Dundee

This morning I took a long bus ride to Dundee to meet Marie from Couchsurfing. I asked if she could host me but then changed my plan to stay in Dundee. She is my age so we are atypical Couchsurfing members! She is Italian, living half the time there and half in Dundee where she was a professor at the University of Dundee. 

We went first to the V&A Museum to see the Palestinian embroidery exhibit. The museum opened in 2018 and is splendid. It is the first ever "dedicated design museum in Scotland and the only other V&A museum anywhere in the world outside London."

The embroidery exhibit was great but heartbreaking. Of course. Dundee and Nablus are twinned (sister cities).

(That's Marie looking at the case of jewelry, dressed all in red)

             Headdress

The other exhibit I saw while Marie found a nice place to read was about Scottish design. Of course,  there was Charles Rennie Mackintosh but so much more.

"Lover's Lane" dress, 2015

A model of the monument to Sir Walter Scott (second biggest in world to a writer, second only to one in Cuba to José Martí)

Then we walked uphill 20 minutes to her clean simple flat and she made a nice vegetarian lunch, chard with an egg and cheese on top, homemade bread, and a potato dish. Her bedroom for Couchsurfers and other guests looked very nice!

Then I walked back alone the way we came and spent nearly 2 hours at Verdant Works,  a former jute mill turned into a museum. Jute was what Dundee was mainly about and it was more women than men who were employed so they could pay them less. The wages were so low they had to get their school age children to work as well while the husbands stayed home with the babies. Very dangerous work for all!

I got quite a shock when I opened a door that said "cludgie" (I found out later it was a slang Scottish word for toilet) and saw this man! (A manikin, or very realistic sculpture/statue)

After I got over my fright I went back to take a photo and heard a recording yelling at me in a thick accent to leave him in peace!

I took the long bus ride back to Perth and in the evening we had the delightful company of Clare's next door neighbors of 20+ years, John from Perth and his wife, Imelda, from Dublin. We had tea and delicious ginger cake.