If you asked a handful of people off the street to name a city in Scotland, I bet you money they would mostly all name Edinburgh. I don’t particularly have a problem with that because it’s understandable — Edinburgh is an ancient and beautiful city that students and tourists flock to from across the world. I must admit I even find it charming. Yet, I purposefully wanted to spend this last spring abroad in the “other Scottish city”: Glasgow.
The reasons why I chose Glasgow, though I knew nothing about the place and had rarely heard it mentioned, revolved around the film and TV industry stationed there. That’s a field I would like to one day work in, and I generally figured I should study somewhere with that scene. In hindsight, those reasons feel miniscule and unimportant — all I can remember is that it was Glasgow or nothing. So indeed it was Glasgow, and I packed my two suitcases just days after Christmas to board a series of flights that would take me somewhere I’d never been before, alone.
I could give you a laundry list of things I saw, places I explored, and epiphanies I had, but that’s nothing unusual when talking about studying abroad. I know very few people who had a poor time abroad their junior year; it changed almost everyone a little bit and allowed us to have fun after a tumultuous two years of college. But before any of that, this is a love letter to Glasgow.
It is a city so alive and thriving. It’s sprawling, yet not overwhelming. The streets are wide; the parks are abundant; everyone has a dog; and if they are not walking their dog, they’re weaving through the streets to get to work. That is one of the things I love most about Glasgow: it feels like an intentional place to live, like its residents are there for a reason and working towards something. It’s both bustling and leisurely (the Scots know how to balance such things). I studied at the University of Glasgow and didn’t understand what a work-life balance looked like until I sat in my first class. The university system in the UK (similar in continental Europe as well) is not the end-all-be-all that it can be in the United States. Students do not kill themselves over perpetual busy-work; professors do not hover over their students; you can be as involved or uninvolved in the clubs and societies as you want. Your learning is left up to you and you can get out of it whatever you want. Students live normal lives within the city, working, partying, having down time, which was completely foreign to me. And I took advantage of it.
I lived in a lovely little flat, not far from the center of town, with two lovely flatmates. We became fast friends, went to pubs, made more friends, and listened to Taylor Swift. They also coincidentally landed in Glasgow and had a similar feeling that we weren’t supposed to be anywhere else. We discovered the amazing range of food the city had to offer, spent hours riding the wonderful public transportation system, and dipped our toes into Glasgow’s vibrant music scene. Nearly every pub could be converted into a concert venue, ready for live music any night. Record shops, vintage stores, and Nando’s populated every street. There’s no place quite like it.
Most Scottish people were shocked to learn I liked Glasgow more than Edinburgh. The common opinion is that Edinburgh is more beautiful and more interesting — I don’t buy it. Sure, Glasgow is more industrial, but that’s because it’s a working-class city. The beauty is less obvious. It might also be deemed “less interesting” because it’s not filled with tourist attractions. The city is lived in, not a mausoleum like Edinburgh. This shouldn’t even be a competition in the first place. Scotland is a vast little country and deserves recognition for more than just one of its cities.
I spent five months in Scotland, five months that I really needed. It gave me time to figure out who I wanted to be, how I wanted to live, and what kind of people I wanted to do it all with. And I’d like to go back to Glasgow again —this time with intention. Perhaps with the intention to stay forever.