Editor’s note: This is the fourth in a five-part series, “Spring Break Diaries,” in which five Daily staff writers will detail the different places they spent spring break.

The locations the series will profile are Chicago; Cancun, Mexico; a small Hispanic community in Iowa; Great Britain; and Dewitt.

I imagined it like a storybook – medieval castles rising above green glens, and sheep grazing over lush, rolling hills. Scotsmen in kilts marching on cobblestone back roads toting their screaming bagpipes. Mountain climbing and cycling through the countryside – we had all the plans for the perfect spring break trip to Scotland.

Then foot and mouth disease struck.

If you’ve been following the news, you’ve probably heard about foot and mouth disease. Infected herds of sheep and cattle are being slaughtered by the thousands everyday to prevent its spread. Every national park, lake, farm or rural area in the United Kingdom is roped off with large warning signs that say “Closed to public access.”

Written in large caps on the front page of the Glasgow Herald the day we arrived, the top headline read: “Foot and mouth disease hurts tourism.” Not only that, but my luggage was lost somewhere between Chicago and London.

I’ve never been on a traditional college spring break. I haven’t experienced the wet t-shirt contests and booty-music-blasting dance clubs that pervade the usual spring break hot spots. I bet my trip was cheaper, though. My plane ticket cost $300 round trip, and I got an on-the-spot 75 pounds ($110) because they lost my luggage. And we stayed for free at a friend’s flat.

Counting an international flight, a ride on the London Underground, a domestic flight and a train into the center of Glasgow, our journey to Scotland took nearly 20 hours. The purpose of our trip was to visit my friend Iain, who lived with me in Friley in 1999.

Glasgow is a cool and cosmopolitan university town. It’s teeming with pubs, trendy stores, ethnic restaurants and art galleries. Our first night we went on a pub crawl through Glasgow.

The pubs in Great Britain close at 11 p.m., so if you plan on doing any drinking, you have to do it early. After last call, the party moves on to the discotheques, where techno thumps until 3:30 a.m.

I was sick with a lingering cold leftover from the evil Iowa winter weather, but when out with friends in the U.K., drinking is unavoidable. All of Iain’s friends kept buying me pints of beer. I think the alcohol wound up killing the germs because my cold was gone by the next day.

Driving through mountains and by lakes, we took the scenic route to Iain’s hometown of Kirriemuir, which lies to the northeast of Glasgow. We stayed the night and his mom cooked us a traditional Scottish meal – barley soup, oatcakes, mince with dumplings and haggis, the infamous Scottish sausage made of sheep stomach, and liver and grains. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. After dinner it was off to the pub for more drinking (notice a pattern here?).

We took a day trip to Edinburgh and toured the castle. It was pretty much the only castle in Scotland we could’ve seen because it’s located in the center of the city, not in the quarantined countryside.

Hanging out with so many Brits, we started to take on pseudo-British accents. It didn’t matter, though; any time we opened our mouths it was obvious we were American.

In London, we went to a concert by electronica band Add N to (X). I’ve never seen such an intense show. After the encore, the band trashed the stage. Fans clamored for anything they could break or steal from the stage. I’m still sore from that mosh pit.

The U.K. nightlife was a far cry from the Dean’s List or any of the other Ames bars. Instead of listening to ubiquitous hip-hop like Nelly and DMX, we heard cutting-edge DJs spin the freshest techno tracks that haven’t hit the states yet.

One Glasgow dance club had video screens playing hard-core porno movies as a backdrop to the dance floor.

Later in London, we inadvertently stumbled upon the gay night at a London nightclub, where shirtless guys and lesbians danced side-by-side with straight clubbers in a leisurely atmosphere.

It’s really the people you meet that make traveling a unique experience. It doesn’t matter if you hit all the tourist sites – it’s your job to write the pages of your trip. That’s what we did anyway.

My trip to the U.K. was as exciting and fulfilling as any beer-soaked beach party in Cancun or South Padre Island.

Hanging out in the corner pub in Kirriemuir sharing rounds of drinks and shooting pool with new friends, dancing the YMCA with a disco-obsessed cab driver on the way to a Glasgow nightclub, bonding over Iowa with a random British bloke we ran into who had studied at Luther College. Beer, dancing, partying and randomly interacting with strangers. It was spring break at its finest. Nevermind the foot and mouth.

Conor Bezane is a senior in journalism and mass communication from Chicago. He is arts and entertainment editor of the Daily.