First of all, I should note that last night was rather stressful because I didn't realize until I saw the completed station schedule that I couldn't make it to a 1-3am radio show like I can at home. I didn't take into account that I'm living off campus without a car this semester, and buses don't run that late. So I was basically Facebook messaging the program director (who was very nice and helpful by the way) all night, trying to figure out what to do, since none of the other open times worked for me. Finally, a slot opened up at 1-3pm on Tuesdays, and I was so happy that I was actually going to be able to do a show in Scotland. On Monday, I'm planning to sit in on an exec member's show to see how the station equipment works, though I don't think it will be too different from the Doobie.
Anyway, after being relieved from that stressful situation, I wanted to take Saturday day off. I meant to get up early and exercise, but then I got on Facebook and saw a Tim Hortons ad, which made me really want a donut, so I decided to go on a walk to find a bakery instead. Surprisingly bakeries are rather difficult to locate in Stirling, even though I've seen a ton in other Scottish cities (apparently, there's a Krispy Kreme in Edinburgh, but I obviously didn't have time to go there). There is a Greggs in the city center, which is a weird little chain that sells baked goods like pasties and Scotch pies and donuts, but I wanted to find a real bakery.
Scotch pies are tiny pies with sheep meat in them, and they are very bad for you which means they taste very good.
I finally found We <3 Cake, but it was very tiny, and there were no doughnuts, so I just got a Mars crispy cake, which I assume requires melting down a Mars bar. It's basically just a rice krispie treat with chocolate in and on it. Scotland knows how to do rice krispie treats, man.
Speaking of desserts, I had an Empire Biscuit a few days ago at the Starbucks on campus, and it was basically a Pop Tart made from two sugar cookies with jam in between and white icing on top. WHAT A GREAT IDEA.
Actually, now would be a good time to describe the different kinds of sweets that I have been seeing at all the cafes and bakeries in Scotland.
Mars Crispy Cakes
Empire Biscuits
(often they don't have nearly this much icing, which is sad)
Caramel Shortbread Bar (also called a Million Dollar Bar)
I tried to make these at Denison once, but the caramel came out as toffee. The bottom level is shortbread, followed by layers of caramel and chocolate.
Shortbread in general is a big Scottish thing, so there are also peppermint shortbread bars, which are like the caramel ones except with a layer of peppermint creme instead of caramel.
The most common donut here is the yumyum, which I think is kind of like a cruller, but I haven't had one yet.
I haven't had rocky road bars yet either, but they have them at the Starbucks. They're a combination of mashed ginger snaps, chocolate candies and marshmallows.
Actually ginger snaps are a big deal here in themselves. I've seen a lot of them, although they are usually called ginger biscuits. By the way, people do actually say "cookies" here in certain cases, not just biscuits.
Tablet is also a thing. It's hard like maple syrup candy but tastes more like really sugary fudge. It's made of sugar, butter, and condensed milk.
There are more I can't remember right now, but a lot of them involve shortbread.
Anyway, other things happened today besides baked goods. I stopped by the 20 Rocks bar that I've been wanting to go to, and I found out it's also a restaurant. There's a stage where live bands play every night, and they have some cool rock memorabilia on the walls. Definitely going to go back there at some point.
Check out all the famous people on the walls.
I walked around the back roads in Stirling and stumbled onto a really pretty view of the city, which you can see from a little public playground. I want to go back there and take pictures. Stirling is actually very easy to navigate, even though the layout isn't in conventional blocks (of course, neither is Pittsburgh).
I wandered back to the center of town and had lunch at NY Slice, which is the best pizza I've had in Scotland. It wasn't the absolute best pizza I've ever had, but it was good thin-crust pizza and more like what I'm used to at home. I'm picky about pizza.
I also had time to go to one of the used book stores, which is actually a thrift shop where the proceeds go to charity. So I felt a little better about spending money on records there. I got a couple Bay City Rollers albums (which are kind of impossible to locate in the US), Steve Winwood's Roll With It (which I've been trying to find for a while), and Argus by Wishbone Ash (which was a rather serendipitous find).
After that, I walked up to Europa Music, a really good record store where I (finally!) got Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and Paul Simon's Graceland, as well as a Bay City Rollers record with cool pull-out posters and Too-Rye-Ay by Dexy's Midnight Runners. When the cashier saw the BCR record, she told me that when she was little and BCR were really popular, her mom would stitch tartan on the sides of her jeans for her so she'd look like the band. So cute!
I've found that carrying cash causes me to buy less, so that's a good tip for the future. I have to be careful that I don't get too many records while I'm here because I do have to get them all home on the plane. I think that when I leave, I'm just going to have to make hard decisions about stuff to give away so there's room for my souvenirs. Probably not going to come in under the weight limit again though...
The one bad thing about today is that I didn't get much any reading done like I wanted to, but I have most of tomorrow for that. The only thing I'm doing on Sunday is going to the Alanwater Brewery in the evening for a meeting of the university's Craft Beer Society. I'm hoping we get to tour the place.
Song of the Day (because most of this post was about bakeries; also idk what this video is, but it was the best sound quality version of the song on youtube):
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