christ."

But, I had to take into account the circumstances. I was in a nation, much like the rest of Europe, which is still incredibly dependent on its railways. The reason for this is simple enough; it’s big enough to limit the feasibility of travel only by automobile, but too small for it to be a necessity to travel around the country by plane. The simple solution is obviously the railroad. It combines the relative ease of air travel with mass transit amongst points in a specific line so that the needs of the many can be met. Train stations can be very small and are much easier to maintain than airports. The other factor is how much cheaper the train is.

While Europe is apparently inundated with a number of cheap airlines and the ability to fly inexpensively from city to city, there are a lot of factors that make the task of using the cheap flight fairly difficult.

For one, advertising at £17.50 is a crock, considering you generally have to pay at least another £20 in airport taxes. On top of that, the ticket in question is usually one way, so by the time things add up, you’ve effectively been sodomized and you don’t even realize it. Yes, the prices are much lower than anything you would pay in the States, but when you can hop the rail for £36 on a round trip ticket, even with the nine stops in between departure and arrival, you’re still making out like a bandit.

So I was left pondering the state of this country. A nation that depends on the railroads, can’t make a bagel, and doesn’t believe in giving you napkins. Of course, that is a description of the nation as seen through a rail traveler. The panorama of pros and cons only expands as you step out into the heart of the country. There’s so much more to go into, but that’s not the point of this story. The point is me on my way to Edinburgh. Me on the way to Leith. Scotland; part the same country, a different world.

I looked up at the sign as the platform was announced. Number seven. I grabbed my bag, hiked my backpack up a little higher, and set out. It was happening. And I didn’t have to deal with another soul while I did this.