As I got on the train, I noticed something that wasn’t too peculiar, but at the same time something I was completely unprepared for; my seat was facing backwards. My immediate thought at this was a simple, ‘What the fuck?’ But then I realized that half the seats had to be like this. This way one leg of the journey would have seats facing forward, and the "backwards" seats could face forward for the other leg. I shook my head at my own stupidity and take my seat. I had a feeling that I was going to be shaking my head at myself a lot on this trip.

Of course, the seating arrangement seemed to make perfect sense. With me riding backwards I’d be seeing things as they passed, not as they approached. The story of my life; always realizing what I had when it was gone, not as I was approaching it or even when it was there. I eased in to my seat and began to acclimate myself to my surroundings, not that it would be that tough.

Something, a sound, made my blood run cold. I froze. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, like when two unfamiliar dogs are confronted with each other for the first time. But this was even scarier, even more sinister, yet I couldn’t quite place what it is.

I heard it again. Fuck. Americans. Loud, obnoxious Americans. This wasn’t happening. Not on my train. Not on my trip to Scotland. Not on the trip that was supposed to remove me from all of my countrymen as much as possible. I uttered a soft prayer asking God to make them be quiet and hopefully understand the idea of British reserve.

British reserve is a beautiful thing. Speak when spoken to, don’t give your life story on the first meeting, look away in crowded places, and most importantly, try to go unnoticed. Granted, this doesn’t apply to the British who have been drinking, but why should it? When the British drink, they drink with purpose, and they understand that sometimes they have to crawl out of their reserved shell if they’re ever going to have a good time.

But there is a time and a place for crawling out of a shell, and that’s in a pub, at a football match, or at some other large event. It is not to be done on a train, in a place of mass transit, or in a crowded area during the day. This isn’t too say that the British don’t talk at all when in a crowded place. Quite the opposite, they talk just as much as Americans would. The only difference is that they don’t want the rest of the free world to know what they are talking about. They try to keep the conversation subdued, the loudest it usually reaches being a low whisper.

Perhaps they don’t want to be eavesdropped on. Perhaps they understand the golden rule; Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I think that’s more the case, because frankly, most people don’t want to hear about what is going on in your life, so if everyone keeps their conversations low, no one particularly conversation has to get too loud and all that needs to be focused on is the one conversation at hand. It no longer becomes an ordeal of blocking others out, everything just proceeds easily.

Americans do not understand this, though. Another group settled in behind the first one and the girl was talking so loudly I wanted to scream at her. No, I don’t want to hear about what each picture you’re showing off has to deal with. No, I don’t want to hear about how you have to explain some of them to your boyfriend. And no, I most certainly do not care how much money you paid for this, that, and the other.

I may sound bitter and uptight, but I can’t remember a trip when I’ve been more relaxed. For one week I didn’t have to deal with anyone I know, at least on a face to face level. There’s the family and friends that I miss, my girlfriend who I was longing to see with such an extreme intensity that I felt like I was going to explode, but those are the standard longings which I know wouldn’t be fixed for another couple of months. Those are the ones that would always be there. But my desire to not deal with anyone from my school was very high. It’s not that I have anything against the people, well, most of the people, it’s just that I needed to get away. I’ve always felt that while I’m a social and interactive person, part of me has a large tendency to be a lone wolf. I’ve always liked setting out on my own, blazing my own trail, finding my own path. And that’s what this trip was about, and I kept reminding myself of that.

But I don’t think that was it. There was something more to this trip than simply getting away from the standard life I’d been living in London for the past couple of months. There was something more important at stake. I was looking for something in Edinburgh. What was it? Meaning? Inspiration? Direction? Renton, Spud, Sick Boy, and Begbie?

The latter was probably the most accurate. I had this image of Edinburgh, well, Scotland in general, in my head, and I wanted to see if I was correct. I hate to categorize people with stereotypes, but I had a feeling that if this image of Scotland was shattered for me, I was going to be heartbroken. I would just have to take it one day at a time. Seven days is a lot of exploring, a lot of soul searching. I could definitely make something out of this.

A couple settled into the seats on my left. They carried on a conversation very quietly. I had no idea what they were saying. I gave a sigh of relief and smiled at the fact that some people still took pride in reserve. I could have kissed them both for being so respectful of other people’s quiet, but then that would have been breaching the boundary of reserve as well.

Americans. Shut. Up.

This was pointless. I hadn’t even left London and already I was letting five Americans ruin my trip. This was worse than pointless, it was sheer stupidity. I couldn’t control the actions of other people, I simply had to deal with them. I looked at the ceiling and tried my best to tune them out. Fuck, why wouldn’t it work? They were just too damn loud and obnoxious.

