Story #4 - Welcome to Scotland

Hi all! I'm here with my fourth story. To my surprise, this memoir turned out to be much harder to write than my fictional stories. Usually it's the other way around for me. Again, I'd like to thank you for your comments on my previous story (and stories). At the end of the story, I'm including a picture of our rental car in a... compromising situation. Read on to find out what that is! ;)

Title: Welcome to Scotland
Warnings: "Bad language" (think symbols)
Summary: The story of my first day in Scotland and how crazy it was.
Length: ~ 2,500 words
Notes: First person point of view, past tense. Genre is nonfiction/memoir and humor.


Welcome to Scotland

I never thought that one day I’d evaluate the worth of a place by how many potentially edible cows it had.

Let me explain. My family and I had had a long day and we were hungry and tired and had no food. It was just one of those days when it seemed like everything that could go wrong did go wrong, and then some.

We should’ve known things wouldn’t turn out well as soon as the day started. For the past few weeks, we had been on vacation in Europe. Today, we were taking one last tour in Paris before we left for Scotland. My mom and I almost missed the tour of the Paris Opera House. We were running late, the subway wasn’t working well, and we didn’t know exactly where it was. We literally ran circles around the Opera House looking for the entrance.

Foolishly, we believed that would be the worst thing that happened to us that day.

I was excited to go to Scotland. I’d been travelling Europe for a while, going to Switzerland, Italy, and France. I was looking forward to a place where they all spoke English (even if Scottish English can sometimes be as hard to understand as German or Italian or French!). I was also looking forward to a country that would be cool and rainy, because I enjoy rain and Italy was hot.

The plane ride to Scotland was pretty uneventful. The trouble started when we reached the airport.

We were visiting Scotland mostly because we (my dad, my brother, and I, not my mom) were Scottish and we wanted to go to our “homeland”. We wouldn’t have much time there, but one of our major attractions was to go to an “ancestral castle” that our clan had been in charge of. It was pretty run down now, just a wall and a flowerpot or two, but we thought it would be fun to see anyway. Sadly, our clan was the only clan without a standing castle. But we had to be proud of what we had!

My parents had decided to change their lodging reservations to be closer to that castle, and also to see the Scottish countryside. So we were going to stay in a remote National Trust cottage. We hadn’t had time to look up the email that had directions to the cottage and said where the key would be, but we figured we could just bring up the email on the computers at the airport. That was our first mistake.

No one had told us that you couldn’t bring up attachments on an airport computer! We could bring up the email, but it was absolutely useless without the attachment that told us where the key would be and the directions to the cottage. We probably spent an hour dithering by that airport computer, calling all our friends and family (and probably waking them up with the time change), trying to reach someone who could bring up the email. I even tried to pull up the email on my iPod touch, but that didn’t work either.

After a while, we realized that it was late and getting dark and we should be getting on our way. We didn’t know the area, so we decided to get dinner at the cottage. Then we went to get our rental car.

We probably would’ve been better off if we had just sat down and slept in the airport. But then, where would the adventure be!

So, a half an hour later, we were setting off in our boring white rental car. I’m sure we all felt like true pioneers, exploring the Scottish countryside without a map or any idea what we were doing. And no food on top of it all.

After a bit of driving in which I happily read my book and blocked out the uncertain mutterings of my parents, my dad spotted a sign to the Hill of Tarvit. That was the name of our cottage. The sign was pretty vague and didn’t really specify where to go, but my dad spotted a hill and figured that must be the Hill. So he started driving up the steep hill. All was well for a while… and then our rental car promptly died.

That made me lift my face from my book. It was dark, we were in the middle of nowhere, and our car was dead. And we were all hungry. Pioneering was starting to lose its appeal.

Let me explain something about my dad. He’s normally an extremely easy-going guy, but when he’s hungry, watch out! There’s a reason we keep him well fed all the time. But on this Scottish night, none of us were well fed and there was no food in sight.

My dad kept on trying to start the car again. He seemed to regress to the vocabulary of a fifth-grader: “Stupid car! The stupid gas pedal isn’t working!!” After a bit more dithering and freaking out and cursing the rental car company, my mom finally said, “Just punch it!”

The drama going on right now was much more interesting than my book. I waited nervously while my dad “punched” the accelerator. To our relief, the car started. But we could all smell an ominous burning smell.

Oh my God, I thought, we’re all gonna die.

Clearly my brother had the same idea, because he yelled, “Something’s burning! The car’s going to explode!” I couldn’t help agreeing with him.

“It’s just the clutch,” my mom replied, trying to be placating. Which was difficult when our dad was still freaking out in the driver’s seat.

We coaxed my brother back into the car and started up the hill again. It still smelled like burning inside the car. We’d probably end up having to pay our loser rental company reparations. We passed by a road that led to some sort of farmhouse. We weren’t sure if we were supposed to turn there or not, but we were worried about the car dying again so we drove on. Eventually we ran into (bad choice of words – we met) an elderly Scottish couple walking their dog.

They were very nice about it, but it turned out that we were trespassing on their private property and weren’t headed toward our cottage at all. They showed us the right way to go and gave us directions to the actual Hill of Tarvit. By now we were all frustrated and my dad was beyond reason. Luckily, we found the Hill of Tarvit. Unluckily, once we turned up the steep road that would hopefully lead toward our cottage, the car died again.

“Stupid car!” my dad snarled. “It’s this @#$% gas pedal, it’s not working –”

After alternatively annoyed and soothing comments by my mom, silence from me and my brother, and multiple attempts at starting the car, we got it going again. It still smelled like burning.

