today i traveled to edinburgh. i woke up, showered, packed, checked out of the hostel, and made my way towards the underground station. i had decided that i would take the underground to the train station even though it’s only one stop, because it’s a rather long one stop, and my extra duffel bag was much heavier than i liked on the way in. i shuffled things around a bit in my bags, so that made a big difference, but it still seemed silly to make life too difficult. and it sounded fun to see the underground!

underground stations in glasgow are Super different from subway stations in new york. first off, they are very small. the trains are only four or five cars long and the station is sized to match. it seems like they just must not ever be that crowded. and, like everything else in central glasgow, they struck me as quite clean (i saw two separate dustpan sweepers in the train station while i was sitting there waiting to leave this morning, and they were chasing after paper scraps and sandwich wrappers very vigilantly. a street sweeping machine also made it’s way down the pedestrian mall in the middle of the day yesterday, which leads me to believe it runs through pretty often).

the instructions once i got to edinburgh were somewhat vague, and i should have procured a better map before wandering around and trying to follow them. i succeeded in finding the right bus, getting off at the right stop, and heading in the right general direction, but then i walked in circles for a while and got myself squarely lost. i was about to walk into a shop and ask directions when i saw a sign pointing toward a parking garage that happens to be on the same street as our dormitory, so i followed it, and found that i had been only a couple blocks away the whole time. such are the joys of learning your way around a new city.

i checked in, and the organizer (yngve – swedish names rock, eh?) mentioned that there was some early festival stuff happening in a park a few blocks away, and showed me where it was on a map. i was hot and tired from walking around in circles with my stuff, so i just wanted to get to the room before thinking about anything else. the rooms are again in university dorms, but these are suites, so we each have a room with a desk, closet, little bookshelf, nightstand, and sink (sink! that’s cool. this makes the room better than the one in glasgow, though the bed is not as comfortable), and then there’s a common room with a little kitchen. the kitchen does not have a dishwasher, but it has a washing machine. this is awesome, though there does not seem to be a dryer, so i guess we should figure out a clothesline. luckily, it is not that humid here, and while a lot of people would probably consider it too cold for august, i have found the weather absolutely blissful since my arrival. it is that cool enough that long sleeves are ok but warm enough that they aren’t really necessary kind of weather that is so rare in indiana, and the skies have been sunny with a nice breeze.

edinburgh is bigger and more crowded than glasgow, which is not something that i knew before coming here [editor’s note: edinburgh is NOT actually bigger than glasgow. it is substantially smaller, actually. the difference is in the proportion of city center to suburb. glasgow has a small, compact center and a large sprawling industrial area. edinburgh has a larger, more diverse center that just kind of tapers off into suburbs, but the overall area and population are smaller], and it is somewhat dingier. it still seems quite nice, though, and once i wasn’t lost anymore, and could put down my heavy bags, i had a great time.

i looked through the materials they had given us, including a huge book of a schedule for the fringe, which is the festival that is running this month, and beginning tomorrow in earnest. i have expressed sadness at having to miss sugar hill this weekend because of my travels, but i suppose that the chance to attend one of the largest arts and music festivals in the world (The largest, according to the flier, but i have yet to verify this) is a bit of consolation. this is apparently the 60th year of the festival, and the schedule they gave us is just way too big to really be able to take in at a single sitting. i saw another mention of the sunday in the park thing that was happening this afternoon, including the big proclamation that it is FREE (unlike many of the other acts and shows, which are separately ticketed and i don’t really know how one goes about deciding what to see) and decided that the best way to get acquainted with the city and the festival was just to go have a look. i felt well rested, and the shellshock of arriving in a new country on my own and not really knowing how to get about was wearing off, so it seemed a good idea. it really was just a few blocks away, and i had a wonderful time.

the park that it was in is very big, and the tents and crowds just kept going further and further as i walked in. there were dancers and jugglers and a few guys on unicycles scattered throughout the field, with rings of people gathered around each of them, and there were tents with other acts and face painters and souvenirs and food, and there were a couple of music stages. in other words, it was a festival, and it was fun to stroll through and look at the people. i ate chips and curry (i heartily approve of this culinary partnership) for dinner, and an ice cream cone for dessert. then i sat on the grass listening to music and watching kids play with bubbles for a while. they were selling these plastic swords that were sheathed in a vat of bubbles so that when you took them out and swept them around they made big blobby rainbow trails behind them, and this had quite a brilliant effect, really. it seemed like approximately 1 out of every 10 kids had talked their parents into buying one, so they were everywhere, and it was fun.

as i left i watched a few of the busker acts more closely – a juggler who finished up with battleaxes and knives, and a unicycling juggler who did fire and apples. i was struck by the skill that they employed, not in their acts, but in managing the crowds. these were seriously professional street performers, and they know how to draw people in, keep them there, and get them to pony up at the end without feeling like they’ve been swindled. it was fascinating, but also somewhat sad. no matter how persuasive you are, i imagine it’s hard to support a family on juggling fire, but there is this whole culture of people who do it anyway, and it got me thinking. part of their pitch is something like “you’ll go down to the pub after this and pay £3 for a pint of beer without really thinking about it. did you enjoy this show as much as you would enjoy that pint of beer?”

and there really is something to that, though with the streets and fields of edinburgh so full of performers this week, it would be quite an investment to give each of them £3. still, it makes me think about value, and how value is reflected in our economy. events like this festival are built, in part, on the basis of our attraction to the margins (or the fringe, i suppose ;) of society – the artists and performers who both attract us and scare us a little, because they represent a lifestyle that is different from the standard 9-5. people throng to events like this because of that attraction, but for the most part they only think about it for the few days a year that it fits into their schedule, and they don’t like to be reminded that there are people actually doing these things for a living. nevertheless, it is precisely beCause they do it for a living that things like this festival are possible.

you can’t juggle fire atop a ten foot tall unicycle without a good bit of practice, after all.

so festivals (and carnivals) (and vegas) are like cultural zoos – little pockets of the margins that have been transplanted and made safe for the general public to ooh and aah at while they eat some chicken on a stick.

i’m not sure this is a bad arrangement, really.
it just got me thinking.

i also thought of my first festival-themed design idea while wandering around.
instead of parceling out money to performers as you go, always trying to decide how much the show is worth and wondering whether you will see anything you like better later, what if you could put some money into a performer payment account when you got to the festival, and then keep track of something like how much you clap at each thing you see? then the money could be doled out proportionally at the end of the day based on what you liked the best.

clapping probably wouldn’t be a very good metric, really, because they make you clap all the time, and you might grow tired or jaded and clap less at things that you really like a lot.

but something else might work.

shrug

time for summer school to start!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 26th, 2006 at 11:42 am and is filed under travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.