Hannah and Harry Potter Dreams Fulfilled

On Sunday and Monday I took a trip over to the West Coast of Scotland for a little dream-realization time between the wonderful world of Harry Potter and I.

You see, the train line that they used when filming the Hogwarts Express in the Harry Potter films is a real train line that runs from Fort William to Mallaig (all the way on the Western coast).  So if you look to the Northwestern area of Scotland on the map below (almost level with Aberdeen but on the other side) you'll see Fort William and Mallaig.



But to get to Fort William we had to take a couple of buses. The first one from Aberdeen to Glasgow, and then one from Glasgow to Fort William. So it was a rather indirect route, like a giant 'V' that took around six and a half hours each way. Lots o' bus. But the trip was definitely worth it.

We left Aberdeen on Sunday, spend Sunday night in Fort William and got on the Hogwarts Express Jacobite on Monday morning.

The train cars

The train ride itself, beyond the Harry Potter draw, was beautiful. That part of Scotland has a lot more mountains than the area where I am. It was also quite fun riding on a steam train for the first time.

The sun also made an appearance which was nice.

There was also quite a bit of water (lochs, inlets, and at one point the Atlantic ocean) along the route.

But the definite highlight on the Harry Potter front (besides the fact that the Jacobite is the train they used for the Hogwarts Express) was crossing the Glenfinnan viaduct. This viaduct is where, in 'The Chamber of Secrets" Harry almost falls out of the flying car while they are trying to catch up with the Hogwarts Express:

The Hogwarts Express on the Glenfinnan viaduct

 

Us on the Viaduct

 Below, to the left is the view from the viaduct, and to the right is a photo looking back on the viaduct.

This last picture was taken by my friend on the return trip. Thanks to her for sticking her head out of the train window.

Pretty neat eh? She also got a picture of me in the train while she was leaning out of the window. The leaning out of the window thing was surprising to me, but it was normal. Since it is a steam train it doesn't go too fast so many of the windows are open and people lean out of them to snap photos and see better. That's how I captured the very first picture of this post.

The train stopped in Mallaig for around two hours. It's a very small coastal town, so there wasn't too much to do. But we wandered around and had lunch (and avoided being accosted by seagulls - who are quite aggressive around here. They remind me of some of the squirrels I've had encounters with in the Midwest U.S.)

In Mallaig

Then we got back on the train and headed back to Fort William. 

We arrived back in Fort William and then had several hours to kill before heading back to Aberdeen on the bus via Glasgow.

Fort William's High St.

And that was that trip. This week has been fairly uneventful since then. I am attempting to write my first real paper for one of my classes. It is proving a bit challenging as I'm having to think about things that I don't when writing a paper in the U.S. Grammatical things that differ between the U.S. and the U.K. the trickiest (so far) of those being that quotation marks are switched. Where in the U.S. we use the double quote marks " " for a direct quote and "' '" the double quotes with a single quote inside for a quote within a quote, that is reversed here. ' ' This is used for direct quotes. And '" "' This for quotes within quotes. You wouldn't think that it would be such a big deal, but having written so many papers in my life, changing one of the fundamental grammatical habits that I have formed definitely adds an extra challenge to an already challenging paper (I'm writing about a Kafka novel, which in itself is challenging). Some spellings vary as well and there are other random grammatical differences that I'm having to research and be aware of while writing.

But, this weekend and the next couple of weekends after that I'm doing quite a bit of traveling. My aunt from the U.S. is coming over to visit and do some traveling of her own. So each weekend I'm going to be meeting her in a different city - this weekend: Paris! I feel extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to do more traveling than I would be able to do on my own. And I'm very excited!

So that's what's coming up in the next post! In the meantime hope you all are well!