Alex Krogh-Grabbe

So I promise, I’ll get to my trip soon, but I do need to talk about yesterday. It was a really busy day with a lot of really exciting firsts in it. Read on.

In the morning I went to this tantric yoga class upstairs in the Forest. I’d never taken a yoga class before (except when I attended one Betsy was taking when I was little), and for a first one this was quite intense. It lasted for 2.5 hours, and I was having great difficulty with a lot of the positions we were holding. There were about 11 people there. The instructor was this small Indian guy; he was really good. I stuck it out to the end, then collapsed downstairs in the Cafe.

After a little while just sitting on a sofa staring into space, I got up and went to get fabric for my Beltane costume. First I had to walk up to the Princes St. Mall to get cash out of the Barclay’s ATM (Bank of America doesn’t charge when we get money from Barclays). Then I went to Edinburgh Fabrics and got 2 meters of this light green fabric. I’m going to make trousers out of them, and presuming it’s warm enough, not wear anything but body paint over them.

At 5:10 I met up with my friend Sara from FolkSoc, who was going to lend me her flatmate’s bike for to ride in Critical Mass, which she helps organize. On the way to her flat, we tried having one of us sit in the seat of her bike while the other pedaled in front of them. Possible, but really difficult. We got the bike, and headed down to the Mound for the start of the ride. There were about 30-40 people, I’d say, all but a few under 30. We rode all over the city centre. We were going slower than I’d like, and we were really pissing off the drivers behind us. I was trying to get people to go faster, under the assumption that getting people angry with us doesn’t help anything, but a lot of people who do Critical Mass are interested in getting back at cars for the injustice that bikes have to deal with most of the time. It’s an understandable sentiment, but I think not a helpful for acceptable one for Critical Mass. But it’s not my city; not my bike ride, and I won’t be here for the next one, so I guess they can do what they want. Although, talking to Sara and her friend later, they agreed with me that such retaliatory actions weren’t a good thing.

I had dinner with Sara and her friend in Sara’s flat, and then walked back home. I was going to go to a Beltane-related party, but I was too exhausted.

Today I have lots of Beltane stuff. I’m hoping to make my costume at this green point meeting, and before that there’s a meeting where we pick up our passes to get on the hill. I’m still really sore. I gots to go now, though, so I’ll write you all more later. Hope things are looking peachy for you all.

Okay, my posts about my Europe trip will come. The first one or two will come soon, in fact, because I’ve already typed out all of my journal up to the Eurostar to Paris, and will do more. I’m going to give you all something very close to what’s actually in my journal, just a little more streamlined.

But today! I can’t believe these things happened. My goodness. I knew there would be social excitement, but…read on.

So I managed to wake up for breakfast this morning, and had it with Sarah and Emily and Emily’s friend (she has had SO many friends visit). Then I went to the computer lab for a bit, then to the Forest, just to hang out, and hopefully to work on updating my 2-week-behind journal. I got there and did that for a bit, then struck up a conversation with the person sitting next to me. Her name is Susie, or some such spelling. She was working on creating her Beltane costume. She was making “Thai fisherman trousers”, which are the cool ones that don’t have a solid pants leg but instead wrap around your legs individually like some sorts of aprons. I’ve admired such trousers before, and think I may try to make some for myself for Beltane too. They’re very easy to make, apparently.

So, we got to talking (background: she’s from Aberdeen, was studying Chinese stuff for a postgrad at Edinburgh, but just dropped out because she didn’t want to do it anymore), and she was mentioning how she had just come from a yoga class on the upstairs of the Forest. I mentioned that I had signed up for a yoga class for next semester, and was hoping to hear back about that all soon (turns out I find out on Monday or so). A friend of hers, Danny, came and sat down and chatted. He does that yoga class too, and it turns out both of them, though relatively new to yoga, are doing a yoga instructor training class by their yoga teacher. I think they do tantric yoga? Or something? I don’t know, but I was invited to come check it out, and I think I’m going to; it’s on my calendar for tomorrow morning. Oh, it’s free; that’s why I was so willing.

