So my first post is going to be brief because I am using the internet at a hotel (where we have orientation) that costs 5 pounds an hour (that’s $10 an hour thanks the marvelous exchange rate…) I feel as if I have been living in one super-sized Wednesday.The trip began when I got to Washington National, where I began reading Jhampa Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies,” which was a suprisingly appropriate book to begin my travels with.It is a series of short stories about the lives of various Indians, often immigrants to the United States, or American born Indians staying the subcontinent, and the trials they face in their new environments.Their problems especially concern being away from friends and family
, and missing people – things I certainly felt on my way across the ocean.That said, my first impressions of Edinburgh are wonderful – the first thing that struck me is how it resembles Seaside Village, the mock “town” where Jim Carry’s character resides in ‘The Truman Show.’Not that Edinburgh feels fake, but, like the town in the movie, it is small, neat, friendly, charming, and clean.Everyone has an endearing and friendly sounding accent, and the policeman all wear bright yellow vests like traffic workers. It also has definite ambience – an old castle sits on top of a craggy rocky outpost above the city, and the rambling cobbled streets with narrow alleys branching off and grey stone architecture make you feel the sense of the history of the place. The final thing I should mention is the “northern’ feel of the place – the old stately architecture and the vaguely austere surroundings, combined with the attention to cleanliness and respectability in the city itself, remind me vaguely of other northern cities I have visited like Portland and Montreal.These cities have the same general feeling as Edinburgh, but without the heavy atmosphere of history and the (so far) charming way that Scotland presents itself.A sign at the airport reads “Scotland – the best little country in the world,”and Edinburgh seems like a city that tries to emulate that sentiment..JPG)
, and missing people – things I certainly felt on my way across the ocean.That said, my first impressions of Edinburgh are wonderful – the first thing that struck me is how it resembles Seaside Village, the mock “town” where Jim Carry’s character resides in ‘The Truman Show.’Not that Edinburgh feels fake, but, like the town in the movie, it is small, neat, friendly, charming, and clean.Everyone has an endearing and friendly sounding accent, and the policeman all wear bright yellow vests like traffic workers. It also has definite ambience – an old castle sits on top of a craggy rocky outpost above the city, and the rambling cobbled streets with narrow alleys branching off and grey stone architecture make you feel the sense of the history of the place. The final thing I should mention is the “northern’ feel of the place – the old stately architecture and the vaguely austere surroundings, combined with the attention to cleanliness and respectability in the city itself, remind me vaguely of other northern cities I have visited like Portland and Montreal.These cities have the same general feeling as Edinburgh, but without the heavy atmosphere of history and the (so far) charming way that Scotland presents itself.A sign at the airport reads “Scotland – the best little country in the world,”and Edinburgh seems like a city that tries to emulate that sentiment.
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