The whistle sounded, the doors closed, and the wheels started moving. Train spotting. It was happening. The wheels were literally turning and I was on my way. My adventure in Edinburgh, on my own, no help from anyone else. I’d be able to do things on my time, the way I wanted. No one wanting to alter my plans saying, "Well wouldn’t it be nice if we did this today?" or "But I don’t want to walk up that hill…" This was all me. This was my time, my trip, my Edinburgh.

No time to worry, no time to panic. All excess baggage was left at the flat. For a trip like this, one needs to pack light, and that’s what I had hoped to do. Only enough clothes to last me for the week, yet for some reason I still didn’t have much room in my suitcase for bringing back Scotch or the bottle of mead that Neal had requested of me.

"Jade," he had said to me when I told him that I was going to Edinburgh, "could you do me a favor? There’s this type of alcohol that you can only get in this one shop in Edinburgh, the High Street Whiskey Shop. The drink is called Moniack Castle Mead. It’s made with honey and it’s really good. If you could do me a favor and pick me up a bottle, I’ll pay you back. In fact, you might want to pick up a bottle for yourself."

I was going to take Neal’s advice on that one. He has a good taste in liquor, meaning he likes the same things that I do, so I was going to take his suggestions to heart. I just had to figure out how I was going to fit three liquor bottles plus whatever other souvenirs I accumulated in Scotland into my almost already full bag.

A bridge to cross at another time, though. All negative vibes were left on platform seven, for only light hearts were allowed to embark on this journey. I’m trying to think of the last time I properly rode on a train and it’s escaping me. The tube didn’t count; it’s not at all the same feeling. There’s no conductor to come punch your ticket, it’s simply easy on easy off, being checked by the automated turnstile.

Speaking of a conductor, where was that bugger? I overheard the Americans saying something about the conductor sometimes not even coming. Jesus, if that’s the case I would start riding the rails more often, on discounted tickets, if you get my meaning. I’m sure that you do. Who the fuck was that addressed to? Maybe being alone on this trip for a week isn’t such a hot idea.

No conductor yet, just the woman pulling the snack cart. Drinks and treats aren’t complimentary, but I was thinking that a beer might be in order. It’s not champagne, but I could still christen my journey, except for the fact that I usually have a rule about no alcohol before noon on any given day. I last broke that rule in Mexico on my last day of visiting my friend Dean, and while the weather here could drive a man to drink, the same feeling of celebration that was had in Mexico was not there with me in the train, so I let the snack cart pass me by.

As it moved on to the next car, the conductor came out and started punching tickets. It was brilliant. Send the cart out first, so if you got conned into buying something, but then later didn’t have your ticket, the railways still managed to squeeze some small amount of money out of you. Not only was this country reliant on the rail system, but they were developing it into a science.

I can’t say I entirely enjoyed being alone. I was wishing that Holly was there to share the trip with me. The reality though was that she wasn’t, so I’d have to manage to find a way to keep sane. I decided that one attempt should be to catalogue all the rail stops the train made. Why this was a good idea, I’m not sure. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure that it was a good idea, but it was something to do.

First stop, Stevenage. I wanted to sleep badly. I hadn’t been getting enough sleep recently, and the desire was becoming overwhelming. Trains, planes, buses, cars, all of them make me sleep like a baby ever since I could remember. But the words were coming and the ink was still flowing, so I kept on writing.

I anticipated a lengthy stop, and then realized that it was nothing at all. Just about two solid minutes to open the doors, herd the people on, and then shut the doors so we could keep moving. I was very thankful for this considering that there were eight more of those stops to go. On the way to the next stop, Peterborough, I saw a burned out car that raised a lot of questions in my mind:

How in the Hell did it get there? Why is it in the middle of a field? Why does it look charred? Is there a specific reason that the windows are missing? Again, why the Hell is that car in the middle of the field?

The story begins to form in my mind, and it’s quite entertaining, coming quite effortlessly. There’s no real inspiration behind the story, not like it relates to my life anyway, I just thought my version was kind of amusing, so I put it down. At least the process kept me going for another three stops, totaling up to five.

The car is involved in the first sexual experience of a boy/young man who is about 20 years old. Whorish girlfriend. Anything that can go wrong does go wrong. He steals the car from his drunken friend, ends up breaking the windows, accidentally setting fire to it. Create story around these facts.

Peterborough, Grantham, Doncaster, and York. Right around York was when the words to the story stopped coming and the train got cold. I pulled down my jacket from the overhead shelf and wrapped it around me. It was time for sleep. Beautiful, precious, untouchable sleep.

I slept through a station which I never ended up identifying, but I don’t feel like I missed much of anything. When next I woke up we were pulling into Durham station, and the sky was turning an even darker gray. With every stop, the farther north we got, the sky got darker and darker. Not darker as in later in the day, but darker in that the sky became even less yielding to the sun. The type of dark that makes you fear the impending storm, but causes you to wait anxiously with anticipation.

