An Unexpected Home in Aberdeen
The Queen Vic pub in Aberdeen, Scotland.
I stumbled into The Queen Vic in Aberdeen, Scotland after 16 hours of travel. My taxi driver from the airport had said, looking at my AirBnB address, “I think you live close to the local here in Rosemount. It’s one of the best locals in Aberdeen, so you are a lucky lass.”
As we approached the little pub on the corner, we realized that I didn’t just live near The Queen Vic, I practically lived right above it in the building next door.
My taxi driver helped me to unload my luggage from the boot of his car, where I hauled it all to the front door of my new three-story building and leaned against the cool grey stone to ring the door buzzer.
Then I waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Ten minutes later, panic began to set in: I’d been delayed by an hour in the air, and I worried my hosts hadn’t received any of my messages saying so. Maybe they had assumed I was a no-show. I pulled out my phone and searched to see if there was any wifi available that I could steal to check my messages, and see if I was without shelter for the night.
The first network that popped up was my new neighbors at The Queen Vic, but it was password-protected. I tried a few others, but those crafty Scots had locked up their wifi like a careful clan who knew some Yank girl was going to try to break into it from the roadside.
I tried the door buzzer one more time, knowing that nothing would change, and took a deep breath. Pulling my two suitcases behind me (with a laptop bag across my back and an oversized handbag on my arm), I walked into the pub, which was crowded on a sunny mid-week summer evening.
If there had been a Victrola playing somewhere in the room, the record would have scratched to a stop as people turned to stare at my exhausted and travel-filthy self.
I tried to ignore the brief silence. Seeing a small table in a corner by the fireplace, I practically threw my luggage at it and headed over to the bar with my wallet. “If I buy a pint, can I get your wifi password for my phone? I’m moving in next door, and my AirBnB hosts aren’t there.”
The bartender, with a moppish head of brown hair and a lilting Scottish brogue, asked what I wanted; as if I would have some idea of what beer would be on tap in a country that I had quite obviously just landed in.
“I don’t care, surprise me.”
By then, I had lived in a couple dozen cities and countries over the prior 6 years. Being a new person who had to seek out new friendships and relationships was nothing, well, new.
While many of my traveling friends had opted to live in hubs where other expats congregated, I had consciously made a decision to start finding locations that weren’t as popular with the digital nomad and location-independent crews. While I had learned so much from them, I’d also grown wary of the get-rich-quick schemes and Instagram-perfect lifestyle lies. I’d landed in Aberdeen for what I thought would be a refreshing stopover from a recent writing residency in Greece, while I thought about Lisbon as a semi-permanent residence.
I sat down with my newly acquired wifi password, and opened WhatsApp to be flooded with messages from my AirBnB hosts confirming my delay. I sent back a note that I was downstairs at the pub as no one answered my buzzing at the door, and leaned back to exhale fully for the first time in at least an hour.
I took in the scene of “Rosemount’s living room,” as I later learned The Queen Vic is called. The broad smattering of people told me much about the area in which I’d be living. Mostly men, though women stood and sat in groups with the guys, joking and laughing. At one end of the bar sat a friendly-looking group of older men (well, at least 10-20 years older than me) and at the other end sat a friendly-but-raucous group of men my age.
One group by the rounded front windows sat at a high-top table in their scrubs, while another group of young men watching a football game on the big screen TV were dressed in shirts and ties, with their suit coats hung over the backs of their chairs. Clusters of men gruffly discussed their latest “off-shore” work and antics.
No one but me seemed to be alone in The Queen Vic, quietly sipping a beverage and staring out at nothing and everything simultaneously.
The commotion I had caused when I first came crashing through the front doors had subsided. In fact, other than an occasional glance at the disheveled traveling woman with a full assortment of luggage in a crowded pub, no one seemed interested in me at all.
Fortunately, my AirBnB hosts texted me soon after, and explained they had been running errands to fill time before my delayed flight got in. They were at the flat now, and I was free to come up whenever.
I was desperate for a hot shower and a comfortable bed, so with a swig to finish my pint, I gathered all my worldly belongings and shuffled my way outside. The bartender looked up and gave me a nod as I shut the doors behind me, and I knew I’d be back.
