Edinburgh, Festival City...

As we all know from my last post, I woke up bright and early the day after the performance, ready to go to Edinburgh. Only one task remained - to pack up the costumes and post them back to Australia.

This whole process started with a trip to Waitrose to collect boxes - Robert had asked one of the staff to put aside the boxes after they stocked the shelves that night. Brilliant idea, but nothing is idiot-proof - nobody had actually thought to pass the message on to the shelf-stockers, so we were boxless. My morning thus began in pouring rain with a tour of Green Buxton, where everyone does their bit for the planet by crushing and recycling their boxes. Laudable and under other circumstances, I'd have been overjoyed, but at the time I'd had two hours sleep and I needed to post several dozen costumes back to Australia.

By 11:30, the costumes were in a van heading to the post office and I was walking towards the station. Luckily, there was a train at 11:38 and I made it. Less fortunately, there was a train to Edinburgh that left about 5 minutes after I arrived at Manchester, which I missed because I was looking for someone to tell me when and where the next train to Edinburgh left. To spice up the two hour wait that ensued, some nice lad left his luggage lying in the waiting room and vanished. If you want to see major excitement, leave your luggage in a train station.

When he came back, it turned out that he was of a dusky complexion, so all I can say is, he was bloody lucky nobody shot him. Or else I could say we were all bloody lucky that he was a nice young man who'd naively assumed that he could go grab a cuppa without lugging his backpack along with him.

Anyway, all musings aside - let us go on with the journey!! Sitting in a train for four hours is not very exciting so I won't dwell on that (apologies to Michael and Chris the train spotters!). However, Edinburgh made up for that lack because they have a festival on about this time of year...

All I will say about the festival is, unless you're a complete masochist, don't go. I was feeling rather tired and wussy when I got off the train about 6pm and decided to take a taxi to the University where I was staying. Since every other human being in the world was also in Edinburgh and also wanted a taxi, this was a silly idea.

Eventually, I got to the head of the queue and was picked up by a driver whose accent was so thick, it was completely unintelligible. That was OK, he didn't understand me either. I ended up waving the Visit Scotland booking letter at him and he finally drove off.

Herriot-Watt University is the Scottish equivalent of Monash. It is miles away from the CBD, set in parkland amidst disadvantaged suburbia and it has the same 60's ambiance. I was glad I'd taken the taxi!

When I got out at the Reception, dinner was being served. A large Rotarian convention had taken over the dining room proper, but us plebs could eat in the canteen. I surveyed the choices carefully. It seemed that I could eat Orange Something or one of two different Brown Somethings, with two veg, chips or salad. I selected one of the Brown Somethings, purportedly a lamb hotpot, and the two veg. To my surprise, it was actually quite tasty. I sat beside a window overlooking The Wood (a small sunken area full of trees between two of the buildings) and watched the rabbits grazing peacefully.

After my hotpot, I went to bed. Early in the morning, I was awakened by merry Rotarians in the room below me and also by someone screaming 'Shut up!' repeatedly. Was she a Rotarian screaming at me to stop banging on the floor with my hiking boot or was she another annoyed resident? At about 2:30 am, the Rotarians took the hint and packed it in. I dropped my boots and returned to my fitful slumbers...

Insight into Scotland 1

In a souvenir shop, I discover a postcard which shows two Highland Cows in the process of creating a third. No, there really is nothing so tacky that a tourist won't buy it...

Buxton 2.0

I arrived in Buxton in the chill early evening. Being rather naive, I assume that the halls of residence are near the University, so I go to the University. So, it seems, does everyone else.

As soon as I arrive at the gates, the security guard comes out with a friendly smile. "You looking for the Halls of Residence?" he asks. Yes, I am. "You one of them Italian exchange students?". I suppose I'm flattered, but no. The Halls of Residence are in the opposite direction to the University but most people don't realise this. The guard has a sense of humour about being confronted daily with lost people, or maybe he is just relieved to have a lost person who speaks fluent English. Or maybe he is overwhelmed by my Parisian elegance (only slightly marred by the absence of any cosmetics) - he offers me a glass of water before I set out. When I explain delicately that, after a two hour journey, this is a bad idea, he lets me use the facilities before I start my trek down the hill.

The halls are at the bottom of the hill underneath the railway line. Through some inspired coincidence, Michael the mad-keen train spotter is on the railway line side - I am on the opposite side of the building and to my astonishment, I don't hear a train for my entire stay. (Michael wakes up at 6:45am every morning to check out the 64... or whatever it is. It was all explained to me in detail, but as I didn't have to document it, I promptly forgot it).