The cab kept getting colder, too. This was not to be a good sign at all. Rain started falling and I overheard a remark, surprisingly made by someone with an English accent, "It’s beautiful, such a shame it’s so dreary." So much for English reserve.

I listened more carefully to what she had to say. She was somewhat elderly, which is why I think she was speaking a little louder than usual. She wasn’t speaking at a normal volume, rather at one where she couldn’t even hear what she was saying. Apparently she’d lived through the bombings that were the Battle of Britain. She’d seen these cities all of her life.

She and I obviously had quite different ideas of what the land was supposed to look like. I just assumed that being from England she’d realize that it’s supposed to be dreary. I’ve stopped commenting that the country side would look better in the sun, because nine times out of ten, there’s not going to be any sun to illuminate the land. It tends to hide behind the grey sheets and blankets in the sky, like a young child not wanting to wake up for school.

To me, the dreariness added to the beauty of Durham. The fact that that the city could stand out like a jewel against a backdrop of gray was a testament to its beauty. She had admitted to its beauty, true, but I was just so caught up in how much the gray added to the beauty, not detracted from it. I could probably debate the point with her for hours, but I frankly had no desire to. She’d lived her all her life, and if I wanted to invade her private conversation, I’d much rather be asking about living through all the German Luftwaffe attacks of the Second World War than debating whether or not a gray backdrop made a city beautiful.

So I eased back and prepared to get to Newcastle. What did I know about the town? Virtually nothing. They made a good brown ale, had a decent football team, and it was one end of the wall that was constructed to keep the Scots out when the Romans had first come into the country.

The poor Scots. They were deemed too savage to be allowed into the perfect Roman society. Some people have the notion that Adrian’s Wall was constructed to keep the conquered English in. This, however, is quite the misnomer. The wall was built to keep the Scots out. What a sorry situation; shunned from civilization just as it was starting. Inevitably it would take them years to recover.

While Newcastle looked a brilliant city that I’d like to visit, it didn’t have much bearing on me at that point. It was the last stop before I hit Edinburgh. Like the last defender in the way to the goal, it’s not something I wanted to dwell on. It’s something to quickly move past. The end result, the goal, is always the focus. The obstacles exist to confuse you; obstacles must be acknowledged briefly and then dealt with in an even quicker manner.

The last leg of the journey was longer than any other and the land between Newcastle and Edinburgh is composed of virtually nothing of interest. Not only is there nothing between the two cities, there’s a whole hell of a lot of it to boot. I was anxious now. Two hours ago I would have been thrilled at staring at an empty field, commenting on how healthy the flowing grass must be in the face of such constant and stalwart rain. But I just didn’t care anymore. I needed something eventful to keep me going through the last part of the trip.

We crossed the English/Scottish border and my hopes quickly began to rise. In a few minutes I looked to my left and my jaw dropped. I could see the sea through the window. I knew that I’d be able to see it, and that I was on an island, so it only made sense that it would be there, but I wasn’t expecting it. It was like unwrapping a present and thinking it’s tighty-whities, only to find out it’s what you’ve been wanting all along.

The water looked cold, harsh, brutal and unwelcoming. Yet it was so beautiful at the same time with its gray pallor and magnificent breakers that I wanted to throw myself in and float away on the rippling waves.

The muddy beaches looked like they had never seen a folding chair or a beach towel. They had never seen sunbathers, never had kids trying to body surf the waves, nor anything associated with a fun day at the beach. But it didn’t matter. I wanted to run on the beaches and scoop up the sand in my hands, lie at the waters edge, and wait for it to devour me alive, dragging me out into the ocean.

I have a great affinity for the sea. It reminds me of so many things: tranquility, calm, peacefulness, summer vacations, and, of course, Holly. Right after I first met her, I went away to the ocean as usual with my family for a week. She’d call the house we were staying at and we’d talk for as long as we could without running up too high of a phone bill. Then I’d run out to the pier to look at the stars and breathe in the salty air of the sea. From then on I would forever associate ocean waters with Holly and my love for her.

The sea never stopped looking beautiful as we pressed onwards. Eventually, houses started appearing along the way and full towns began to take shape. We passed through one little run down hamlet and my heart immediately skipped a beat. Was this Leith? Was this the little decrepit port town I was so excited to see?

"No, you idiot." Leith is north of Edinburgh, I was coming up from the south. I had a quiet chuckle at my stupidity as the train started a more visible approach to Edinburgh. The city was in view now, and it was amazing. Not really for the sights, I couldn’t see anything yet, but just knowing that I was there gave me a great feeling of pride. I wouldn’t be seeing Leith until I went there on foot, but that mattered little, there was plenty of time for that. The train pulled into the station and finally stopped. The journey was over and the adventure was laying in wait for me.