Midnight Marathon

Forty Hours.

Street level in Glasgow

That’s how long we went without being in bed—if you count the two-hour nap we had between 11:00 PM and 1:00AM on Sunday “going to bed!” Rising from this slumber, Jonathan and I flung ourselves into a whirlwind marathon of traveling by van, bus, car and plane, wandering city streets and waiting in airports, passing through six count-em ‘ countries in less than two days.

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It all started at 2:00 AM in Slovenia on Sunday morning, when we eight tired Canadians climbed into our rented cube van for the last time and drove off into the night, bound for Austria. There, my brother & I waved goodbye to our teammates and spent the morning wandering Vienna. The two of us returned to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, this time to attend mass.

While I couldn’t see the front of the church due to the minivan-sized ornate pillar parked in front of me, I could certainly hear the pipe organ music, operatic choir strains, and German chanting that echoed off the high Gothic ceilings surrounding us. We had almost no idea what was happening for most of the service, so we sat, stood and sang as cued by the others in the congregation. At one point, everyone turned and started shaking hands. Now this was something familiar! Forgetting that we were in a liturgical service and everyone was probably saying the German equivalent of “peace be with you,” I turned to the guy beside me and murmured a friendly Pentecostal “Guten Tag!” Hopefully he didn’t hear me.

Jonathan and I returned to the Vienna airport for a flight to Amsterdam, during which layover I was sure to stock up on liquorice from the airport shops. By nightfall we had flown into London, where we waited until 11:45PM to catch a midnight bus bound for Scotland. There is a certain element of intrigue and excitement which I love about a good midnight bus ride—especially if it involves a midnight snack of Amsterdam liquorice.

In the morning, my liquorice supply slightly depleted and my neck significantly stiffened, I stuck out with Jonathan during our three-hour layover in Glasgow to find breakfast. Glasgow is a fascinating city, filled with sturdy buildings, hilly streets, and innumerable jaywalkers. (Pedestrian signals, it seemed, serve aesthetic purposes only.)

As we passed a beautiful mountain lake like this one, I
decided to break out the Scottish folk music on my phone.
(Yeah, now you know my secret.)
"You take the high road and I'll take the low,
And I'll be in Scotland afore ye
For me and my true love will never meet again
On the bonnie, bonnie banks of Loch Lomond"
Suddenly I looked up, unable to believe the words
I saw painted on the side of a boat on the lake:
"Cruise Loch Lomond."
What are the odds?

Unlike the elaborate stonework and frilly fountains of Vienna’s artful streets, Glasgow’s neutral-coloured structures suggest a more no-nonsense life philosophy. Their historic appearances and imposing forms nonetheless impress the observer with a sense of the city’s
industrial majesty.

For the next seven hours we continued our road trip northwest across Scotland, pausing chiefly to distribute backpackers among the boulderous, sheep-studded highlands we crossed. I, too, could feel the green, misty mountains, their peaks outstanding against the low grey sky, begging some intrepid soul to venture up their cliffs. Our bus however, pulled into our final stop at Portree, the capital of Skye, without losing me to the highland wilderness.

This time...