All the shows are sold out. Bummer! I had hoped to see at least one show other than our own... well, it was not to be. I am still pretty tired, so I will take the chance to catch up on work and sleep in that order.

Saturday night

On the evening of my arrival, we have a celebratory dinner. I sit down to deep-fried chicken pieces on soggy spiced rice and think longingly of Paris... The Buxton climate is actually not that different, it is cold and rainy. But the food - alas, the English have never quite come up with something to equal my chicken salad. I eat the fried thing and stagger back to the university to work while indigestion wreaks havoc on my innards.

Sunday

I wake up and do a morning run down to the Gardens and back. The Gardens are closer to the halls or I am fitter - I did the same run last year and took most of an hour, this year it only takes half that. Little furry critters flee before me - some things never change...

Rehearsal. This year, we have the Octagon, which is right in the middle of the Gardens. It is a lovely venue, but very public - we have a lot of people looking through windows, wandering in and out etc etc. Eventually, someone shuts the doors and draws the curtains so we can work in peace. Our extra aesthetic maidens need to be fitted in their costumes and decorated appropriately - for some reason, I am in charge of this, it is a bit like asking Attila the Hun to mind a china shop. Luckily Tiffany is prepared to help out!!

Hooray! We are right next door to a canteen we can get coffee!! Maybe I am not used to cows milk, because the coffee tastes quite odd. Or maybe the problem is that the coffee comes from one of those press-button machines like they have on the railway stations in Australia. Sad addict though I am, I can't drink it. I empty the cup into a garden bed, then apologise to the flowers.

Sunday night we have a working bee to let things down, take things up and add extra glitzy bits to the four spare costumes. Much to my amazement, they work out rather well - possibly because my main contribution is to organise the event rather than to actually participate!

Monday

More of the same. We rehearse. Today, I know not to grab a quick coffee from the Octagon cafeteria. I go back to Project X over the road, which does superb coffee using a proper coffee machine.

I go to the wool and craft shop in the mall about six times for ribbons and extra costume bits - eventually, I succumb and purchase a heap of wool for the plane trip back. It looks like we have 20 lovesick maidens and a sheep in the Octagon - maybe I bought too much wool?

I finish my first project and email it back to Australia... one down, one to go!

Tuesday

The big day!! This year, I know not to help with bump-in. When I am good and ready, I make myself breakfast and cart my costume down to the theatre. Since the costume is 90% of my baggage, I end up carting my suitcase down to the theatre and back. Twice. I really have way too much stuff!

I manage to get a quick lunch break and go back to the halls for some time out.

The dress rehearsal was pretty lame - everyone was saving themselves for the night. Luckily, it paid off. We were great and the audience loved us. I was extremely happy with what I did, we got a lot of laughs and at the end of it, our adjudication was all we could have hoped for.

Our cabaret also gets a rousing reception - people are quiet and listen to us. That never happened last year or at any of the cabarets I saw this year. Usually, there were people ordering drinks and moving about. This time they sat and paid attention to every word. Particularly good reception for 'Chocolate' and the 'Dance of the Cygnets', also for a racy version of 'Three Little Maids'.

Afterwards, we went home and drank everyone's duty free. Maybe a bad move - one of the orchestra seemed to be coming along with us for the party, but when I explained where we were staying he told me that they'd been banned for rowdy behaviour. Hopefully we won't suffer a like fate, because there was a LOT of duty free at the start of the evening and none at all by the time we all knocked off about 4am.

Outside my window, a local moggy, with an unerring cat instinct for finding a sucker, was crying. I wandered out (carefully!) and brought it in. I gave the poor little thing a cuddle and dried it off, then realised that I couldn't keep it in overnight so put it out again. All a bit of a waste really, but I do miss having little purring furry people around...

The next day I awoke at 6:30 and went to Edinburgh, but that's another story...

Paris again...

I arrived in Paris on Wednesday about midday their time and 2:00 am my time. Although I'd slept on the flight, I was not necessarily in any condition to be in a country where I effectively didn't speak the same language as everyone else.

My train journey from the airport to the CBD was not marred by pickpockets or any of the other nastiness I'd been warned about. It was marred by my luggage, which was too big and heavy to move quickly. When I got to Chattelet-Les-Halles station, instead of changing trains to get to Pont Marie, I ended up stuck behind the luggage watching Chattelet-Les-Halles fade into the distance behind me.

