Oh haggis, oh beautiful, tasty haggis!

Yes – I have been smitten! I have been smitten by the taste for haggis. Over the last 5 or 6 years I have traveled around a good part of the world. As I have visited different countries I have always tried to experience the local culture and the local cuisine. I was determined to make sure that my brief trip to Scotland was no exception to the norm. As such, it was a requirement that I had the opportunity to taste haggis – the national dish of Scotland. Through the 3 days of meetings both Martin Borch – a colleague from Denmark who was leading the meetings and I had firmly said that we wanted to have the experience of eating haggis. Two of the local Greenock staff who were involved in the meetings – Dave Clementson and Gordon Boyd, were gracious hosts and helped us fulfill this experience. After work on Thursday evening about 10 of us packed into Gordon and Dave’s cars and headed off to a small pub in the town of Greenock. We started the evening with a few drinks – in my case I had a Tennent’s Lager. Tennent’s I was informed is referred to as the Budweiser of Scotland. Apparently, there isn’t anything fundamentally great about it, but it is just the beer that most people drink in Scotland. Shortly after we arrived, Gordon went and spent a few moments talking with the proprietor of the pub. He really didn’t let on to what was said, but he came back to the table and told us that we would definitely get to have some haggis. About twenty minutes later a waiter proceeded to bring out 2 large dishes of an interesting looking dish. It kind of looked like a pastry roll surrounding an indescribable filling. Half of the pastry rolls were filled with a brownish looking paste, while the other half was filled with a black looking paste.

Though we were all a little apprehensive having heard what haggis was made of, we still dug into the dishes with gusto. I was amazed and surprised by the taste explosion that filled my mouth. It was great! There was a definite taste difference between the “brown” haggis and the “black” haggis. I didn’t realize it at first but the “black” haggis was actually a form of blood pudding – and yet it was good!! If you are wondering what is the big deal with haggis and why I would be surprised that it tasted good – here’s the definition of what haggis from Wikipedia. “Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish. There are many recipes, most of which have in common the following ingredients: sheep's 'pluck' (heart, liver and lungs), minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and traditionally boiled in the animal's stomach for approximately three hours.

Haggis somewhat resembles stuffed intestines (pig intestines otherwise known as chitterlings or the kokoretsi of traditional Balkan cuisine), sausages and savoury puddings of which it is among the largest types. As the 2001 English edition of the Larousse Gastronomique puts it, "Although its description is not immediately appealing, haggis has an excellent nutty texture and delicious savoury flavour.””

I was very thankful to my Scottish colleagues Gordon and Dave for making this experience happen. All of us involved in this series of meetings from around Europe and the US owe Dave and Gordon a big Thank You for the effort they put into making the week great! Til later – peace to all!

A Pint of Guinness and a Corner Seat in Scottish Pub

This is the first blog entry that I have penned from a foreign country. Today’s blog is coming to you from Glasgow, Scotland in the United Kingdom. This is my first international trip in a little over 3 years. In some ways I am very apprehensive to be here as this is the furthest I have been from Zack in years. In other ways I am very excited to be here. I loved getting that first stamp in my new passport. (My old passport expired on July 18, 2008, so before this trip I had to get my passport renewed.) My trip to Glasgow was uneventful. I arrived at the airport in Denver around 10:30AM for my 12:10PM flight to Newark. I was flying on Continential – an airline which I have not flown frequently and on which I have no “status”. During the height of my flying days I had one of the absolute highest statuses on United – I was a Premier Executive 1K flyer – which meant that I flew over 100,000 miles per year on United. As a result of not having any status on Continential I would be flying coach class the whole way from Denver to Glasgow. The flight to Newark went off without any problems and I arrived on time. There was a 2 hour layover before the flight left from Newark to Glasgow. I spent most of the 2 hour layover on the phone talking to Zack, Nancy and my brother. We were dealing with a crisis at home as Lex had a significant cut on his foot and had to spend half the day at the vet. At 7:00PM promptly the flight boarded and then backed away from the gate at 7:40PM. The plane was a 757 – which is a two engine plane that can seat about 220 or so passengers. This is the “smallest” airplane that I had ever flown across the Atlantic. I was in window seat and thankfully there was no one in the center seat – so I had a bit of room to stretch out. Right before the plane boarded I took a sleeping pill so I that I could get a little bit of sleep on the flight. The flight really wasn’t that long as the flight time was only scheduled to be 5 hours and 56 minutes. But I figured I needed to sleep as much as I could as I needed to go straight into the office once I arrived in Glasgow. After eating dinner I closed my eyes and slept fitfully for the next 4 hours. Once the flight attendants came around with breakfast and hour or so before landing I woke and didn’t fall back asleep. Once we landed in Glasgow, clearing immigration was a breeze. I was through all the checkpoints and in the main airport within 5 minutes of landing. After a quick clothes change, teeth brushing and face washing in the “toilet”, I was on my way to the taxi stand to find a ride to the IBM facility. After arriving at the expansive (and I do mean LARGE) IBM facility in Greenock, I survived an entire day of meetings without falling asleep. By the afternoon I was consuming large quantities of coffee to keep myself awake. The interesting part of my travel started after work was complete. Getting from work to the hotel in central Glasgow brought memories of reading “Thomas the Tank Engine” stories to Zack. The IBM facility is located along a “branch line” railroad that is serviced by a small little two car train. It was funny waiting along the rail line for this train to pull up and then for the few of us who were there to get aboard. It just brought a huge smile to my face as I thought through all the stories of Thomas the Tank Engine and his branch line I have told Zack. So it was very cool! My first evening in Glasgow offered me the opportunity to go out to a big dinner with my colleagues from IBM. There were about 20 of us participating in this workshop and about 10 different countries are represented among us. So I would have loved to go out to dinner and have some very interesting conversations with my compatriots, but I was just too tired to think of being out until 11PM or later local time. Instead of going out to the big dinner, I took off into the streets of Glasgow in pursuit of a few things I had forgotten at home. I ended up walking through much of the central city and of course ended up back at the main train station. I found the things I needed – a comb and an electrical adapter and then headed off to find something to eat. I wandered through the streets of Central Glasgow before settling on a pub called the “Goose”. It was nothing special, but it offered me the opportunity to experience a little bit of traditional “British Pub life”. I went to the bar and ordered myself a pint of Guinness (you have to have a Guinness when you are in an Irish or British Pub!) and a “steak and ale pie with chips and mushy peas”. When you order in a pub like this you give them the table number of where you are going to sit and then a wait staff person brings the food out to your table. I found a table in the corner and sat back to wait for my food and watched all the coming and goings in the bar. I always find it interesting to observe life when I am traveling – to watch the interactions of the people and see what life in the country I am visiting is really like. When my food arrived I took my time eating and finishing my Guiness. It was just very cool to spend my time there observing and watching. After dinner I returned to the hotel and quickly fell asleep. Unfortunately, my sleep was quickly interrupted as I awoke at 1:30AM local time in the midst of a coughing fit. Once I woke up…. I wasn’t able to fall back to sleep until almost 4:00AM. This was not the way I wanted to spend my night! Despite only getting several hours of sleep I was able to function on my second day in Greenock. It’s been an interesting trip so far. I hope to be able to document the rest of my travels in the coming days. Hopefully I will also get to be outside when it is light so that I can take some pictures of the area around Greenock and Glasgow and post them to the blog. But for now – peace to all!