At some point in Australia my focus in travelling changed from seeing and doing a lot of nice stuff towards learning something about the country I’m in. In Cambodia Couchsurfing was very helpful for that and in Germany I met a lot of interesting people through the network as well. Here in Scotland I wanted to give the ‘original’ couchsurfing a try, that is staying with a local and crashing on their couch or - in this case - spare beds.

Text comes later, here’s some pictures.

Most tourists come to Islay either by car or with their bicycles which is not the worst idea as public transportation is rather scarce. I don’t have either and using a bicycle on a windy island for hours wouldn’t be to my taste anyway. For Sunday I planned a visit to the Bowmore distillery which is about 11 miles from Port Charlotte where I’m staying. As I had to learn, there is no bus services on Sunday.

Islay, pronounced ‘Eye la’, is an island on the west coast of Scotland and home to famous whisky distilleries like Lagavulin, Laphroaig, Bowmore and others. The whiskys from these distilleries have an extremely smoky flavour and are uncontested number one on the list of my favourite spirits. Aside from the beautiful nature they are the reason why I chose to come to Islay. I left Glasgow by bus in the morning and one of the first stops on the way north was Loch Lomond.

Those were the words of the flight attendant announcing our arrival in Scotland. Edinburgh was sunny indeed and a big improvement over rainy Bremen were I left Germany at half nine this morning. Getting to Bremen was pleasantly uneventful, no trouble with the trains this time. At the airport Ryanair has a private terminal and they probably have that because no other passenger would want to stay there. It’s ugly.