E D I N B U R G H
4 - 8 May 2007

Introduction

Just in case you suffer from the same world-geography knowledge-gap as I do, allow me to explain that there are not two separate cities in Scotland, one prominent on the map and pronounced, "Edinberg," and another one, more difficult to pinpoint, and pronounced, "Edinboro." There is, I have discovered after only mild embarrassment, just one: it is spelled 'Edinburgh' but unaccountably pronounced, Edinboro.

Go figure.

Edinburgh, a tidy, accessible city

Edinburgh is a grey city; grey buildings, grey skies, grey streets. But those are just its physical aspects; the people, the places, the politics--those are very colorful indeed.

Some of the more colorful locals

We spent our first day becoming acquainted with the city and found it to be tidy, affable and accessible. As with many European cities, all the interesting bits are within walking distance--though in Edinburgh's case you'd better be fit as much of it is up and down steep hills--and anything a daunting distance away can be reached by train or bus.

Edinburgh, grey, but nice

The architecture is magnificent and the old and the new, if they don't blend together seamlessly, then at least they are not as jarringly dissimilar as I have seen in other places. There was, however, one building that stood out. As soon as I saw it I had to take a photo.

The ugliest apartment block I have every seen

"That's the ugliest apartment building I have ever seen," I remarked.

"That's the new Scottish Parliament," my wife said.

It was a marvel to me how any person could ever conceive of a building so magnificently grotesque, much less convince a presumably large group of people to allow it to be built. It wasn't art, I insisted, or bold, or symbolic; it was just rubbish.

But the Scottish Parliament was not finished with me yet.

Edinburgh street scene

The bums, my litmus test for the quality of a city, were fewer than I expected and, in my experience, sat unobtrusively in the background, whereas I would have assumed them to be a bit more vocal. And there may have been fewer of the disenfranchised about than I originally thought as some of the tourist attractions drummed up business by sending young people out dressed in period costume. These costumes were not stylized and sanitized depictions of period dress but often consisted of ragged clothing and, perhaps, a blanket wrapped around the shoulders. Young people dressed like this would wander the crowded streets offering brochures of their particular attraction and I occasionally mistook them for street-people selling the Big Issue.

View of the city

There are, to no one's surprise, a lot of bagpipers about, especially near the train station and information center where there is a high concentration of tourists. Naturally, I had to stop by for a listen. Bagpipe music still gets to me, and it made me want to go home and get my pipes out. Just think of the money I could make busking in Horsham; I could set up outside of a business and play until they paid me enough to move on.

Pipers, as if you expected anything less

<=Home      Return      The Past=>