Look out for one another

In August 2018, I went to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the first time – the biggest open-access theatre festival in the world. My love affair with theatre was still quite fresh, or let’s say I never really went to any sort of theatre festivals. In Berlin, I had started going to plays by myself, as none of my friends shared my drive to see as much as possible. But going to a theatre festival in a new city and by myself was something new for me. 

I heard that Edinburgh goes completely nuts during the month of August when the Fringe takes place, so I was excited to see lots of great and affordable theatre but also quite scared. But when I arrived, I realised I hadn’t had much alone-time in the past few months. Since I was planning to continue on to New Zealand for a year, I had crammed a lot of music festivals and little goodbye-trips with friends into my already-busy full-time-job life.

So I often found myself having a lonely moment at the Fringe festival. It was worse when I didn’t have to change venue between shows and I’d just hang around in the beer garden. All around me were people sharing stories of plays they’d seen or performers and crew were chilling after their shows and I’d just sit there… feeling like an outsider. Alone. Out of place.

But funnily – and it happened to me twice – there was a woman who started to talk to me. Both times a different person, both times middle-aged, asking me how I was finding Fringe. After finding out it was my first time, we’d have lovely conversations about the inclusiveness of Fringe, how daring both the performers and the audiences are. I vividly remember the last drag show I’d seen and so many white-haired audience members enjoying it immensely and then asking myself if I would ever see something quite like that in Berlin.

The first conversation was with a woman who lives in Edinburgh and goes to lots of Fringe shows every year – it was such a great way to learn more about the heart of the festival and helped me to feel more included as if it were my festival too. The second conversation I had was with a woman who had come to Edinburgh with her whole family and ended up introducing me to everyone, giving me valuable tips for other picks to go to.

These little encounters fitted so well with something a very wise traveller-friend once told me from her own experiences of travelling: that women look out for each other. Fellow women help to make sure we get where we need to go, regardless of cultural or language barriers.

And this was my experience, where I might have looked a bit lost and a woman picked up on that, maybe not even consciously, and made feel good about myself again.

And why not? I will do that now myself and be that woman. I am doing it right now, in New Zealand, with a younger woman who is just starting to travel here and unsure if she should have a full travel itinerary mapped out. Especially when you are so much more settled with yourself, why not talk to younger women who seem to be in the middle of that journey to themselves?

So I think I might have found a little survival strategy for times of loneliness while travelling. And I’m going to need it again soon as I head off to spend three months in Samoa and I do not know anyone there… yet.

by Maxie Haufe

Featured photo by Jessica Papini.
Supportive comments are welcomed.