moving in



This was originally written on 05.01.2002.



We left the hotel around 10:30 by cab. I had slept in more than I had wanted on account of a late night spent writing journal entries and e-mailing people from the internet cafe, but I still had ample time to try to score as much free breakfast food as I could. I wasn't able to eat much though, maybe its the heavy Scottish cooking or just nerves, I don't know.



After running around for a while trying to find the office, we got the keys to our flats. When I eventually maneuvered the bulk of my baggage into the flat, I found the place to be vacant and a letter from Erin waiting for me by the mail slot. The flat is nice enough-the carpet seems new, the furniture level, no roaches, etc., but by some cruel twist of fate, I've ended up in one of the few residences without internet or phone access in the rooms. Really lame. Oh well. I'll have to subsist on internet cafes or other sources of access for the next six months. I went out for a while to pick up some things for the room: some drawing pins for the Edward Gorey calendar, hangers for the closet, and a plug adapter for my laptop. I cam back and put the room in order. Its actually nice to have so few possessions that its possible to set up the room in 15 minutes. I tried to read for a while, but eventually just took a nap, thereby killing my plans to check out the university's science and engineering campus.



I finished reading Franny and Zooey. I really liked it. In the past weeks, Salinger has definitely become one of my favorite writers. He creates characters that are really interesting and human. They're people that you seem to know, or at least wish you knew. So, Franny and Zooey are two seperate short stories (perhaps Zooey is too long to be a short story, but I think it reads like one anyway) which essentially are different parts to the same story. Franny and Zooey are brother and sister, the two youngest of the Glass children, all of which were (big surprise) incredibly precocious as children and are now coming to terms with being incredibly precocious in a world that can be dumb, egomaniacal, and at the least annoying. While away at college, Franny becomes frustrated with her life, her studies, her boyfriend, the world in general, I guess, has a nervous breakdown, and begins to explore some odd religious practice that she read about from one of the numerous religious and philisophical books provided by her older brothers. So the entire 200 pages or so of text take place in a few hours in terms of the narrative, but despite the slow pace, its really enjoyable. The characters are clever, in just the right way, not annoying, and one finds oneself really indentifying with Franny and her frustration, and contemplating Zooey's advice as if he were your elder brother instead of Franny's. Salinger seems to like writing about the unspectacular moments in life, the minor catastrophies, but despite the lack of intense drama, I'd rather read about Holden or Franny or Zooey any day over Hemingway's hollow men. That's the thing. Salinger's characters are anything but hollow and when Zooey starts talking about the futility of blanket angst, the dialogue almost strikes too close to home:


"What I don't like at all is this little hair-shirty private life of a martyr you're living back at college-this little snotty crusade you think you're leading against everybody. ... Don't spring on me, now-for the most part, I agree with you. But I hate the kind of blanket attack you're making on it. I agree with you about ninety-eight per cent on the issue. But the other two percent scares me half to death. I had one professor when I was in college-just one, I'll grant you, but he was a big, big one-who just doesn't fit in with anything you've been talking about. He wasn't Epictetus. But he was no egomaniac, he was no faculty charm boy. He was a great and modest scholar. And what's more, I don't think I ever heard him say anything, either in or out of a classroom, that didn't seem to me to have a little bit of real wisdom in it-and sometimes a lot of it. What'll happen to him when you start your revolution? I can't bear to think about it-let's change the goddam subject. These other people you've been ranting about are something else again. ... I've had them by the dozens, and so has everybody else, and I agree, they're not harmless. They're as lethal as hell as a matter of fact. ... But what I don't like ... is the way you talk about these people. I mean you don't just despise what they represent-you despise them. It's too damn personal, Franny. I mean it. ... It's exactly like this damned ulcer I picked up. Do you know why I have it? Or at least nine-tenths of the reason I have it? Because when I'm not thinking properly, I let my feelings about television and everything else get personal. I do exactly the same thing you do, and I'm old enough to know better."



A few things I forgot to write about yesterday regarding differences between Edinburgh and the US. Yesterday, on the walking tour of campus, I noticed all these security cameras. Today, I noticed even more, in the dining room of a restaurant of all places. I guess those in the UK have a lower expectation of privacy than those in the US (though recent tests of cameras in city centers in the US seem to indicate we're heading in the same direction). I also noticed lots of little kids running around with Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Linkin Park shirts. Sheesh.

posted by geoff on 1/18/2002 09:52:52 AM
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new places


This was originally written 04.01.2002. I didn't have net access to post it until now


I've been in edinburgh for 2 days now and I'm starting to feel my way around the city. I don't feel like some tourist on a school trip but at the same time, I don't feel like its like my city yet, like I do about Columbus, or Austin.



