If It's Not Scottish, It's Crap

Maybe an exaggeration, but if it is Scottish, it's probably pretty great

It had really never occurred to me to go to Scotland because, under my particular counting rules, I couldn’t count it as a new country. (Note: Yes, I am aware of how many entries I start by discussing country counting rules.) Probably most, and certainly many, Scots would disagree. Certainly Scotland is its own nation—it sure as hell ain’t England—but with one British UN seat and one British Olympic team, it frankly wasn’t that close a call for me. After all, I don’t count Puerto Rico as a separate country from the U.S., and they have their own Olympic team.

I probably should have gone to Scotland for the first time some 22 years ago. I was a low-level PR flack at the time and my firm had won a contract from Scottish Development International to promote American investment in Scotland. My strategy was simple—soulless corporate hacks love golf, take them golfing in Scotland—forget taxes, workforce, and logistics and focus on golf. Some of the members of the PR team I was on were invited to visit Scotland early in the contract—but not me. This was, I thought, unusual, as generally I was a strong performer. There was a problem though. The clients hated me.

I like to think I am pretty hard to hate. Maybe I am dislikable to some, I am after all, a know-it-all with enviable good looks, but hate is a very strong feeling. But I think these Scots legitimately hated me. They were convinced that during the presentation that won us the contract, I had fallen asleep. Now, given how boring—but apparently effective, given that we won the contract despite them hating one of the team members—the presentation was, I might have been justified in falling asleep. And certainly as someone who went many years with an undiagnosed sleep disorder, it was plausible that I could have fallen asleep. But darn it, in this particular case, I had not fallen asleep.

Therefore, their hatred for me was unwarranted. Still, it was enough to cost me the a trip to Scotland in 2003 or so. And so I never made it there. I’m not totally sure I would have gone now, save for the fact that my wife bought the family tickets without asking me—it was my Christmas present. It was a really good Christmas present.

She’d gone to Edinburgh for a work meeting earlier in the year, and despite seeing nothing and doing nothing, as one does on work trips, she concluded—correctly—that Edinburgh is a place worth seeing. And with EasyJet offering round-trip flights between Geneva and Edinburgh that were a fair bit cheaper than the round-trip cab fare from my house to Geneva’s Cointrin Airport (note: distance 2 miles), it was a reasonably-priced gift on top of it.

As the day of our trip approached, the weather looked grim. It was going to rain. But it’s Scotland so what does one expect? Well, we might have expected rain, we might have prepared for rain, but the rain came only at night leaving us with dry and, at times, even sunny days. As a result, we have the completely unreasonable expectation of sunny skies for any future trips to Scotland.

I assumed I would like Scotland. What I did not assume was how much I would like Scotland and the Scots. First the Scots.

I have generally liked the Scots I have met in my life, and I have known a fair number of Americans, including people with no Scottish ancestry, who are real Scotophiles. I was completely convinced that one of my grad school friends (note: hi Hannah) was of Scottish heritage because she was so in love with the place. Not a whit, as it turned out. She just likes things that are really, really great.

Nevertheless, I retained in my head the stereotype of the dour Scot, grim, moralizing, and unyieldingly serious. I obviously didn’t think everyone in Scotland was like that, but I assumed a fair number were.

Well, maybe there are, but I didn’t meet a single person who fit the bill. The Scots, to a lad and lass, were wonderful. My expectations started to be upended before we even left Geneva. Our flight was full of Scottish soccer fans, some in full highlands attire, returning from a soccer match in Athens between Scotland and Greece. The gate was crowded so we sat on the ground. C, as is typical for a three-year-old, was all over the place, swinging his arms and legs, with only his vigilant father preventing him from slamming into fellow passengers.

“C you’ve got to watch out for other people,” I said, as if he might listen.

