I have arrived in Edinburgh – actually for the second time during this trip, but I like that city. I stay at the Castle Hostel, a 13 pounds-a-night hostel located centrally. Actually, I am a bit reminded of that Brad Pitt film where he stayed at some cheap hostel in Bangkok;Thailand. One bloke from Canada was already in the 8-bed room and immediately started to tell me about life as a such and his life in particularly. He plans to find a room in Edinburgh, wants to get a new job and is in the process of paying back his credit card dept. He had been living in the hostel for a couple of months. I listened politely and at a certain point of time (maybe about 20 minutes later) I told him that I travel around the world in a car. He found that “interesting” and told me about the fascinating high prices for 1-room apartments in Edinburgh.
Other things are different, too: My bed’s name is Brooke Shields, but I also could have decided for the “Jesus”-bed. Well, I did not want to wake up bound to… …arhhm, you know what I mean.
The second guy in my room is an Australian with Scottish roots. A writer. He has not published any book or article yet, but his newest project is well on its way. He already has some concrete ideas. It will deal with his own life, with life as a such, and the dark and bright moments in life. Alright then, I went for a run.
Now, football is not really my favourite sport and I am far from saying that I would be any good at playing it. But I know the rules and somehow understand what is happening on the field. In the Edinburgh central park, which is lovely by the way, they play cricket. A sport where everybody is dressed in white and where after 20 minutes of running around their play-ground I still had no clue about the rules. Not even who was playing in which team. Or whether there were teams at all.
Running in Edinburgh’s park anyway is dangerous. They play golf there, too. Ok, not with the  long-range clubs, but however, I heart several times a sharp high noise in the air and a white unidentified object passed only inches in front of my forehead. Well, Scottish are sportsmen.


Before arriving in Edinburgh, I stayed at Cara’s farm somewhere close to Glasgow. What  a place! It’s peacefully situated between to green hills, in the middle of the countryside and you have to cross a small river before arriving at the farm. Only seconds after I had parked the car in front of the about six garages, some two riders arrived high on their horses. One of them was Cara, the couch-surfing host. Now, if you have asked yourself whether Super-Woman does exist, let me assure you, she does! Not only that she knows the differences between the oils for gear-box, brakes and motor, she also has travelled around half of Middle-America with her own van. And she is cool to hang out with. When driving to Glasgow for a night out, she parked backwards faster than I would have dared. Well, was there anything missing? Oh yes, actually she looked quite breath-taking beautiful up there on her horse. I swear: if I had stayed 5 minutes longer at her place after two wonderful days, I would have fallen in love and the world-trip would be over by now.
Her family is equally cool. Her brother loves to race – with every second week changing Mitsubishi Evolution VIII with 350 bhp. He was pretty much an expert about this and showed me some video where he was drifting around a round-about. For about 5 minutes. Unfortunately his Scottish accent was quite pronounced to I could not understand everything he told me. But com’on, we talked about cars and I was quite sure that we agreed about most of the points I thought we were discussing. Mom and Dad seemed to be very easy going - and they both were driving fast cars, too. Quite a fast family. I enjoyed staying there!However, with Cara we went out for a picture safari around Loch Lomond and Loch Fyne. We had excellent oysters there, fresh from the local oyster farm. Good wine and good discussions, too. We tried off-roading a bit, but contrary to Wales, the Scotsmen close their gates with huge locks. So it was a bit challenging to get the wheels of ground this time. Finally, let me make a commercial: you want to go to Scotland! It’s worth it!