Danny also got to talking about something else he’s doing, which is parcour. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, but it’s this form of “street-running”, which is best described (as far as I can tell) as the sort of running, jumping, swinging from things that children do for play, except evolved into an art form. If, perchance, you’ve seen either Casino Royale (the new James Bond movie) or District B-13 (a French action movie), there has been parcour featured strongly in a chase scene in each. It seems really cool, and Danny invited me to join he and his friends who do it. I said sure, and gave him my mobile number, and he’s going to call me sometime and we’ll figure stuff out.

So that was the afternoon.

At 7pm I went to a Beltane workshop that I had been advised to go to by the person who runs my group. It was mainly for the Stewards and Torchbearers, those people involved with Beltane whose job it is to keep the enormous crowds back from the performers. There was some useful information; I’m glad I went. At the end of that workshop, I saw a friend from my group (green point). We hung out briefly and watched some drummers involved with Beltane practicing, and the Red Men practicing next to them. This was all in the Meadows, this big grassy area near the center of the city. I borrowed a drum and drummed a little with these people, and then went and planned with my friend to meet back there in an hour. I brought my drum and a frisbee back with me. I drummed with the same folks (who are apparently “no point”, a group that wanders around Beltane mocking the performers and making mischief), and chatted with someone I’d met at the Equinox party. Then I threw a tennis ball for a dog for a little bit (which also involved a good deal of searching around the now-dark fields after the the two of us had jointly lost the ball). I was tossing my frisbee around for a bit, then my friends got there. We walked up to the Forest and sat there for a bit. We drank wine and I played with a candle that was there, getting a flame that was 6 inches high or so, just as a by-product of tossing flamable stuff into the candle. Oops. I had about 4 glasses of wine (oh, I’m 21 now, since Sunday, cool, eh?).

We left, and I parted ways with the two of them. I walked home, drunker than I’d ever been while out by myself before. I would have been stumbling if I hadn’t been paying close attention to walking straight. It was weird. Blurry senses, but not blurry vision like when I don’t have my contacts in. It was sort of like when you’re cooking soup, and it’s all bubbly and swirly, convection currents making it slosh around a little. It was a little like that. Tell the truth, I’m still getting over it. Ridiculous. I’m developing a slightly more favorable taste for various types of alcohol (beer and wine; haven’t had anything stronger yet), but I still really don’t like the feeling of being drunk. I like to have my wits about me, at all times, and being drunk is pretty explicitly not having your wits about you.

Okay, I have a really big day tomorrow, with Yoga, costuming, MY FIRST CRITICAL MASS, and a Beltane party. Oy vey. Don’t worry parents, I am looking at a big blank space on my calendar for next week during which I intend to do much studying.

Hope you all are well; I will tell you about my travels as soon as possible.

So, I just read on Treehugger (or Grist, but I think it was TH) about “navy showers”. Apparently this is how they take showers in the navy. It’s really simple: you turn on the water long enough to get yourself completely wet all over, then turn it off while you soap up. Once you’re done soapifying, you turn the water back on and rinse off. Saves a ton of water, and I actually found today that it reduced the amount of time my shower took up significantly as well. You do lose on the comfort of the water cascading over you in a gentle, massaging tumult, but really, how important is that to you compared to saving gallons and gallons of water?

Second, apparently my home state of Massachusetts has enacted immediate legislation to require all large building projects to estimate the energy usage of their project. The developers would then be required to make efforts to reduce that consumption. This means that all new big developments in the state will be more energy efficient than if they hadn’t been thinking of the environment at all. It’s an extremely worthy start, I think.

So I never wrote anything between the 11th and the 20th of March. A lot of stuff happened then. And there appears to be a somewhat blank space in my journal then. Therefore, I will write about the last weekend before my trip.

