Everything Stirling wants you to forget about Stirling

There are several things that Stirling will want you to remember fondly about your time here. The incredible history, the safety of your chosen university and the beautiful scenery. But there are also many things Stirling would rather you didn’t tell people about your time there, and it would rather you forgot about them.

The underwhelming nightlife

You’re a buzzing first year and you cannot wait to discover a new city and what its nightlife has to offer. You head into the city to discover the numerous clubs to go to. How many is there? Two. Dusk and Fubar, that’s it. Go to Dusk and you’ll lose two stone worth of sweat, but it’s alright because you’ve had many Bucky bombs.

Go to Fubar and don’t expect to be served. Ever. The bars aren’t much better, they either wish they were Wetherspoon’s or have a dog in them.

The inability to find a parking space

We’ve done this already, but we’re doing it again. You’ll spend more petrol driving around the campus trying to find a space than it did for you to drive to uni. And when you realise you’re never getting a space you just dump your car on the nearest kerb or near a bush, but then you get a fine because you’re not allowed to park there. Great.

It really wishes it was Edinburgh

There’s a castle in the middle, it’s steeped in great history, next to a river and lots of people come there to do shopping. Sound familiar? I just described Stirling, but you wouldn’t know because that is exactly how you would describe Edinburgh. It’s never going to be Edinburgh though because it’s going through an identity crisis. Stirling can’t decide whether it wants to be the historic Scottish city or the typical Scottish shit hole, it’s stuck somewhere between being Edinburgh and Fauldhouse.

Stirling, make up your mind

Its arts festival isn’t quite the Fringe

While we’re on Edinburgh, Stirling also has an arts festival, but it’s not very good. Edinburgh attracts some of the biggest names to the city for the Fringe and what does Stirling give us in return? The Stirling Fringe.

The Stirling Fringe. They didn’t even try and think of a different name, just went with a classic example of plagiarism and made themselves look like the brother that doesn’t get any Christmas presents.

Raploch

Maybe you shouldn’t forget the safari park that is the Raploch. You maybe should remember it so you try your absolute best to not stay there or anywhere like it. If you learn anything during your four years, it’ll be that mixing up your 54 and 54As can change an afternoon for the very worst. As you get on the wrong bus the cast of Thriller gets on with you and their eight screaming children. They’ll start drilling a hole through you with their accusing stare because you’ve got on their bus.

Ah shit. I’ve got on the wrong bus

The locals

The residents of the Raploch are easy to find, you’ll be waiting for a bus in the city centre and suddenly an argument will start kicking off in front of the hostel about whose turn it is go into Greggs and buy a steak bake. Buses would never come quick enough as the argument then spilled over on to other locals who thought they were fighting over the custody of a child again and decide to tell them that Louise should always have been with her dad from the start.

That made no sense, and neither do anything any of them say. Only the brave would go out on a Friday and Saturday when all the locals are able to scrape together enough of their dole money to have one Jack and Coke. Usually entry to Dusk on a Saturday night comes with a free punch in the face from one of them.

The Argos goths

We’ve all seen them. About 4pm they’ve been let out of school, put on their best Iron Maiden t-shirt, picked up their skateboard and headed to Argos to burn a hamster to death or whatever it is they do down there for the five hours they’re there for.

Once the goths have been unsuccessful at trying to make a sacrifice to the devil they set off in search of another demon of the night on the only thing children of the devil would travel on- a skateboard. This is where your toes are at risk of being broken a they slalom around everyone for no reason like it’s a round on Total Wipeout.

You can’t get a takeaway after a night out

You’ve had a night in Dusk and all that raving to some remix of Meghan Trainor has made you work up quite an appetite so you wander down to your favourite takeaway, Tastebudz or The Fountain, but they’re shut and so is everything else – they shut at 12. As if falling down the stairs in Dusk wasn’t bad enough Stirling council is now going to make you starve to death.

Sort it out Tastebudz

So, you now have to trek all the way back to halls and order a Domino’s. No easy task as you must fulfil the minimum £12 spend so you need to encourage everyone else to get pizza, but Sarah doesn’t really want much to eat so asks “can I get a half and half with you?”. It really is quite the ordeal and you end up having to settle for cheese on toast.

Possibly the worst Students’ Union

“Anyone want a night out in Venue tonight?”. Said no one ever. You will have been to Venue at some point, it was probably when you were in freshers and didn’t want to venture into the city and so you went to Venue once when Scott Mills was playing a DJ set, but as terrible as Dusk and Fubar are, they don’t even compare to Venue and it makes us all wish we went to Dundee.