When I arrived at the Glasgow airport, after a six hour plane flight from Newark, I was struck with a familiar feeling; the feeling that the place one is visiting is not all that different than the place that one just left. I first experienced this on my first long trip away from home, a school trip to Florida when I was in 5th grade. I remember leaving the airport by bus and being somewhat underwhelmed. Other than the occasional palm tree, it wasn't all that different from Pennsylvania. I had a similar feeling when I first entered Scotland, I mean, one sterile airport is the same as any other sterile, right? The further I got away from the airport, however, the more I got the feeling that I was in a very new and different place indeed.



Obviously, the whole driving on the left side of the road is a bit different. Furthermore, rather than the cow which is a common site around the countryside of central Pennsylvania, one finds the sheep to be omnipresent. I am told that in Scotland, sheep outnumber humans two to one. As we drove into Edinburgh, I was struck by how old everything was. Despite the occasional Starbucks or KFC, the buildings resemble the ancient tenements which define the city, and many of the city's narrow treets and alleys are still paved in brick. Just for reference, the University of Edinburgh, where I will be matriculating next week was founded in something like the late 1500's. In addition, the city has a castle. Yes, a freaking castle, in its center.



Edinburgh, at least the part of it with which I am now familiar, is pretty cool as cities go. There are plenty of shops and cafes and a ton of pedestrian traffic giving the city a busy feel, but not to the extent that its stifling or overwhelming like NYC. I've been walking around a bit, just trying to find my way between places I'll need to go without a map. The center city is pretty clean, nothing like Columbus, though I'm told that the economically marginalized sections are on the perimeter of the city.



Yesterday was pretty uneventful. There was a short, basically useless, walk around the neighborhood near the hotel. After that, I found a pretty good vegetarian/vegan restuarant called Bann where I got good, moderately priced, and filling bean burrito-esque dish. I wasn't brave enough to try the vegan bangers and mash, but there's always other meals. I think it's going to be pretty easy to stay vegan while in Edinburgh. Even the hotel restaurant had vegetarian options. vegan/vegetarian options are usually labeled as such, and turbinado sugar seems to be offered everywhere. I still haven't found the food co-op or good dumpsters yet. Maybe that will be my mission tomorrow.



Today I had to sit through multiple presentations by various university departments. The presentation on Scottish cutlure, history, and geography was really good and I learned a ton, though I doubt I'll remember much. After the obligatory meetings let out, I went skating in a plaza near the university where I eyed a ton of skaters earlier during the day. When I got there, there were still a good number of kids, despite the fact that at four PM it was already growing dark. Evidently the Edinburgh police don't really care much about skaters. I guess they don't care that much about marijuana use either, because while I was skating, I saw a couple of young kids smoking weed rather conspicuously in one of the corners of the plaza. The skate session was good, but I had to end it because, I confess, I wasn't yet aclaimated to the cold,
dark environment. I skipped dinner so I could make it back to the hotel in time to meet the group to depart for the musical



We saw Andrew Lloyd Weber's musical, Sunset Blvd. Midway through the musical, some poor girl scurried up the aisle only to vommit repeatedly and then collapse right in front of us. Well, the musical was only slightly better than the unannounced spectacle of indigestion displayed before us. Maybe it was the off-broadway cast, or maybe I am forever biased against musical theatre, but I found the plot to be predictable, the characters cliched, and the writer, in many instances, clearly trying too hard to be ever so clever. I've grown to appreciate musicals mainly for their value as spectacle and the sets and some of the conventions, like a car chase simulated with some clever use of lighting, the set design, and coreography were very well done.



I'm a little bit lonely. There are a bunch of kids who I flew over with, and am in orientation with, as run by the US school who administers the study abroad program. The kids are nice enough, I guess. They all seem to be a similar type. Caucasian, upper middle class, and go to primarily small liberal arts institutions or larger universities well known for their "resort" qualities. At least quite a few of them knew where Carlisle, PA was located. There were the familiar presence of the white hats, and fraternity letters, but at the same time, most seemed to be accustomed to traveling, if only throughout the US, which seemed to grant them a bit more breadth, and therefore a bit more
tolerance than many of the breatheren left stateside. They were nice kids, pleasant kids, but when it came down to it, at days end, they just wanted to hit the pubs. So, they weren't my kind of kids. For me, validation of shared experiences is of great importance in friends and aquintences, and I'm not one to spend time doing something I find boring or offensive just for the sake of being around other people. Maybe tomorrow I'll try to contact some of the kids Dana gave me a lead on.



posted by geoff on 1/18/2002 09:46:20 AM
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