So, on Friday night the 16th, I got two couchsurfers, Muriel and Alex. They’re both studying in Aberdeen, and are from Rennes (in France) and Austria, respectively. They came down to go to the Climate Action Conference, which had been on my schedule for a long time too. It was all day Saturday in the Forest Cafe. I may have written about the Forest before, but anyways it’s this really hippyish community arts venue/cafe. I had originally been weirded out by all the piercings and dreadlocks, but I went to the conference for a little while anyways. I went to a demonstration about homemade wind turbines, which was really cool. That workshop partly inspired me to start thinking about engineering as a field to potentially go into. Then I went to a workshop on Combined Heat and Power, otherwise known as cogeneration, or when cooling is included, trigeneration. It’s a way of greatly increasing the efficiency of energy production by using the waste biproducts. Anyway, after that I watched some of The End of Suburbia in the main room, then went home for a little while. Muriel and Alex stayed at the conference. Before I left, I saw a friend from FolkSoc who reminded/informed me that one of our FolkSoc friends (Morag) was playing with her band (Black Cat) in the Forest that evening. Apparently there was to be lots of music. So, when I arrived back to my room and found Muriel and Alex there after dinner, I suggested we go back to the Forest (after they ate) and see the music. Holy cow, am I glad we went back.

I saw some more friends from the ISC, and made more friends through them, all very quickly and smoothly. Alex and Muriel went off to find some friends of theirs. I sat around with my new friends waiting for this band to start playing. It took a while, and by the time they actually started, some of my other friends from FolkSoc had shown up too. Then the band started playing, and they were AMAZING!! Really good, energetic Balkan music. I was dancing. Everyone was dancing. Then another band came on, with a turntable and rapper, and they were good too. I had had a little beer earlier in the night, which I enjoyed. After the second band, my friends (the one from FolkSoc who’d tipped me off to the music, Sara, and her friends) and I went upstairs, where there was more mellow stuff going on. A guy playing electronic music on a keyboard, and people having a drum circle syncing with that. We were just lying around for a while, then danced more. I danced well that night.

After that, things started to wind down (it was about 1 or 2am). Muriel and Alex decided to stay with their other friends. I started talking to the dumbek/tarbuka-player and clarinetist from Black Cat, Adam, and he was excited that we played the same instruments (he thought when I said I played clarinet in 4th grade that I meant I played it now). People were all really chill and nice.

The next day I went back to the Forest, and saw Adam there. I asked him about Beltane, and he said that a lot of people who hang out at the Forest are involved with it. Have I not mentioned Beltane here yet? There’s a big fire festival with lots of pageantry on Calton Hill here in Edinburgh on the night of May 30th, to celebrate the Celtic holiday of Beltane. I was really excited about it before I even came to Edinburgh. And Adam now said that I might be able to perform with them! That got me really excited. I then watched the movie Clue, which I’d seen before, and which they were showing in the main room where I was just then.

On Tuesday, I had been invited to this concert which Black Cat was doing at this club. I skipped FolkSoc and went to it. It was in this club called Octopus Diamond. Turns out, it was a big thing by all the Beltane folks for the equinox. So there were numerous bands, but really it was my opportunity to network toward the goal of getting involved with Beltane. I met a lot of people, and it was really really cool. The best was the processional drummers. It was so packed, and there was so much dancing. I think I’ve found a social group that I want to get involved with, but I lament the fact that it’s taken me until this late in the semester to do so! Oh well, I’ll just have to make up for lost time is all. But wow, that night was so amazing. I staggered home, and started packing for my trip. I finished packing and moving out of my room the next morning after my class. It was tight; I almost missed my train to London. What a hectic time. Soon to be followed by three more hectic weeks. But that’s for the next bunch of entries.

So I’m in Dublin! Not dead, just in Ireland. I’ll be back in Edinburgh in a few days, but unfortunately probably won’t be posting for another week or so after that, as I intend to travel around the UK a bit. We’ll see how that goes. But I have lots to tell you all; I’ve been having an incomparable time, and have been keeping a journal so that I don’t forget stuff. Hopefully I can get everything up to the blog (including the multitudinous pictures and video clips) before I get back to the US. I’m also probably going to have some interesting stuff going on when I get back to Edinburgh as well. Eek. And studying, and exams. It’s gonna be wild.

Can’t wait to see you all again, hope all is well.