Edinburgh. Wild, crazy Edinburgh.

Well, that was something. Three days in Edinburgh during the fringe festival. I don´t really know Edinburgh very well, and so seeing it in its festival state is like hearing the ultra-hypo techno dance remix of a song before you hear the original acoustic version. I wouldn´t mind visiting again when there´s not a festival on, just to see what it´s like normally. But this was madness. The streets were packed with people and performers (because performers aren´t people). When people in a show weren´t performing they were pushing leaflets of their show into your hands. There were jugglers, musicians, singers, those annoying people who pretend to be statues, stilt walkers, you name it. And that was just on the streets. It seemed like every second pub had a free comedy show, and then there are venues on every street of the city that hosted half a dozen different shows in every room it could cram a couple of performers in. The university particularly was a rabbit-warren of performance spaces.
I spent a lot of time in Edinburgh just going into pubs, walking around, going into pubs, watching some live street performance, going into pubs, having lunch (in a pub), and just generally consuming more Guinness than is strictly healthy for a person.
Of course I saw a handful of paid shows in fixed venues. Again, this isn´t a theatrical review blog so I´ll keep it brief. The first three shows I saw were comedy - Dave Callan, Jimeoin and Ed Byrne, in that order. I swear it was purely coincidental that they were all Irish (Dave Callan and Jimeoin have spent so much time in Australia they may as well be Australian though). The shows got progressively better. Dave Callan was... mediocre, Jimeoin was funny - but you´re never in for a surprise with him anyway. You always know what to expect. And Ed Byrne was side-splittingly funny. Makes my paltry attempts of humour in this blog seem feeble. But hey, he´s a professional comedian, and this is a travel blog. I would say the travel journalism in Ed Byrne´s comedy show was lacklustre at best.
Then I saw two pieces of theatre. As many of you may know I graduated from uni 5 years ago with a major in Drama, and apart from a little bit 4 years ago I haven´t seen or been involved in any theatre since then. So I was feeling a bit guilty about this and decided to see a show called "tales from Edgar Allen Poe" and a production of "Death of a Salesman".
The first one started at quarter to eleven at night, probably to suit the material. Now, I like E. A. Poe. This show could have been better though. Firstly there was little in the way of seating - the audience was required to sit or stand around in the space. I´m not sure why they made this decision, because I became very uncomfortable very quickly, and this fact may have been the biggest contributor to my not being overly impressed with the actual performance. However, with such a huge body of work to choose from, they could have chosen some pieces that were better suited to being adapted to the stage. The three they chose - the Raven, the Fall of the House of Usher and the Telltale Heart, are really little more than dry monologues. Great to read, but turgid on stage.
But anyway, moving on, I enjoyed Death of a Salesman a lot more. First off there was traditional theatre-style seating -  a godsend. And secondly it´s a famous play written for the stage. I had no idea what to expect when I went in - I had heard of the play and that it was supposed to be really good, but that´s about it. Oh yeah, I also knew that one of the characters was a salesman and that he would die, but that was only a bit of highly deductive reasoning.
The play is set in 1950s America, and the biggest fault I could find with the production was that the scottish cast´s attempts at the American accent were for the most part embarassing. However the actor playing Willy, the salesman and main character, pulled it off nearly flawlessly so it was ultimately pretty good.
And finally on the last night I went to see the famous Edinburgh Tatoo.

I want to ride my bicycle

Seeing as I play in a Highland Pipe band in Australia, I couldn´t exactly go to Edinburgh while the Tatoo was on and just ... not go to the tatoo. I would´t be able to show my face! Besides, I was genuinely interested in seeing it myself.
And to be honest, I was slighly disappointed. I guess I was expecting bagpipes until my ears bled. I was expecting to positively drown in them. I was expecting so many bagpipes that they literally had to throw them into the audience to get rid of them. Okay I got a bit carried away, but I did expect more pipes than I got.
Of course the massed pipes and drums at the very start and the finale at the end had plenty of pipes, but throughout the middle of it there was only a light smattering here and there and the rest was variations on brass bands throughout the world with gimmicks. Don´t get me wrong - I thought the band from the Netherlands that played on bicycles were quite interesting (don´t ask me how the Tuba player managed to steer!), but when at least half of the items were gimmicks such as this, and most of the rest were straight brass bands I really craved the sound of the pipes.

Edinburgh Castle from the top of the Sir Walter Scott monument

And I haven´t even begun to tell you about the sightseeing I did in Edinburgh! And, well, I didn´t really do that much. I visited the Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh Castle and climbed the Sir Walter Scott monument.
As I´ve mentioned before, museums aren´t that great to write about. I love visiting them, but writing about them is often tedious, particuarly for this sort of gigantic museum that covers everything imaginable.
Edinburgh castle is a bit easier to write about, but it has such a long and colourful history it´s hard to do it justice. Like so many castles it has been repurposed and rebuilt uncountable amounts of time. There is probably nothing remaining of whatever fort was originally built there thousands of years ago, but the chapel built at the top of the castle is the oldest building in Edinburgh. The castle does command a spectacular position over the town, perched up on its rocky outcrop. It´s almost surreal to see this green, rocky hill jutting out in the middle of this highly built up city. It´s also been the scene of enough sieges, intrigues, assassinations, political machinations and beach volleyball tournaments to keep historians busy for decades, although I may have made that last one up.

Sir Walter Scott Monument

And finally I got to get my fix for climbing monuments, by clambering up the over two hundred steps to the top of the sixty odd metre high Sir Walter Scott monument. Sir Walter Scott was a famous Scottish Novelist, having written such books as Rob Roy and Ivanhoe. I´m not quite sure why they thought this monument would be suitable for him - it looks like someone got a "do it yourself" cathedral kit, used up all the fancy archways, buttresses, vaultings and sculptures then couldn´t be bothered making the rest of the church. Still an impressive monument though, and you get quite a view from the top.
Now, however, I´m back in Germany for a week to get some well needed rest. I´ll still make a few posts, and I urgently need to update my Pub Challenge, but be expecting exciting posts again in about a week´s time when I head off to Venice.