On our laborious way up, we met a Scottish lady who was also walking her dog (the Scottish people seem to like their dogs). She gave us directions to the cottage. As we were about to drive off, she politely asked, “Is everything all right? Your car smells a little funny.”

Yeah, because it’s about to explode.

            We thanked her and drove off. Eventually, we reached a turning point. We slowed down to take the turn and the car died again. But this was worse than the other times, because this time we were blocking the only road. For once it was good that we were so isolated, because we didn’t have to worry too much about someone needing to cross the road while we tried to get the car starting again. “Tried” being the operative word.

            “Punching it” wasn’t working anymore, so we contemplated literally pushing the car up the road. But every time we tried to go forward, the car would fall back a little. Soon we were backed up against a fence with a huge drop-off and didn’t even have room to try to push the car. We would either fall into the ditch or the car would.

            Naturally, by this point it was raining and muddy and still getting dark (it never actually got dark ‘till like midnight at Scotland). Eventually we had to admit defeat and call emergency services for the rental car. They said they’d be up in about an hour. We could see the cottages just up the hill, so we decided to walk to them. We had to drag the suitcases in the rain. By this point, everyone but my dad was starting to realize the complete absurdity of the situation. We couldn’t help but laugh. I think we all knew even then that this would make a great story now that it was almost over. Well, now that we thought it was almost over.

            While we were walking to the cabin, I spotted a few cows. It made me remember that we didn’t have any food up at the cottage. I asked, only half-joking, “We could always eat the cows, right?”

            Oh, how far the mighty have fallen.

            When we made it to the cute little cottage, we realized that we still didn’t know where the key was. My parents and I searched for a “secret place” where the key might be hidden we were heard the sound of a door opening. I looked up to see my brother opening the front door.

            “It wasn’t locked,” he said with a shrug in response to our questioning/astonished/disbelieving gazes.

            “I guess they don’t really need to keep it locked up in the middle of nowhere,” I said.

            The middle of nowhere where they have no food.

            We were all starving by this point, and we ransacked the cottage in search of food. It was a very nice place, but “well-stocked” is not an adjective I would use to describe it. They had next to nothing in terms of food. It looked like we were going to have to do without dinner, because it’s not like we could drive to a grocery store (and even if we could, we wouldn’t know where to go).

            But we finally had a stroke of luck. We saw the groundskeeper, a very nice Scottish man. My dad went over to ask him for food, and he offered to drive him to the grocery store. My dad accepted, and my mom, my brother, and I waited while he went off to get food. It seemed like everything was shaping up well.

            During that time, the emergency crew for the rental car made it (we were worried that they wouldn’t come in time). With no difficulty at all, they drove the car to the cottage and informed us that there was no problem with the car. They left and we still had no idea why it kept on stalling.

            My dad came back with plenty of food and a story about how the groundskeeper had showed him where our ancestral castle was located. We ate dinner at around ten p.m. (finally!), and then we relaxed. I was innocently playing my DS when my parents dropped the next bombshell – my dad had lost his cell phone. His expensive, special travel phone that would cost $200 dollars to replace.

            “I gave the cell phone to you!” my dad insisted to my mom.

            “I never had it,” my mom replied. “You were hungry and you probably just threw it at me or something.”

            It turned out that my mom was right… but the question was, where did my dad “throw” his cell phone at her? After a while, they figured out that he passed it to her without her knowledge at the Scottish couple’s private farm.

            There was no way around it. My parents were going to have to trespass on their property again to try to find the cell phone, in the dark and the rain.

            At least my dad wasn’t hungry anymore!

            The rest of this story I heard from my parents later. They left my brother and I to search for the phone, and decided that they had to take the car, which was supposedly okay. But when my dad tried to put it into reverse, he couldn’t and proclaimed it broken. My mom realized that there must be some sort of trick that the Scottish people would know and us silly Americans wouldn’t. She figured out that you can get into reverse by pulling up the gear shift and moving the handle to the side. It turned out that the whole gear grid was in a different position than it is in American cars and there was an extra gear. So every time my dad had thought he was putting the car in “first” gear, he was really putting it in third. That’s why the car kept on dying and wouldn’t restart (without burning sometimes) – it was in the wrong gear the whole time.

            With the mystery solved, my parents set out to try to find my dad’s cell phone. It seemed like a “needle in a haystack” scenario – it was dark and muddy and raining, and the cell phone was small and brown. On top of that, who knew when the cell phone got lost. My mom had been going in and out of the car that night trying to find people to ask for directions. Any one of those times, my dad could’ve “calmly passed” the phone to my mom and it could’ve fallen out.

            My parents devised a system. My dad drove in the car that he now knew how to work, lighting up the road while my mom walked in front, holding an umbrella and searching the ground for the cell phone. Just as they were about to give up, my mom saw a glint in the dark – it was my dad’s cell phone, lying in the mud and rain but still working perfectly fine!

            Victorious, my parents returned and told me and my brother the story. It was late – probably eleven or twelve at night, and we were ready to sleep. It had been a true adventure for our first day of Scotland, and we couldn’t help but wonder what tomorrow would bring.

            Eventually we would visit our ancestral castle (which my dad probably wouldn’t have found if not for the nice groundskeeper who pointed it out to him on the drive to the grocery store). Eventually we would pull up our email and listen to our phone messages and find out that every single friend and family member we desperately contacted asking to pull up the email with the directions and the key responded… just a little too late. But for now, we had to go to sleep in our nice, remote little cottage.

            I went to sleep thinking what a great story this would make someday.

THE END! :)

Now here's the picture:



This is our rental car when it was stranded in the middle of the road.