Fantasy World Escapism

I was sick, there was no doubt about it. Some small child on the 25-hour flight from Brisbane to London had infected me with alien influenza. Sneezing, sniffling and literally coughing up blood, my Euro gap year was off to a miserable start.

But everything changed when I boarded my hallucinated version of the Hogwarts Express and made my way up into Scotland. Staring out at the snow-dusted landscape, I felt the promise of adventure calling me. Sure, that may have been a result of the suspiciously packaged “paracetamol” given to me by the helpful Amsterdam native I met at my previous hostel—hey, when you feel like you’re dying, you’ll take what you’re given and ask questions later—but who was I to argue with such an impending sense of destiny? No one, that’s who.

It doesn’t happen often enough, but in this case, my intuitive spidey-senses were spot on. As soon as I stepped out from the Edinburgh Waverly railway station and caught my first glimpse of the fairy-tale city with its magical castle resting atop the precipice of the mountainside cliff, my world shifted.

“I feel like I’ve entered a Disney movie,” I wheezed to the kilted, bagpipe playing Scotsman on the street curb, who was kind enough to smile at me and honour me with a lyrical, “Aye, wee lass,” before he pointedly shuffled away from my very clearly infectious self.

I wasn’t offended by his desertion, mostly because I knew I was a walking zombie apocalypse waiting to happen. But considering I’d stepped into my own fantasy world, cobblestone pathways and medieval buildings included, I was content to stare in silence at the picturesque view before me.

“Three days isn’t enough time here,” I thought to myself as I began my lung-burning trek up the hill to the Royal Mile in search of my accommodation. “A lifetime wouldn’t even cut it.”

And I was right. But while I managed to stretch my stay out for an additional four days, I still didn’t get to experience everything I wanted to before I had to take off for the next leg of my journey. I did, however, see the inside of the Royal Infirmary—the oldest hospital in Scotland—but that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, my alien flu enjoyed Edinburgh as much as I did. But it was worth it, because even after hacking up my internal organs for the entirety of my visit, I’ll never forget the postcard-perfect city that’s as old as time itself, yet beautiful beyond imagination.