My dad believes that trouble always happens on trips. For him, three serious problems over the course of one journey — is well within normal limits. This immediately raises some questions:
- What counts as a serious problem.
When this comes up, it turns out that seriousness can be a fractional value, at least in 0.5 increments, meaning 6 medium problems = 3 serious ones. I don't know if there are problems with an irrational coefficient of seriousness, or an imaginary one, but irrational or imaginary ones definitely exist. - Why exactly three, and not more or less, and what counts as a single journey. It's logical to assume that the number depends more on duration than on the type of journey segmentation. On the other hand, things like accommodation, illness, currency exchange, and flights usually depend on country borders, and so in my case it would be quite reasonable to consider a visit to each individual country as a journey.
As you can see, I've started, as I often do, not from the beginning, but hey, you gotta master new literary devices. Following a tip from my favorite blogger Avva I read some short stories by Ted Chiang (and reread many that, as it turned out, I had already read). I was impressed — he weaves things together very deftly, and is stylistically diverse too. Then, in the comments, someone also mentioned the Polish sci-fi writer Jacek Dukaj with his book «Other Songs» in the context of incredible imagination and weirdness. I sometimes like that sort of thing, so I swallowed this novel too, with great pleasure. At first, nothing makes sense, but by page forty you somehow get the hang of it. Unfortunately, to fully appreciate the book, you have to be much better read than I am (or better yet, know Ancient Greek). Now, Denis, whom I am currently visiting in Romania, would probably have found more things familiar. Out of everyone I know, only he casually drops phrases like this:
— remember how Herodotus wrote
— remember when Ulysses landed on Calypso's island
— well, you know, like in Plato's most famous dialogue
Okay, I know who Herodotus is, I read the Odyssey in school, and I'm aware that Plato pushed the idea that a world of ideas exists, and the things of our world — are merely a reflection of it. But I'm a long way from recalling all these guys in everyday conversation.
I was, by the way, going to get back to the first day in Scotland, but instead plunged even further into digressions and musings. Well, at least Andrey won't be able to say anymore that I write travelogues (which he doesn't read).
So here, unexpectedly, is the first thing I saw during the day in Edinburgh. A trash bin that wants to be cool.
By the way, it was a revelation to me that Edinburgh is pronounced «Edinboro». Now I can show off, just like everyone else who has been here or lives here. With the fact that I'm in the know, and not just some clueless foreigner.
So, I set off to wander around Edinboro from my hostel, and the very first thing I hit was that same bridge where the bus had arrived. The bridge is called Waiverly, just like the railway station next to it. Perpendicular to it runs Princess Street, the second most busy and famous after the Royal Mile. As I was walking in the crowd, having grown unaccustomed to the din and bustle of a large tourist city, I spotted a mini-kiosk with an ad proclaiming: «The smallest falafel shop in town!». I can't walk past something like that. Not only do I rarely eat meat, and usually only out of necessity. But I also really need protein, because otherwise I'll lose all the muscles I've earned through hard work over the past six months. Getting protein without meat is a problem: while at home you can constantly eat low-fat cheese, lentils, beans, and soy, when traveling everyone around tries to slip you buns, spuds, pasta, and butter. As a result, as someone currently following the idea of achieving one goal at a time (losing weight), I've had to eat meat fairly often.
I don't think, as Dima casually dropped, that the reason is that it's «yummy» I hadn't eaten meat for a couple of years, and I didn't feel any special craving for it. A far greater temptation for me has always been sweets, especially chocolate and pastries, and rich breads. It's silly to have a proxy debate, of course, but I suppose I'm driven by justice or the search for truth. Blaming meat for all mortal sins — is a dead-end idea. If you look at it from a health perspective, then in a hamburger or a wrap, the rich bun and lavash, as well as the sauce, are probably no less harmful than the piece of meat. While the latter might in some cases cause cancer, the fast carbs in the bun and the sugar in the sauces — are a path to diabetes and atherosclerosis.
I'm also trying to always tell the truth, and it turns out that with strangers, when you need something from them, it's even harder. Like, when someone treats you to some booze, you can't just say the doctor forbade it, you have to say directly that you don't drink. Sometimes it's pretty hard to turn down a genuinely heartfelt offer to knock back a shot.
I've gotten totally sidetracked again, and it's all because the camera with the shots from the first day was left at Denis's house near Bucharest, and I'm heading to the city of Brasov from the Bucegi natural park, and I'm practically there.
You'll just have to wait for the next installment, in which I recklessly wipe out on a longboard, and get a nasty injury that puts the whole trip in jeopardy.