“T’s braw don’t worry aboot it,” (note: “It’s fine don’t worry about it” to Scottish dialect courtesy of the English to Scottish slang translator, so it’s the algorithm that’s racist, not me.) said a Scottish woman seated on the floor next to us with her child, an older boy. “He kin kick th' back o' mah sear fur th' entire flight fur a' ah care." (Note: He can kick the back of my sear for the entire flight for all I care.”)

This was not friendly behavior.

This was suspiciously, strangely, psychotically friendly behavior. Normal people should not and do not tolerate punk kids kicking their seats. But I think this woman meant it. Either that or my ability to decipher a Scottish accent is worse than I thought.

C spent the next half hour playing with her son, pretending to punch him and delighting as the older boy fell to the floor as if he’d been hit by a truck.

Nice. Really, really nice.

We’d have similar experiences through the visit, as a variety of Scots of all ages offered us big and small kindnesses. A waiter rearranged the seats at the pub for us and then moved us to better seating as soon as it opened. A volunteer at the Royal Naval Lifeboat Institution, the charity mission that does sea search and rescue instead of the coast guard. let the kids get in both their boat and the tractor that launches the boat.

And not once did anyone try to Baby Reindeer me.

It was enough to make me wonder if my Malawi briefing was wrong. I am, let’s say, a specialist on Malawi—expert sounds grandiose—and the last thing I need is Malawi scholars (note: Hi Kim) calling me out. For many years I briefed people ranging from entry-level diplomats to Ambassadors, to Assistant Secretaries before they visited Malawi. The introduction to my briefing went like this:

If you want to understand Malawi, the first thing you need to grasp is that while Malawi formally received its independence from the U.K. in 1964, it was effectively under Scottish colonial domination until 1994. Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Malawi’s first president, may have been born in Malawi, but he lived in Scotland for decades. He wore tweed and a Homburg hat, he was an elder in the Scottish Presbyterian Church, and he was grim, humorless and moralizing. In his Malawi, women were forbidden to wear pants, men were not allowed to wear their hair long, and the position of his government was that learning Ancient Greek and Latin was essential to building the future of the country. He was the very stereotype of a dour Scotsman, and his dictatorial rule reflected that. Only when Kamuzu left in 1994, could Malawians really be who they are.

I would probably still give this introduction today, but I would really, really emphasize the word “STEREOTYPE.” Perhaps Kamuzu was a Scottish stereotype, but it was a stereotype for which I found precious little evidence in Edinburgh in 2025. In fact, the Scots were nice enough to make me wonder if the Malawians might have picked up some of their celebrated friendliness (note: it is the warm heart of Africa) from the Scots.

The country, or at least the small slice of it I saw, was at least as lovely as the Scots themselves. Edinburgh is a quirky multi-level city whose hills, stairs, and closes create a notion that anything could be around the next corner. In the old city, numerous plaques note the vast history that’s played out there. Sometime it’s where Adam Smith lived. More often, it’s where people were executed, where siege lines were drawn, or where someone, or everyone, died of plague, cholera, or tuberculosis.

The historic sites were premium. My brother, who recently traveled with his family to London, asked me last week if I’ve started to get bored with the European tourist standards. The answer is yes. I no longer seek out cobblestones or quaint, and as a family, we have decided that we are no longer paying to go into castles, palaces, or fortresses unless we know there is something really special inside. I have grown to feel about castle tours the way I feel about brewery tours—been there, done that, and there just isn’t enough difference between battlements here and battlements there (note: or malt here and malt there) to justify the time and expense of going inside. But both Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace were among the small number of sites worth spending time inside of. For starters, these are both places where real historical figures spent real time. As one spends time in Europe, one begins to realize that every duke, earl and viscount, you’ve never heard of had a castle. This devalues castles. But Edinburgh Castle and Holyrood Palace were places where figures of real historical weight like Mary Queen of Scots, James VI, and Bonnie Prince Charlie had not only spent real time, but had lived and in some cases even been born.

