Yes, you often see the king here, he likes to walk through the forest, collect mushrooms and greet him in a friendly way - that's what the devoted subjects in the Scottish Highlands, around the royal estate Balmoral Castle and the village of Braemar say. Just about everyone here has met the king at some point, and before that it was the queen who was so close to people in the Highlands that people at best hint at these anecdotes vaguely, but never reveal them completely. Blurring, it seems, is the principle of this area.

Andreas Lesti

Editor in the arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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We were there just a week ago, and Braemar was already intoxicated with coronation anticipation. The newspapers reported the coronation mark, spinach quiche with beans, which everyone in the kingdom is supposed to cook on May 6th. And unlike the local subjects, some foreign Braemar regulars spilled their Charles dicks. One of them goes like this: Half a year ago, shortly after the Queen's death, one day during a rainy walk in the woods, a lonely man with a half-filled mushroom basket suddenly appeared among the trees: His Majesty the King! He greeted and disappeared again. That's how it was, and nothing else.

A walking king and "Scottish Porridge"

Moment. This story sounded somehow familiar to us. Wasn't that something like that in the newspaper? Hadn't a colleague experienced it the same way? That's right – she, too, had seen Charles in the rainy forest near Braemar, she was sitting in a Land Rover and saw the walking king with a mushroom basket on the side of the road. Could that be?

The next day we had "Traditional Scottish Porridge" for breakfast, "with a nip of whisky", as the menu said. "Lovely," said the Scottish waitress. Only: The "nip" was a double single malt that should be mixed with the porridge. It was half-past nine in the morning, and the warmth of the porridge drove the whisky into our noses and tears into our eyes, putting us in a royal state of rapture. Nevertheless, the news penetrated through the blurred world: The king is here! He stayed at Balmoral for a few days.

Later we wandered through the Highlands with a so-called whisky ambassador, and just as some clarity returned to consciousness, we recognized a lonely man in the distance. Is it him? Could that be? The ambassador remained calm. Yes, it could well be. The man came closer, closer, very close – he wasn't. But the sheer possibility of a meeting (and a whisky tasting) put us in a certain, let's say: illusionary readiness. On the way to the royal distillery Lochnagar we saw a police car and were sure: he must be here somewhere! Another whisky tasting in the distillery strengthened our belief.

And indeed! On the way back to the hotel, the driver and the ambassador sitting next to him in the Land Rover later told us that the king had come to meet us in the car. We sat in the back, in the single malt blur, and didn't see anything. Was it really him? "Really, we looked him straight in the eye."

The principle sounded familiar to me. There is an elevation near Innsbruck next to the highway on which an artificial ibex is enthroned. Dramaturgically perfected, bus drivers point out to their après-ski-damaged tourists at the very last moment on the return journey to look to the right – and everyone is happy to have seen a real ibex.