While in the city we went to a Tesco, a 1£ store, a shopping mall, a Scottish University, the William Wallace Pub, the William Wallace Monument, a chip shop, a local independently owned record store, a cemetery and walked through the castle section of town.
Tesco is very similar to a Super Wal-Mart or a Super Target. The store sells both groceries and household goods. It probably does many similar “cost saving” actions to its American counterparts, I assume this because of the price of goods, many of which seemed to be made overseas. I bought groceries, candy, a cheap calculator and a cheap flashlight.
1£ store. This store was something I hadn’t actually seen before in Britain, but later saw quite frequently. The store was set up and contained similar items as you might see in a 1 $ store here. Many of the items were rather poor quality and once again were probably made over seas. I bought Guinness socks (probably a cheap knock off) and batteries.
The shopping mall was almost exactly what you would see in a suburban shopping mall in the United States, however stores that we would normally identify were replaced by British stores that sold similar products and even seemed to use similar marketing and designs to highlight their stores, for example the British media store Virgin Records, is similar to a Suncoast, or Sam Goody. They sold CDs, movies, books, t shirts and posters.
Price wise the CDs and movies were relatively comparable but the currency conversion makes the goods cost more for Americans.
The William Wallace pub, was a darkly lit, older looking building. It was quite crowded at all times. On some of the wooden beams quotes had been carved saying things like “give him strong drink, until he wink.” In the back they had a pool table (not billiards) which was surprising.
The most interesting thing about the William Wallace memorial was not the large tower with the view of the area, nor the shop that sold tourist goods like Scottish flags and books, but the statue of Mel Gibson near the base of the tower. Mel stood in full Braveheart attire, an interesting wink to the Hollywood version of history.The chip shop had some interesting items on the menu, things like hamburgers, pizza and chips, but the interesting part was the variation on food items, like hamburgers came with or without a bun, side items might include baked beans or green beans rather than chips or crisps. The girls ordered chips with melted cheese on them and used vinegar (yuck).
The independent record store, was a local favorite for university students. The man seemed to know many of the people shopping, he ran a music trivia night at one of the local bars. The store was cramped, records tapes and cds (in a punk rock sort of set up).
Buttons, stickers and patches, t shirts posters, used music new music, all cramped in a space of maybe the size of a bedroom. The hole in the wall feel of the store was quite British in a sense but had a similar feel and look to independent punk and underground stores in the states.
The cemetery is located in the middle of town, very old. The gravestones were marked with multiple names, meaning they buried the people on top of each other to save space. A number of the gravestones were falling over or falling apart. It did not seem like restoration was a high priority but the cemetery was still being used (we saw evidence of a recent burial).
The old section of town was on a hill and lead up to the Castle. The streets became somewhat more narrow, and some of the buildings were clearly built upon older structures where as others seemed to be a few hundred years old and had been kept up to date, repainted with added light fixtures. The old section had signs along the way that spoke of historic events and places, sometimes the former use of the building.
___
Much of Stirling seemed to share many elements with the United States. The housing, university, shopping locations, etc, all had that distinct western commercialism to them, which speaks to the growing globalizing factors that capitalism seems to bring about. Still there were more traditional sections, like the cemetery, the castle and churches, which seem to grasp on to the traditional heritage. The William Wallace memorial with reminder of Braveheart speaks both to the historical significance of the man and his legend, reawakened by Hollywood to show the world what Stirling offers. Stirling seems to be a good example of the mixing of new and old, of global and local.
 |
| Not really the highlands of Scotland. |
