Tom Thumb writes in a very engaging and humorous style about his decade or so of attending Rainbow Gatherings in Europe, as well as Israel and Thailand. Many of the things he describes are familiar to American gatherers, but there are some noticeable differences.
European gatherings are usually affairs of hundreds of people instead of thousands, and, there being almost no public lands like National forests, their gatherings are often in extremely out of the way places often at the ends of long hikes and climbs, on land that is, as he says it, "commercially worthless so no one objects to a temporary hippie village springing up for a month", and "remote enough that the local teenagers won't be driving in after the bar in the village closes"
Unlike American gatherings where there are several kitchens serving at a main circle and also at their individual locations thruout the day, there is always only one kitchen that serves only two times a day. And there don't seem to be the crews who keep returning to gatherings together gathering after gathering. Instead it is anybody's guess who is going to be showing up to work in the central kitchen, and there can be unpredictable periods of food inefficiency and hunger. A larger proportion of the attendees are full time road dogs, and there are fewer bills of large denominations going into the Magic Hat, so the supplies are not as luxuriant. The food at the breakfast circle he usually describes as "porridge" There is never anything like Kid Village breakfast or zu zu night at Lovin' Ovens.
And they have had to deal with harassment by law enforcement and dangers beyond what the US Forest Service ICTs have dished out. In Russia soldiers attacked right thru an om circle, slashed tents with knives, and took all of the attendees off to jail. In Bosnia, they had to watch out for leftover land mines.
And if his account is accurate, their gatherings are flashbacks to a lot of people's ideas of the golden days when the hippies with all their New Age pursuits still flourished. There are still music and dancing and healing workshops and nudity and cannabis and lots of chai tea and chapatis. I didn't read much about the goth punks, skinheads, pirates, and dirty kids which are numerous and sometimes predominate at American gatherings.
And his account seems believably accurate, for there are many words about all the problems with bad weather and organizational mixups and what we Yanks call "bliss ninnies" and all the other frustrations that are found at American gatherings. It is far from being a propaganda piece about the power of love with Hopi prophecies. All the dirty laundry is hung out in the rain and some of it even gets mildewed. But he seems to revel in all the inconstancy and unpredictability that the anarchism brings. He acts like he loved it when there was cold a freezing rain for two weeks.
It's a professional quality book that was laid out by a knowledgeable typesetter, and the best part of it is right before the end, where he examines the real relationship between the Rainbow and Babylon.
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