I ended up at Notre Dame, which is only about 10 minutes walk from Erin's abode, unless you have giant baggage, in which case it's physically impossible to get there. I learned a useful phrase from the first taxi I flagged down, which I think meant something like 'P!ss off I am not driving you such a pathetically short distance'. At this point, the impending thunderstorm had broken and so had one of my bags, so I felt moved to reciprocate by teaching the taxi driver some useful Australian colloquial phrases. I hope they all come to pass upon him in the imminent future, with an especially large pineapple and a Rugby All-Black.

The second taxi driver was more helpful and I arrived at the Cite des Artes at about 5pm Paris time. As I said in my previous post, Erin's apartment was amazing - the location is beyond belief, she is about 10 minutes walk from everything and the block was just gorgeous.

Using her flat as a base, I explored the Ile-St-Louis, which is sort of like a very, very plush and much older Toorak, and the area around Notre Dame. I never did actually get in to Notre Dame on account of the terrifying queues, which stretched most of the way across the square (see the pix).

On my second day there, we went to the Louvre. The Louvre is every bit as amazing as everyone says. You can't see everything there and you'll go completely insane if you try - my strategy was to focus on a couple of areas that I thought would be interesting and to skim through, allowing things to catch my eye.

The building itself is a wonder - I think it's about 1km each side - and the craftsmanship involved at every level of its construction just defies belief. I found myself wandering around the mediaeval foundations of the Louvre by mistake (I was looking for the Egyptian antiquities wing, which I never found) and it was quite interesting to see how much work was involved in just keeping the edifice upright. The public areas were painted, carved, varnished, veneered and otherwise decorated to within an inch of insanity - all in superb taste of course.

Stand out memories:

Sitting on a carved stone seat on the servants' stairs. How did I know they were servants' stairs? Plain stone walls, no carvings, no chandeliers, no ornamental work - except on the seat, which had two perfect little lion heads carved on the armrests.

Seeing the Code of Hammurabi - the very first piece of written legislation and for those of you who remember your Bible, the origin of the saying 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth'. His Highness had a very literal sense of justice... He was also very into killing people for infringing the law.

Walking into a room which was deserted except for two 12-foot high Mespotamian Winged Bulls, dug up from the ruins of some ancient palace or other (my French wasn't up to the fine detail of the exhibit labels).

Laughing hysterically at a Classical carving of a Greek hero. An explanation is in order - as I understood the label, an Ancient Greek Olympian who was reknowned for his sporting prowess wandered into the woods one day, where he was unfortunately eaten by wolves. A famous French sculptor, moved by this tale, decided to commit it to marble. The end result is a sculpture of a very well-built gentleman being bitten in the ass by a lion. Said lion is about 1/3 the size of the athlete and it looks like the sculptor used his pet cat as a model. I felt that the sculpture perhaps did not convey the tragedy of the tale in the way that the sculptor intended.

Case after case of Mesapotamian cylinder seals with their impressions. These things are about 3,000 years old (or maybe older - again, language difficulties!) and yet they create such delicate, detailed impressions!!

A case with small Mesapotamian artifacts - a crude clay sculpture of a bed, happily occupied - on one hand, a sign that some things transcend history. On the other - what did it mean to the original owner? Was it a prehistoric version of Playboy? A religious object? Something you gave to your kids before they got married as an educational aid? Beside the sculpture, a group of the daintiest little ivory carvings of a cow suckling a calf. Obviously the image was important enough that some exceptionally skilled artists put a great deal of effort into reproducing it, but why?

Going through the Arab exhibits and realising that I could easily substitute most of my jewellery for that on display - seeing pottery that looked very contemporary - finally finding myself in front of an abstract human figurine that (I think!) was about 7000 years old.

Trying to find the bloody Egyptian exhibit!! I found a Sphinx in one of the crypts, but the rest of the exhibit eluded me.

Jumping up and down at the back of a very large room trying to see La Gioconda/Mona Lisa. The Venus di Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace were also very popular.

By about 3:30, I couldn't handle any more art so I wandered back to Erin's apartment. En route, I tried to see Notre Dame but was foiled by the queue again (and by the funeral of a Cardinal, which meant that the tourists had to wait until the service was finished). Instead I went to see the Crypte Archeologique, which is under the Cathedral - someone has excavated the Roman and medieaval ruins under the Cathedral -it is quite trippy seeing how the City has built up on itself, layer after layer, with the lower layers quietly biding their time in the dark under the ground. It was also trippy seeing how narrow the streets were! The main thoroughfare for transporting materials to the Cathedral site was a whole 7m wide (probably about the same size as a two-lane road or slightly less) - that was major thoroughfare territory in those days, sort of their equivalent of the Western Ring Road.

