Glasgow is a lovely city. In the time I spent there, I saw a few things that were really cool/worth talking about, but didn’t merit an entire blog post.

Haggis! Liechtenstein! Sectarianism! Read on!!!

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#1 – A Really Mean Simulator 🛵

Perhaps it’s just because its inventor Sir Clive Sinclair died literally yesterday (at time of writing), but the Riverside Museum has what I feel is a hilariously mean-spirited simulator of the Sinclair C5, the electric personal vehicle that failed so hard it nearly bankrupted its creator. Despite the fact that Sir Clive tried so hard to improve the world through innovation (and sometimes succeeded – he invented the ZX Spectrum for example), this simulation pulls no punches whatsoever.

The immersive simulation – which has you sit in a fake C5 replica – offers the challenge of navigating your way through a dystopic portrayal of Glasgow, avoiding potholes, dodging motorbikes and picking up “upgrades” that do nothing at all. I got through most of the course, successfully dodging an array of hazards, only to lose at the last second when I hit the pavement wrong and destroyed my vehicle. The entire thing is just one long dunk on Sir Clive.

I wonder if they’ll change the tone of this simulator now that he’s passed away? Either way it’s definitely one of the funniest museum exhibits I’ve ever seen.

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#2- A Delicious Little Beastie 🦔

The Kelvingrove Museum has some Scottish natural history displays that are… pretty “eh” if I’m honest. But there’s one creature that caught my eye.

I’ve yet to see one of these in the wild, so I don’t think haggis migrate south of the border. I’m a vegetarian, so I won’t be trying one, but Edinburgh apparently does some meat-free haggis so I’ll give it a try. I just couldn’t bear to eat such a cute beastie.

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#3 – A Really Strange Atlas Obscura Entry 🌴

I’m a sucker for botanical gardens, mainly because I went to one in Ghent a few years ago and had the Victorian tropical greenhouse to myself. It was really magical and I’ve made a beeline to them ever since. The one in Glasgow is really cool (look how big their main greenhouse is!!!), So I walked down to check it out, but that’s not what this entry is about.

Atlas Obscura recommends the “Abandoned Botanical Garden Railway Station” as a place to visit. You can see it from a certain area in the gardens. The webpage has a picture from ground level, which actually does look quite cool, so after visiting the greenhouses (and destroying my hair from humidity) I went to check it out. The view from the gardens is… this.

You can’t really see anything other than some moss. There’s a sign explaining the station’s brief history, but that’s… it really. I’m not really sure why this was recommended 🤨

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#4 – A Throwback to a Previous Trip 🥁

Restrictions on travel in 2020 were – for good reason – even stricter than they are this year. I cancelled my planned trip to Belarus (dodged a heck of a bullet with that one) and spent a week in Northern Ireland in September instead.

Being a Political Science graduate I was curious about the often contentious politics of the region, so I made an effort to see the perspectives of both sides of the conflict. Unionists have plenty of tours and museums showing their perspective, but I did notice a lack of the same thing for the Loyalists. I missed the controversial Orange Order marches, so I left Northern Ireland without seeing much of the Loyalists at all. Cue my surprise this year when, completely by coincidence, I bumped into a huge Orange Order march…!

Glasgow has a large population of Ulster Scots, who apparently feel a strong connection to their brethren across the Irish Sea. This particular march had hundreds of people, making a lot of noise, getting extremely inebriated and apparently causing as much disruption as possible. Although marches intimidating the Catholic population marking the Battle of the Boyne are normally scheduled for July, on the anniversary of the event, Covid-19 restrictions moved them to mid September this year.

However I wasn’t aware of this, and probably would have missed them entirely, only catching them by sheer luck. I was cutting through the University of Strathclyde campus to try and get to the Glasgow necropolis, when I noticed a procession blocking traffic. And then I noticed the orange banners!

I followed the march for some time, watching the community react to the disruption they were causing. As I’m English and not Catholic I didn’t feel intimidated. It was fascinating seeing an Orange Walk in person, but they seem like the death rattle of a movement that, whether they admit it or not, knows their relevance is ultimately fading. It’s one of those weird quirks of the UK – in fact outside of NI and Glasgow the Orange Order organisation is barely relevant at all.

The drums were loud enough that I had to head back to my hotel room and clear my head for a bit. I’ve no idea how the drummers put up with such earsplitting percussion for the entire march, especially at point blank range.

