The first day - Aka: Welcome to UK!

My first 'real' view of the city. Rested, eaten and not so cold, I could appreciate a lot more of the town around me.

This is what it looks. The town is famous for its grayness. In the past, it had a very practical reason for this: The town had a granite-mine, and granite was very cheap here. Nowadays I think it's more because they want to keep it the way it was. I don't know if the locals actually like it this way, or are just proud of it, but I can say that it has indeed justfully earned the title 'Granite City'. After getting used to it, I find I quite like its esthetic. I don't know yet how it will be in the winter, Vika says it is a rather depressing a town, with long nights, little sunshine and cold winds. But now in the summer, I find it quite nice.

Btw, this picture perfectly summarizes a lot of what Aberdeen streets look like. Gray walkways, gray buildings, but with quite a bit of green in it. Not all, but many of the houses have small front-gardens, and you find tree-lanes, bushes and lots of tiny parks strewn about, and several large ones too. You'll find that a lot of the streets look like they were built at the same time, by the same company: The whole of the street has the same copy-paste house design, made with the same color.

A quick photo-fight on the street-corner. :P

(Did I win? ^^)

Even Vika's phone was in a catty mood :D

Anyway, we went to the bank to arrange some things, and to open my account. Turns out you need a National Insurance number to do that, so here I am waiting for it to arrive...

But the bank itself is rather pleasant, and I had a look at the accounts, (and Vika told me quite a bit about them), and it's not quite the same as in Hungary. Shortly put, there are a lot less fees. No account-charge, no transfer cost between banks. Free cash withdrawal. (not everywhere in the UK from what I read, but still in a lot of places. Even more so in Scotland). You get a normal account, and a saver account that gives you some interest, with free transfer between them. No bank-card fees either. And there is an interesting option for saving too, where every time you use your credit card, it will round up the amount to a whole pound, and send the difference from the main account into the saver. Though that is optional, and probably just a feature of that one bank.

Also, it's a lot more common here to set up direct debit on your account by default: For example, for our internet, when we formed the contract they asked us for our bank details. And when the invoice arrives, we don't make the transfer to them, but they withdraw that amount automatically. Same for our rent.

After the bank, we went exploring a bit.

Through the town center: Imagine two big streets meeting in a square, the Union Street, and the south end of the Kings Street, that continues to run north and out of the town. The entire Union Street is filled with shops and cafes and all, and clustered around the Union Street are 3 plazas and yet another square, named aptly the Union Square, with the bus station. And that's basically the town center. Right next to these are the quays.

And then along the University (we just walked past it, pics later :P ).

And after that, we arrived in Seaton Park.

I'll let the pictures talk for themselves.

(Got sunny here ^^)

This is just a part of the park. We went along the 'main' road that runs from the cemetery in the south, through the center, then to the eastern exit. The the west, right along the edge of the park runs the river Don. And to the North of the park, on a hill, is the Student-Village. But these have to wait before I tell you about them. Our destination that day was of a higher priority than mere beauty and nature: Lidl. (Food :P)

Which brings me to our next, very important chapter ^^