On Saturday, my mission was to see Kilometre Zero, the central point from which all distances in France are measured, and the Memorial de la Deportation. I also had a fancy to purchase some Florame skin products - sort of a French Jurlique, only all the ingredients are organic not just some. Slight problem, in France they do not have the concept of 'open 24/7' so everything was shut.

I managed to get to the Memorial at 11:00, just in time to stand in a queue. The Memorial is dedicated to the French who died in the concentration camps. The only way I can describe it is to say, think of a prison. Or look at the pictures. When you get through the claustrophobic concrete maze, you find yourself at one end of a tunnel full of little lights. There is one light there for each person who disappeared or died, and it looks like the tunnel goes on for ever.

I missed the Kilometre Zero, it is in the square outside Notre Dame so presumably some tourist was standing on it. I found Florame and purchased several products - unfortunately, I left them in my handbag, so French customs confiscated anything over 200ml. Luckily my plane was delayed or I'd have missed it while I was trying to work out what the hell was going on. My French is OK for simple things like 'Interdit' (Prohibited) and ne... pas (do not [do whatever]) but I wasn't equipped to deal with the complexities of whatever law I'd transgressed by having 200ml of cleanser in my handbag.

Lessons learned in France:

- The food is great, but you do still have to know where to go. And what to order - Erin and I went to a health food restaurant, where I scored a delicious chicken salad. Erin got an overcooked casserole with soggy rice salad. This might relate to point two...

- If you try to speak French, you really do get brownie points. I found everyone extremely polite and helpful, but I always tried to communicate in French and only used English when I absolutely couldn't get my point across any other way. Even Customs were reasonably polite and helpful - put it this way, I've still got a couple of bottles of cosmetics and I'm not entirely sure that I should have them!

In case I missed the lesson, I came across a small group of American tourists who were in a similar predicament to myself on my first day (missed their stop, trying to find their way back to their station). I mangled out some sort of explanation of my plight and got directions to a taxi rank. They communicated by shouting at everyone and were still standing outside the Metro station being rained on when I left.

- There are places in this world where a three room apartment (not three bedroom, three ROOM) is a pretty good score.

- Melbourne house prices are really insane, apartments on the Ile-St-Louis are about the same prices as premium Melbourne apartments (although they are possibly a bit smaller).

- Either French men have an entirely undeserved reputation for sleaziness or they have a better sense of self-preservation than they've been given credit for. Although I was on my own most of the time and identifiably a tourist (wearing jeans - big fashion no-no in Paris!), I didn't have any problems.

So much for my first experience of travelling somewhere where I can't speak the language fluently. It was nowhere near as scary as I thought and I reckon I'd be right to do it again. Although next time I'd like to speak enough French to ask the Customs for my bloody make-up back!!

Paris! Part I

Hello everyone, just in case you haven't caught up with the good news, I made it to Paris safe and sound. I even made it to Paris well-rested, as there was no-one in the seat beside me in the plane. Although it's not easy for someone of my build to lie down on two aeroplane seats, I was determined and so slept, pretzel-like, across the Indian Ocean.

On arrival in France, I quite quickly discovered that a vocabulary of about 30 words is really not adequate for very many situations. It got me most of the way to Erin's place though and a kindly taxi driver got me the rest of the way.

Erin is staying in a converted old-style apartment block - some genius has partitioned a graceful 18th century building into bedsits, luckily they haven't completely succeeded in destroying the elegance of the original although they've had a red-hot go at it.

You'll be astonished to know that it has been freezing cold every day that I've been here - one of my errands today will be to go to the department store and buy a warm jumper before I go anywhere!!

What else? I've seen some amazing queues, but not many tourist attractions. I've managed to buy myself some universal chargers and adaptors at FNAC (the French Harvey Norman or Dick Smith, except much more stylish). I've gone shopping, which was actually quite enjoyable, and I've seen a couple of churches and parks that weren't tourist attractions and were therefore accessible.

Off to the Louvre today!

Return to Buxton

Yes folks, when we left our heroine, she was paying off her credit cards in $20 installments (last installment due in September 2030) - poor but happy in the knowledge that she'd had the holiday of a lifetime.

But wait!! A knock at the door - is it a bird? Is it a plane? NO!! It was good old Opportunity (in the form of an email from Robert) saying that the entire cast of Patience had been invited over to perform in the 2007 Buxton Festival.

What to do? Being the modest, retiring soul that she is, our heroine immediately stopped eating, bumped up her credit card repayments and booked herself in for the Holiday of a Lifetime Part II... Now, read on.