Despite its difficult name, I love this city. Against all odds, it always welcomes me with sunshine, the Scots are very nice people (it's difficult for me to understand them, but they sound nice), and the city has so much to offer to its guests. One of my favourite attractions is, in addition to the castle, Arthur's chair. In fact, it's called Arthur's seat. But I kept confusing it and asked a Scottish cab driver for Arthur's chair. He looked disapprovingly at me, probably thinking: "Ugh, these tourists from the South!"
Scotland is considered as a country. They have their own language, their own football club, and their own banknotes. When I came back to London and tried to pay with my Scottish Pound notes, people looked suspicioulsy at the note as if they had never seen something like that before.
To be honest, I don't really get it. Why does Scotland have its own money, but Wales and Northern Ireland haven't? On the other hand, Wales seems to be obsessed with its language. I have heard that there are villages, where people don't speak a word English. I like to say that Bavaria doesn't really belong to Germany. Some people might argue that we have our own language, too. But at the end of the day it's just a dialect, not a completely different language. Yes, we have our own football club and I would say Bavarian footballers actually represent Germany in world cups etc. However, we pay with the same banknotes. My grandma might still calculate in Reichsmark sometimes and my parents in D-Marks, but we all use the €.
Next year, Scotland could actually become a sovereign nation. In September 2014, the people of Scotland will vote in an independence referendum. They will be asked the question: Should Scotland be an independent country? Yes or No. If they vote "Yes" and also introduce a new passport, I would suggest they take the Finnish passport as an example which has a flipbook-style animation of a walking elk included and replace the elk with Nessie.
