Festival Season

For those of you who may not get fun spam and don't know that the newest spam craze is to insert into the subject line fake and yet oddly eye-catching headlines. Here's one I saw today: Bush sells Louisiana back to the French. I'm trying to decided whether that would be a good idea or bad...

Regardless...

I meandered around town this morning, heading through the throngs of early morning tourists and construction workers running from the rain and down past Bobby the famous dog of Greyfriar's Kirk, and around twists of needle exchanges and turns of dodgy-looking night clubs and into the Grassmarket, my first home here in Scotland. It's impressive how much its changed, even in this last month. A month ago, the walls of stone and brick were laid bare and worn; a month ago, the streets were barred with unfriendly fences and glaringly unkind orange safety netting; a month ago, roads were ripped apart and crumbling, an open pit into 800 years of Edinburgh history; a month ago, it wasn't raining.

But now, every free inch of ancient mortar or brick of guillotine stand is plastered in a thick layer of glue and glossy paper, asking, begging, urging, screaming at you to go see a Yank comedian or a sing-a-long about divorces or a play about sex and sin and the Church of Scotland. Little paper mache tenements, deteriorating advertisements for the modern. "Be Edgy!" they declare boldly, assuming that, as tourists, we are all conservative and scared and filled to the brim with expendable income. Churches and mosques have been converted from the sacred to the alternative, housing plays and demonstrations and existential discussions about drugs and bisexuality and hard cider and Jesus' role in all three, leaving admonitions to their oft-ignored bookstores. Dark pubs built into the ruins of castle walls have been given over to 3 am, 5 am venues for the night owls and drunken brawls in the name of tolerance and acceptance and learning. Students are driven out and replaced by an uncouth crowd of Aussie backpackers and German tour buses and English superiors marveling at how quaint and uncivilized the Scottish are.

It's quite a leap from the haunted and abandoned streets that have kept us company all winter long. Gone are the restaurants that close at 8; gone are the quiet Edinburgh nights; gone are the days of being able to walk normally along the stone-lined streets. It almost feels like a genuine big city, transformed from quiet to rowdy, from early-to-bed to never-to-bed. Fireworks at the Castle at midnight, kettle drums from Calton hill echoing through the tenements at dawn.

Also gone are the days of blending in, being one of the crowd. Interesting story: since Festival Season started, we have been asked a dozen times how we are enjoying our holiday in Edinburgh. While the concern is touching, they are most often needlessly embarrassed when we reply sweetly that we do, in fact, live here. I have gone from student to tourist, and I didn't even have to change my clothes.