DAY NINE: Lerwick, Edinburgh

After a somewhat surprisingly busy yet slow-paced last day in Lerwick, I’m coming at you from the emptiest airport in the world and have  half-hour before our plane (allegedly) takes off for Edinburgh (pronounced EdinBORA), our home for the next (rainy) week.  The big board says our flight’s on time, which would probably shock taxi owner Ronald, who, after not showing up and sending a different, vastly more professional driver to get us, said (I think), “You’re flight won’t take off tonight anyway.”

Sumburgh: Emptiest airport in the world.

Cue great sweating and uneasiness, especially among Sandra Bullock, whose concern for her mother showing up at our hip Edinburgh pad tomorrow morning only to find that we’re still trapped by fog in the Shetland Islands is bordering on manic.  Fortunately (I think), our propeller-powered airliner is on its way.  Also, our very professional driver, who purchased his very clean Toyota wagon at one of the the three auto dealerships on the island, actually followed us into the least busy airport in the world to see if we were taking off.  If you add him to us, plus the Logan Airways desk agent hiding behind the pillar, that makes four visible people at the airport when we checked in.

Since I’ve (allegedly) only got 25 minutes,  and since today, while busy, revealed no new secrets about Lerwick’s past, I thought I’d take this time to get you caught up on some Lerwick and Shetland culture, things you might need to know should you choose to visit or relocate to the far north. 

First, the proper way to say Lerwick:  You don’t say Lerwick.  You say Shetland.  And while you emphasize the first syllable and all but swallow the second one, you linger, enjoying every letter, sending a message of soothing centuries-old calm, the sort of calm that comes only when you were once given away as a dowry by a Norse king who didn’t have enough cash:  SHAY-IET-lind.

BUYING A CAR: while the pro driver bought his Toyota on-island, many locals actually fly down to Aberdeen to purchase vehicles then ferry them back up to Shetland.  This way they enjoy the same breadth of vehicle options as anyone, if a bit more hassle.  Also, it’s cheaper than buying something on-island.  

FINDING A SHETLAND SWEATER:  not as easy in Lerwick as you might think, although after visiting many knit shops I think Sandra Bullock might want to revise her initial take of “I can’t believe it; there’s no place to buy a Shetland blanket on Shetland!”  Most of these shops are, in fact, more about knitting than they are about knitted items, though if you dig deeply you will find blankets large and small, sweaters, hats, neckties and plenty of scarves which are all “too itchy.”  Also, some of the scarves are those weird kind that are basically tubes that Sandra Bullock would never wear and the blankets, well, if you wanted to spend a lot of money in Shetland in July on a heavy plaid blanket for the backyard deck why did you buy those expensive Timberland blankets last winter?

STILL A BAD HUSBAND:  That’s me.  A dream-crusher as well.

BY THE WAY:  If you are in Lerwick and want to buy some knitted stuff, don’t go to Anderson’s.  They’re too stern.  Go see Rosie instead.  And then go to her friend’s restaurant in Edinburgh, the Urban Fox.

MERCHANTS IN LERWICK LOVE BLAND AMERICAN POP MUSIC:  Everywhere we went today, and we went everywhere, we heard the vanilla strains of Jason Mraz, Sheryl Crowe, Katy Perry.  Even the lauded Dowry cafe, where people reserve (!) tables for lunch on Wednesday, lest they lose their spot to a member of the Cruise Ship Army that descends on central Lerwick daily, we ate our poached eggs on toast to a soundtrack of overproduced, radio-friendly top 40.

IF YOU ARE WALKING, DON’T TRUST YOUR APPLE OR GOOGLE MAP:  With a few hours to kill before our flight (allegedly) took off, we decided to stay on brand and tour Lerwick’s only brewery, the aptly-named Lerwick Brewery.  The Lerwick Brewery is reachable on foot if you’re us, only 1.6 miles out of town, on Ladies Street.  To get there you have to walk past the really, really impressive new high school (with its dorms!), up an

Sheep/no fence/us

extremely foggy and steep hill, past some sheep who fortunately haven’t realized there’s no fence to keep them from charging at the lost-looking, incongruously sweating American tourists trudging up the road in the fog, then past a small, Scandinavian-looking housing development, through an intersection then up another foggy hill.  If you trust your Apple map, it’ll look a lot like the Lerwick Brewery is actually adjacent to Ladies Street, in an office park.  It is not.  It is indeed on Ladies Street, several hundred feet past where Apple maps claims it to be.  

