My time in Scotland is almost over, I have been living here since early September of last year (excepting three weeks for Christmas).

The friends I have made have been from all over the United Kingdom: the Channel Islands, the south, the midlands, the highlands, northern England, the diffuse area of London and southern Scotland. I have traveled through and received visas from seven different points of entry into the country. I have flown in it, around it, to it, from it and through it. I have taken a train under the Chunnel, seen it from Ireland, crossed it by train and bus.

There are a lot of cultural ties between this country and that of my home such as laughing at obscure yet unknown references in Family Guy episodes, cursing profusely while running Toad's Turnpike in reverse, noticing that shoes are remarkably hard to find in bushes at night and celebrating holidays with loud explosives.

Likewise there are differences, otherwise we would still be the same country. And not just the pronunciation of tomato or misspelling of color, only in the last weeks have I noticed a subtle difference in the way we few society. It is the feeling that the government allows us the residence or citizens to do what we do instead of us allowing the government to do what it does. I suppose it is the reason American revolted in the first place and I can still feel the echoes of it in modern Britain.

This feeling does not ruin my experience living here, in fact I only barely noticed it after eight or so months. Other parts of the society bugged me first, such as the prevalent CCTV everywhere in the country or the TV license system. Whenever I see I camera positioned from the top of a building or a protruding black bulge on the ceiling I try to smile and wave, wondering who if anybody is watching out at me.

I will miss Scotland. Men wearing kilts just walking down the street living their life. Pubs lining streets with business at every hour of the day. Such fierce regional pride between areas smaller then a Californian County. Street names changing at least every two blocks. Buildings older then my state draped with ungainly cables connecting them to the modern world.

It has been a long journey and soon I will be on the road again heading home.

You Are Now Entering Free Derry

Murals around the square speak of the violent struggle around this square

This is a mural of the first victim of Bloody Sunday

This one shows a little girl shot dead by a rubber bullet, the one hundredth victim of The Troubles

Over here you can see a student leading the fight from behind her barricade

This smoke in this one comes from CS gas and molotov cocktails thrown from both sides

That blue one over there depicts people fleeing over debris away from British Paratroopers

Everyone wanted to find spent rubber bullets as souvenirs

The IRA blew up the statue that stood atop the city walls

A monument for the hunger strikes in the prisons

The ceasefire was signed in 1994

You Are Now Entering Free Derry

A creepy night.

It was dark, as it tends to be at night, the building was empty save for myself. The tarpaulin walls beat against the steel frame and reverberated through the hall as empty footsteps of a distant room. Counters sporting banners for Ryanair repeated along the far wall, enticing with promises of cheap getaways and low, low, fares.

The board predicted the next flight to be in seven hours, until then I was alone.

I came to the East Midlands Airport with the intention of sleeping through the night. I wanted to get the earliest flight to Rome imagining myself fresh and ready after a sound sleep on a steel seat. I was not expecting much and in a way I found more then I imagined.

I had a full, slightly padded bench to myself. No one came around or even moved through the hall, my only companions the disembodied voice of safety mingled through the beating wind. My bag served as my pillow, my jacket my blanket. A bandana encircled my face to block out the unending waves of fluorescent light.

Sleep did not come easily.

The unbearable emptiness of a room build to be full and moving. The echoes of activity lingered in disheveled cord enticing queues of people, in empty floorspace planned to hold milling crowds and in countless flight desks waiting to send midlanders on to their dreams.

Sleep eventually came in bursts and fits. Everytime I awoke and looked around more people materialized out of the ether and onto the adjoining benches. As they arrived I could sleep easier knowing other people still existed.

That night I glimpsed our world uninhabited, empty and abandoned. As I wandered Rome that morning I felt that the edifices of today will soon become the ruins of tomorrow.