I didn’t know that I’d be back the very next day as soon as they opened.
With work to catch up on and no knowledge of the neighborhood, I needed wifi and lunch, and figured a pub was the perfect place to do that. The night before, I’d learned the prior tenant in my flat had nicked the router (along with a random assortment of various household items) before he escaped into the night. My hosts had gotten me a SIM card to at least have internet on my phone, but it was damaged. The joys of getting settled into a new place.
After I finished my emails and pint, I looked up the provider for my SIM card and headed out to find out why it wasn’t working. Getting lost in two roundabouts as I tried to remember what direction Maps had pointed me in, I turned a corner to see the sign for the supermarket where I could get a new SIM—and a vacant building where the supermarket had once been. The joys of getting settled into a new place, 2.0.
Heaving in frustration, I almost screamed out on the busy city street. Internally, a battle had begun to rage. While I was struggling to get even the simplest things done, I was also strangely drawn to everything I had experienced in Aberdeen in the past 15 hours.
I returned to what was fast becoming my home base — the pub. A couple of the friendly men I had observed at one end of the bar the night before had returned to their seats; obviously regulars.
“Excuse me, I know this is a weird question, but can you tell me where the nearest still in existence Tesco is? I need to replace a defective SIM card.”
The men turned to look at me, but not in the creepy way men sometimes look at new women. They simply acknowledged my existence (and, likely, my American accent), glanced at the phone in my hand, and turned to each other to figure out where the closest location would be.
“Aye, go out front here, and across the street. Stay straight, and go down the hill. It’s a long road, keep going until ye hit Union. It’s a busy street, can’t miss it. The Tesco is down there.”
Sure enough, after a bit of crossing back and forth at a 5-way intersection, I found the store.
While I should have gone home at that point, I instead decided to repay kindness with a kindness, and returned to The Queen Vic for a third time that day; to buy a round for these strangers who had helped me.
But they declined my offer immediately, replying that they'd love to buy me a drink to welcome me to the neighborhood.
That evening I had drinks with Graeme and Vinny, as more of their friends showed up. Unbeknownst to me, I was at the pub for the first qualifying match of Aberdeen Football Club to make it into the Europa Cup. That night I celebrated their win with screaming and drinks and cheeky cheek kisses of excitement and glee.
Later, one of the men I met, Trevor, asked me to join them at a home game at the stadium. I was invited to join the pub quiz team, where we sat as reigning champions every quarter I was there full-time — and I learned that port is an almost tolerable drink when you are drinking from a (very unhygienic) communal trophy cup.
“Rosemount’s living room” is where I went after that horrible first date with a venture capitalist who informed me he went out with a hobo writer like myself because I was “a novelty.” We had chocolate cake to celebrate Carlos’ birthday. I talked marketing regularly with Tommy, and Marcelo made me delicious lunch treats at their new restaurant. I made my friends Mary Berry’s Christmas Pavlova for the holiday quiz to add even more merriment to the Victorian decorations and mince pies the quizmaster offered up.
When I returned to Aberdeen the following summer, to decide if I wanted to move there, The Queen Vic was my second stop (after my local coffee shop, because 8am warrants caffeine.)
Even now, three years later, as I finalize my long-stay visa application, my pub friends stay in touch and send messages wishing I would return sooner rather than later. They are the ones who send elated replies about my connection to Aberdeen when Ancestry.com randomly updates my DNA results to verify I am likely 37% or more “ancestrally Scottish” (a real surprise for this “told I was Irish-Canadian as they get” gal!)
Some women feel uncomfortable in pubs and bars, like they are constantly the focus of a male’s lust and gaze. I’ve been to enough bars across the United States in my 20s and 30s to confirm that the meet market is often a meat-market. But for me, pubs and bars are where I find my community. Not around the alcohol, but around the people.
I moved to Aberdeen for a temporary reset. Instead, I found a new life, and it all started in the pub downstairs.
Elisa Doucette is a writer and editor who travels the world looking for great stories to live and interesting tales to share. She owns an editorial agency called Craft Your Content, and her work has been featured in publications like The New York Times, Huffington Post, Forbes, and more. She is also the Programme & Speaker Curator for TEDxAberdeen. You can learn more about Elisa on her site, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.