So if you’re walking all this way to get to a 2 PM brewery tour and get to where the maps app says the brewery should be but it is nowhere in sight and it seems like the smart thing to do would be to retrace your steps back to the intersection and check out the office park, don’t do it  Just keep walking on Ladies Street.  The brewery will suddenly appear like an apparition, well past where Apple maps says it should be.  And you will be sweating.  And freezing.  At the same time.  The beer is worth it. 

DON’T COME TO SCOTLAND IF YOU DON’T LIKE FRENCH FRIES:  at least don’t come with us unless you like french fries.  Right now, as we ate tomato soup and french fries at the tiny Sumburgh Airport cafe, Sandra Bullock said, “I think yesterday was the only day of this trip where we didn’t eat french fries.”

“What about the ‘potato wedges’ you had with dinner?”

“Shoot.”

Also, they’re chips, not french fries.  Sweet potato fries are still fries.  Potato wedges, which are really just obese french fries, are potato wedges.  You figure it out.  I give up.

OIL CHANGED THE SHETLANDS:  Until 1972, the Shetlands were a very poor region.  Locals worked almost exclusively in the fishing industry and/or lived in peat-heated hovels like the one I described yesterday.  Then: oil was discovered off the coast.  Now the Shetlands are a place of wealth, its hillsides full of comfortable homes, Lerwick’s city center boasting a stunning new arts center, museum, hospital and, of course, high school.  Next they should add a Hilton.  Just kidding, Lerwick.  

BEER MADE HERE ISN’T MADE HERE:  Surprising factoid from today’s brewery tour — it’s actually cheaper and more efficient for the Lerwick Brewery to ship its beer in big plastic containers to Glasgow, where it’s bottled and then shipped back to the islands for retail sale.  Some of it, anyway.  Over half just stays down there on the mainland, which makes sense, as the total population of the Shetland Islands is around 20,000.  They do drink a lot, and I’m taking this mostly on hearsay, since I never got brave enough to talk myself (and definitely Sandra Bullock) into The Lounge, which Ronald pointed out to us as “the locals bar” two days ago as he drove us in.

One little related beer-related anecdote before I wrap this up and we (allegedly) board our plane (which is nowhere in sight):  last night, on Grant’s recommendation, we went to the Douglass Inn, where they had live music.  After, of course, eating enormous portions of food at Da Steak Hoose (that’s “The Steak House” in Shetland dialect for those not fluent in Shetland culture).  Live music was this: about a half-dozen old guys in the corner, playing traditional Irish music to a packed house of similarly-aged locals and the visitors lucky enough to have Grant as their guide, plus whoever came in with a violin and wanted to join in.  Remember, this week is Folk Music Frenzy in Lerwick.  By evening’s end, we had about a dozen violins drowning out the half-dozen old guys.

And a quick note to the guy sitting next to Sandra Bullock at the bar who waited until I went to the “toilet” to bring forth from his pockets a trove of jewelry, spread it out on the bar and offer my wife her pick of it, saying, “I go to antique stores the give their proceeds to charity and buy things, then give them all away,”  I’m onto you, old man.  Nice try.

Today in numbers: 

27 — sheep, with no fence between us and them

3 — half-pints of Lerwick Brewery beer.  I enjoyed two.  The IPA was too fruity.

12.5 — the number of Lerwick Brewery fermentation tanks that could fit in a single tank at Genentech’s Vacaville plant, per Sandra Bullock with some quick math in her head.

170,000 — the cost, in pounds, of a pretty decent house in Lerwick.  

54 — the width, in inches, of a full size bed, the exact size of bed that I cannot sleep in with a partner.

55 — the high temperature in Shetland today, and yet somehow I arrived at the brewery drenched in sweat.

2-3 — how many days it takes to properly enjoy Shetland.  We probably could’ve taken another tour, so maybe push that out to 3-4.

As it turns out, our prop plane did arrive and we did leave on time, and are now in Edinburgh a full 13 hours before Sandra Bullock’s Lake Chelan-enjoying mom.  One thing about prop planes, though — they scare me.  We took off into gray skies about 100 feet above gray waters and in between noticing when we stopped ascending and suddenly dipped a few feet and staring at the engines and imagining what would happen if one suddenly stopped turning, I decided I’m scared of flying prop planes.  So there’s that.  On the bright side: no Teddy this time.