For the sake of comparison – I walked through a Scottish independence rally the day after, and everything seemed a lot more welcoming. The crowd was more diverse and they were much less intimidating. The main singer was doing an Elvis-style act on stage, about how being a rebel is fun, while everyone waved Scottish flags. Everyone was polite and having a good time. Which protest would you be more likely to sympathise with?

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#5 – A Police Museum that Keeps its Promises 🚔

I had the Glasgow Police Museum on my list of places to see, but managed to forget about it until I walked past a sign pointing the way. It’s a small, free museum with two rooms – one is an alright display on the Glasgow Police force over the past two centuries, complete with old uniforms and newspaper clippings about interesting crimes through Glaswegian history. The other room is dedicated to Policing across the world, and here’s what really caught my eye.

The website promised they had equipment from every country in the world. And they absolutely deliver on this.

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I asked the staff (I assume retired policemen) where they source all this equipment from, and apparently the founder has been collecting since the 1950s, having built a network of collectors across the globe. The North Korean items were apparently acquired from a collector in China, for example.

But it gets better! Perhaps because I showed genuine interest in their huge collection, and perhaps because it was a quiet Sunday and nobody else was there, one of the staff let me see the museum storeroom. They didn’t let me take photos, but imagine a room filled to the brim with police uniforms and boxes with labels like “CROATIA/ROMANIA/TUNISIA”. Entrance is free, but I had to donate after that. Give the Glasgow Police Museum a visit.

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#6 – Another Local Food Crime 🍕

In addition to the Battered Mars Bar, Glasgow is home to another, slightly less notorious food crime known as the “Pizza Crunch”. It’s exactly what you think it is. Upon finding out that said crime isn’t available in Edinburgh, I trudged out my hotel room on my last night in Glasgow to find and try one. I don’t know why. I just felt like I had to know.

It’s 10 at night and raining on a Saturday night in central Glasgow – the queue for the chip shop is out the door. I am the only sober person in a several mile radius. While waiting for my pizza crunch to be ready, two middle aged men randomly fall onto the pavement and start beating each other senseless.

A third gentlemen joins in and tries to punch the head of the man on the pavement. Their beleaguered wives, also inebriated, watch on in dismay. Someone in the queue behind me reaches for his phone and laughs while filming this trial by combat.

After some drunken flailing the fight just… ends. The three men get up and go their separate ways. None seem to be bleeding. The old lady at the till, who hasn’t batted an eyelid the entire time, sighs and says that “it’s just typical for this time of night”. I pay for my pizza crunch and scarper back to my room before the gentlemen realise I’m English.

Anyway I ate the whole thing and I’m ashamed to say it was amazing. I’m not sure why Glasgow is the only place in the UK to do deep fried pizzas. If I was still a student I’d probably live off these.

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Places I visited but didn’t write much about 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

• 🐘 Kelvingrove Museum– Love the natural history hall with the Spitfire! A good collection that’s very easy to navigate. Free.
• 🚎 Riverside Museum- Cool collection of mostly transport related items, including a huge luxury caravan and old steam trains. Also there’s an old sailing ship you can go aboard. Also free.
• 🌴 Glasgow Botanic Gardens– As mentioned, beautiful greenhouses and pretty grounds, but not really offbeat. Free as well.
• 🥟 Cafe Cossachok– Russian restaurant with delicious Slavic cuisine. I’m not a serious food blogger so I won’t try and review it properly, but check it out! The vegetable packages and honey cake are 🤌

Places I wanted to visit but couldn’t this time around 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

• 🛐 St Mungo’s Museum of Religion – Gutted by this one! Unfortunately it’s closed due to funding issues and might not reopen 🙁
• 🪦 Glasgow Necropolis– This one actually is still accessible, but I got distracted while walking to it by the aforementioned Orange Walk. The day after I just realised I’m probably visiting the Edinburgh one anyway so I skipped it.
• 🏴 The People’s Palace – Historic museum about working class Glaswegians, social movements and so on. Unfortunately also closed at time of writing.
• 🦏 Hunterian Zoological Museum– Side museum to the Hunterian Collection that focuses on Natural History. I walked down to the entrance but unfortunately it’s still closed, and may be soon merged with the main museum.
• 🏬 Cumbernauld– Yeah like the town. I read a book about the crazy brutalist architecture – at one point most of the town’s facilities were all contained in one concrete monstrosity that’s now a shopping centre – but I never got round to having a look. Maybe next time.

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Currently I’m in Edinburgh and will be here for a bit longer than I was in Glasgow, so expect more stuff soon 🙂