University Tourists

Squelchy boots, tired thighs and sweaty t-shirts: some of the sorry results of a whistle-stop weekend of university tourism!

My daughter has decided to stretch her horizons far and wide in the quest for the perfect undergraduate experience and so, despite UCD being a mere twenty-minute bus ride from home, we plan a weekend in which to explore possibilities in Belfast, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dublin and Galway remain in her sights, and the local bus timetable keeps miraculously appearing on the kitchen table for her to peruse, but I’ll not be found wanting when it comes to keeping your options open!

Visits to Queens and Glasgow are ably informed by our men-on-the-ground, Tom and Hamish respectively, who give Ella an honest insight into the critical aspects of student life in their adopted cities: variety, cost and quality of the nightlife; availability of casual (but undemanding) employment opportunities; standard and cost of accommodation, and the pros and cons of going fully catered or not; and quality of the academic staff (importantly this is not necessarily the same thing as the quality of the academic input!!).

As an aside, I am struck by how much our expectations have changed in a few short decades.  As a student nurse in London, and subsequently an under grad in Belfast, my priorities when it came to accommodation were, pretty much in this order:

• Cost.
• Distance to the nearest pub.
• Availability of public transport.
• Distance to the nearest pub. (Yes, this one was important).  
• Chances of NOT having ice on the inside of the windows in cold weather.
• Party friendliness.

Now, accommodation is unquestionably on a single person basis – no chance of having to share bedrooms here, and most are even en-suite.  (The house in Stoke Newington which I shared with six other nurses back in the day had two toilets and one bathroom, but then again, we only used the bath in warm months because it was too cold to have a bath for most of the year! It was a fantastic party house though!). ‘Fully catered’ student accommodation was not an option, but now it’s possible (presumably if your parents are prepared to stomp up the dosh) to have all your meals provided, so no shopping, cooking, cleaning up etc. I wonder do they also do your laundry? Change your bed linen, or at least remind you when its overdue? Organise your timetable? Check your homework has been done?

Seriously, how can we expect young people to become responsible adults with the skills and capacity to multi- task, and cope with competing demands, when we create these ridiculously cosseted spaces for them? We are consistently de-skilling young people and expecting less of them, and of course, they generally live down to these expectations. But this is for another day. Back to the University hunt.

My own contribution to the adventure is to bring Ella to the Crown Bar in Belfast, where Michael has been serving me pints for over thirty years, since my own undergraduate days. I thought it only right to introduce him to the possible next generation of regulars, despite this being (as Andy Biggart pointed out) a somewhat unusual parenting style!  Ella is impressed that a bar man would remember me so long after I left the city, although of course I have visited regularly over the years.  Thankfully she doesn’t ponder too closely what it might take to make a long-term impact on a bar man, and the likely consequences on utilisation of the university library!

The Crown is a fabulous bar, largely constituting snugs where small groups or couples can close the door and drink and chat in private.  Ella starts looking for an empty snug until I explain that the whole point of coming to a pub like this is to stand at the bar and chat with people – you can’t do that in a snug. She looks at me doubtfully but shrugs her shoulders and sips her drink. (A pint of cider by the way. So funny, it’s the second time I’ve bought my daughter alcohol, and it feels simultaneously shocking and completely natural).

Of course, Belfast is a very different place than the city I studied in. We didn’t have tourists back then, so the Crown really was a locals’ bar. My pal Joy and I had our regular place at the bar where we frequently met the same people, and no doubt had the same conversations. The city centre shut down at 10pm back then and there were turnstiles to get in and out. Bags were searched on the way into shops. Pubs didn’t open on Sundays.  There were virtually no late bars. The army was omnipresent.  And yet I loved it, and still do.

It’s only minutes until my theory is proven. We shuffle up the bar a bit to let someone in to place his round. He remonstrates with his pal who belatedly orders a pint of Guinness, explaining to us that he worked in a bar as a student and hated when the Guinness wasn’t ordered first, to allow it time to settle. 

‘Amateur’ I say, nodding at his pal.

He enthusiastically agrees, and we launch into a conversation about why we’re here. It turns out he and I studied in the same place at the same time – he was one year ahead of me. I look a bit more closely at him, wondering whether I ever snogged him. I suspect he’s doing the same.  We avoid eye contact for a bit.  He chats to Ella, telling her what a great city this is, informatively fills her in on the current students haunts, and enthuses about the great opportunities there are for them when they graduate.

This kind of encounter is repeated several times during the evening, (not the bit about wondering whether I snogged them. That was a once-off). Dublin is a great city, but it cannot compare to the friendliness of Belfast where the still-newness of tourism and indeed immigration means locals remain curious and interested in people visiting the city for the first time. Standing at a bar, ordering a coffee, or getting into a cab inevitably brings questions about why we are here, what we’ve done so far and a flurry of suggestions and recommendations for what else we should cram into our visit. The enthusiasm is infectious, and I find myself desperately hoping that Ella loves this city as much as I do.

Saturday morning, we get an early flight to Edinburgh where I’m delighted to be met by a torrent of rain and a gloomy grey sky.  The job now is to maintain the appeal of Belfast and minimise any attractions held by either of our Scottish destinations. With every puddle we splash in, every bus that soaks us as it drives by, and every step of a squelchy boot, my hopes lift a little.  We have no local guide here in Edinburgh so we trudge around the city, trying to find the main campus, doubling back on our path several times because we can’t navigate the GPS (we blame the weather), and eventually settling in the library café for a coffee, where I have to strip off in the toilets to put my t-shirt into the dyson hand-drier because I am literally wet through to the skin. It’s going perfectly.    

We leave Edinburgh on an early evening train to Glasgow, and whilst Ella can see it’s a lovely city, with plenty going on, I suspect her enduring memory will be of the wet and the rain, and the endless walking. I breathe easy.

Sunday morning, and as I pull back the curtains on a bright and sunny Glasgow, my heart sinks.  The city looks wonderful, and with each graceful square we pass, or row of bars and restaurants we meander along, I worry that she will feel embraced by the friendly residents and a city which is clearly responding to wider changes and a young population. Electric car chargers are evident on every corner and apparently, it’s been voted best city to be a vegan!  

Her tour guide does an excellent marketing job, extolling the benefits of the city, the pace of life, the sports facilities and its proximity to the countryside. But then he makes a fatal mistake – he talks enthusiastically about all the hiking he and his friends do in the nearby hills and how easy it is to hop on a ferry to one of the islands to wild camp overnight and cook on an open fire.  He doesn’t realise that Ella refuses to travel without a hair straightener. He’s not to know that her idea of hell is not being able to have a thirty-minute hot shower. He’d never guess that she has at least five pillows on her bed, and all of them are absolutely necessary. And he clearly isn’t aware that she goes nowhere, and I mean nowhere, that doesn’t have good Wi-Fi. Duh.         

As we wearily board our flight home, I ask for the final verdict. Edinburgh is ‘too hilly’ and whilst she really likes Glasgow, the university doesn’t have a Gaelic or Camogie team, notwithstanding the similarities with Shinty. Belfast is very definitely the outright winner and she has succumbed to the splendour of Queens, and the warmth of the people. I smile to myself, and settle back for the short flight, reassured that even if she decides to stay in Dublin, or goes to Galway, my daughter recognises and responds to some of the things I hold so fondly about this great city. I’m proud of her.