Favorite Place in Europe

In this post I just wanted to outline my favorite place that we visited on this trip all thanks to @CGINDSU or ndsu-studyabroad.blogspot.com

  Journey through Edinburgh Scotland  

-Edinburgh is a city that really interested me because it has some dark and historic stories.  There are many stories about the criminals who practiced their crimes in the cities that were interesting.  Not to mention that J.K. Rowling starting writing the Harry Potter series at a cafe that we saw in the city.  It was interesting to see not only where see wrote the books but perhaps got some of the ideas for the characters names.  There was graveyard were the names of Thomas Riddell and William Mcgonagall:

-That was just one of the stops that we had during our excellent New Europe Tour of Edinburgh.  Another stop was the Edinburgh Castle which held some interesting stories during the times in which a lot of people were convicted of being witches.  The guide told us that there were three signs that they looked for when deciding whether or not you were a witch.  One was having orange hair, a mole, and a third nipple.  It was funny because Nick, who had orange hair and has a mole, was now the focus of the group.  Its okay though I don't believe he has a third nipple. But back when they would convict people of having both orange hair and a mole they would throw you into a lake that was filled with poop and see if you would float.  If you float you were a witch and if you didn't you were not.  Luckily for Nick, the lake has been filled and turned into a beautiful park.

-Some other interesting facts about Edinburgh was that there were a lot of famous people grew up in the city such as Sean Connery, Alexander Graham Bell and Tony Blair.  Another interesting fact was that because of the poor sewage system they had, the citizens were given a designated time that they could throw their sewage out the window.  This sewage was rounded up and put into the lake that I was talking about before.

-We did a night tour of the city which showed 3 different graveyards, creepy buildings and dark stories.  There were many creepy ghost stories about the people who were either hung or killed.  We found out that night that Edinburgh was a city that was host to many murders and dark stories.  During the end of the trip I read a book that talked about some of the different murder stories.  I will quickly talk about one story that I heard during the walk.  Starting in November 1827 two people by the name of Burke and Hare were in need of money.  During this time the need for dead bodies for medical research was in heavy demand, these two would kill people and sell their bodies.  The killings stopped in October 1828 with Burke being convicted and Hare getting immunity for testifying against Burke.  A detailed story can be found here.

So if you like creepy spooky places than Edinburgh Scotland is the place to go.  between it's day and night time activities you will be in for a great time!
-Bennett