> eric brunsell

I spent last week visiting the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.  It was a fantastic experience.  I’ll write a post soon on the professional aspects of this.  I’m still catching up from a week away, so I’ll start with a shorter post about two of my cultural experiences.

The Monkey House 

I fell in love with this pub soley based on the name, tagline and logo.  A colleague and I had a wee chat with the bartenders while we were looking for merchandise with their logo.  We were able to get a stack of children’s menus and a t-shirt.  Besides having a discussion about the U.S. controversy regarding intelligent design, we also had a surprisingly deep conversation about U.S. politics.  The bartenders, both college students, knew that Barack Obama and John McCain won the Wisconsin primary.  They were not the only ones.  Nearly everyone that we talked to mentioned something about the presidential campaign.  

 Ken from Answers in Genesis seemed to like The Monkey House too. 

The Tunnels

Occasionally I find myself in a situation where I need to pause and reflect on my life.  Usually, it is a bizarre situation where I wonder how I got to this particular point in my life.  Last Wednesday was one of these times.  A colleague and I were crammed into an old sewer tunnel with about 750 twenty-somethings.

It so happens that we were on a quest to find live music.  We followed vague directions that ended in a club in the underbelly of Aberdeen. To our surprise, we ended up getting into (for free) a sold out show featuring one of Scotland’s hottest indie bands, the Dykeenies (check out the video, New Ideas).  To put it mildly, it was grand!

Dykeenies Concert Pics