I have little tolerance for monarchy as a form of government. I suppose there’s an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” argument for it in stable countries that have long been under dynastic rule, but I hate hereditary privilege, and generally think monarchies should be done away with. (Note: With apologies to my friend Prince Seeiso of Lesotho. He somehow had the idea that I was the sort of person who could get people on to a dance floor, and for that I shall always be grateful.) But in many places in many ages, the figures that shaped the world were monarchs, and the attraction of history outweighs my disinterest in royalty.

Edinburgh Castle is a true fortress castle, perched upon imposing Castle Rock and designed for defense rather than ostentation. Its defensive design, however, seemed to often come up short, as it is, perhaps, the most besieged castle in history and has fallen many times in its thousand years. I really didn’t know much about Scottish history coming in, save from what I learned watching Braveheart and knowing now what a drunken, insane, violent, sexist, anti-semitic idiot Mel Gibson is, I’m disinclined to trust his version of history, so I’m glad I got at least the basic outlines at Edinburgh castle.

Hard to understand how a Castle located there kept getting overrun.

Holyrood Palace, as the other end of the Royal Mile (note: Royal 1.6 Kilometers pre-Brexit) is the show piece. It was only a few hundred meters from our AirBnb, but I had a bit of trouble getting there, as autocorrect kept trying to send me to “Hollywood.” I hadn't really planned to go into the palace—and its 30 pound price tag did its best to keep me out— but ultimately it was just too alluring.

I had to correct it from “Hollyrood” to “Holyrood” like 11 times in this piece.,

It’s a working palace, that is, it’s used for government business, not just royal residence, so it’s open as a tourist attraction, and the appeal of seeing where Mary Queen of Scots saw her advisor murdered, where Bonnie Prince Charlie ruled for six splendid weeks, and where Charles III, I don’t know, fops about, was too much for me to resist. Like Edinburgh Castle, it was well worth it. The palace not only drips with history, it drips with history one might have actually heard of. This is where someone you’ve heard of slept. There is where someone you’ve heard of used the bathroom. That is where a bunch of people you’ve heard of lived off the sweat of the peasants. These were world class tourist attractions with world class history. Yes, I loved the Bavarian castles, but the fact that they came from Abraham Lincoln times did take the shine off. But the castles in Edinburgh were not modern show pieces built by vain monarchs yearning for a less just time, they were the real deal—the ancient property of those who believed they were chosen by God to rule.

There’s a lot more wonderful stuff I could say about Edinburgh. The food was varied and excellent—one point, and only one, for imperialism, I suppose. The whisky was as good as advertised. And finding out that by a complete coincidence, my cousin was visiting from New York at the exact same time I was there was pretty neat. I even liked haggis—tastes like scrapple. But I want to finish on the nature.

One of the things that makes Edinburgh so special is its proximity to nature. Not only could I get on a brief train ride to North Berwick and see exotic seabirds like the Northern Gannett (note: too early for puffins, darn it), I could walk right from the heart of the city into the heart of nature. Arthur’s Seat, an extinct volcano that sadly has nothing to do with King Arthur, is right there, and one can walk to the top of it from Holyrood in about 40 minutes, provided one does not first accidentally hike to the top of Salisbury Crags like me.

Salisbury Crags was awesome, but I basically climbed two mountains instead of one.

And it’s not just tourists making the trek. On a sunny but still chilly day, I saw dozens of Scots running up the thing in shorts. I loved it. I wouldn’t do it—both the shorts and the running—but I love to see local people enjoying the beauty of their city.

Sitting atop Arthur’s Seat.

Years ago, Mike Myers had a sketch on Saturday Night Live, where he ran a store called All Things Scottish, a store with the slogan “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap.” It was a joke, but only sort of. There are indeed an astounding number of stores proclaiming their Scottishness.

So many shops with this kind of time. Best name “Thistle Do Nicely”

Yes, it was mostly in the tourist district, but even creeping outside, there were still an awful lot of shops with the word Scottish in their names. And why wouldn’t there be? When you live in one of the greatest places in the world, you might as well crow about it.