Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

Halloween in Edinburgh. I wasn't sure what I was expecting, but I should have figured on college towns being the same all over Western Europe and North America. In theory, children get dressed up and go "guising" around town, asking for cakes, much like our Trick-or-Treating in the States (without candy), but I saw very few costumed children. Perhaps in the more suburban areas, and not in the college parts, there would be more of this. In true Athens fashion, Jonmikel and I dressed up. I went as an original Star Trek chic, and he went as The Dude, from the Big Lebowski. His costume took a lot of thinking and planning, and he was so worried that nobody would know who he was. He neednt have, as a good number of people were cult followers of The Big Lebowski. Even in Scotland...

This was the first time Jonmikel dressed up in about 10 years, and as for me, I was eager to emmulate my good buddies back at Ohio University. So we got dressed up and headed Uptown to bar hop for the night. Thankfully, the weather seemed to warm up just for us (and, of course, all the girls out in almost nothing in honor of this very special holiday). It was pretty but almost 60 outside.

The first guy who recognized JM was a fellow American dressed as Popplebaum (don't hold me to that spelling), one of the pitchers for the Red Sox during the World Series (which they swept, by the way). It was fun to see another Yank running around Scotland for Halloween. So we hung around the Grassmarket area, which attracts a fairly young crowd. The streets were crowded with young revelers, but the bars seemed oddly empty. Parties? Underagers? I have no explanation for this, other than someone must have been offering 1 pounds beers somewhere else. But there were lots of people out and about, showing off costumes. We stopped in at the Oz Bar, our local pool hall, only to get frustrated with the mini-pool balls. Really, what's with these Across-the-Pond pool tables? Crazy.
At about 1am, when most of the bars were closing down but the night clubs were just getting started, we headed off to find a late-night snack. We ended up at this little pizza place that was CRAMMED wall-to-wall and shoulder-to-shoulder with hungry kids, all demanding cheese and crust in a round pie-shapped snack of goodness. Cheap, too: about 4 pounds for an 8-inch(? I've never been good at visually estimating diameters) pizza. Not quite enough to satiate us fully, but the city (except the nigh clubs) completely shuts down at 1, so we headed home. Not too bad of a decision, as I had class the next day.

We made a final stop at an old kirk to check out the cemetery in back. It was wonderfully eerie as we meandered among the tombs and gravestones, especially with a castle as a backdrop and the drone (sounding oddly like ghosts screams, etc) creating a fitting soundtrack for this excursion. Two homeless people slept soundly on the front steps of the Kirk, and we were careful not to wake them as we strode past. As we crossed the Park on the way back to our flat, fireworks lit up the sky, as they had been all day. Jonmikel astutely commented that Halloween is just an excuse to light fireworks, as many had been going off throughout the day for the past week, at least.