 Fringe Fun |
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Well, sleeping at the hostel last night was akin to water torture, except instead of drops of water, it was slams of door. All night long, up and down this hostel. I would jump out of my "sleep" like someone had banged a congo drum right next to my ear or rather instead of banging the drum, they skipped the drum and decided to bang directly on my brain. It's like the doors here are weighted down with lead so they slam so hard that the windows rattle right along with my teeth. Not to mention that whenever the dude beneath me rolled over, I felt like I were rocking on a ship in peril, jarred by its crashing into glaciers and I had to grab onto the bedrails in fear of careening onto the floor to my death with a thud. We're settled into bed again in anticipation of an early morning train to York. Not that there's any point in going to bed, really, in the LOUDEST HOSTEL IN THE WORLD. Four stars my big fat arse. It's really not so terrible of a place except that people have absolutely no concept of exercising sheer common courtesy and lowering their voices instead of shrieking like crazed banshees when others such as myself are deluding themselves into the futility of attempting to sleep -- and the doors! The fucking goddamn doors! Slamming like bombs going off something like every ten seconds all night long and I am not in the least bit exaggerating. My earplugs have no effect. I can hear the street noise of traffic and street corner musicians and drunken maniacs celebrating the Fringe Festival and that is all cool and expected. But the doors. The doors are killing me. Is it so difficult, fellow backpackers of Edinburgh, to hold the handle and break the slam into a reasonably volumed, gentle closing rather than cavalierly releasing the zillion ton tank to its subsequent deafening crash? Is it? IS IT?!? It's almost comical. I mean, it has to be almost comical, otherwise I'd hurl myself out of the window and fling myself upon the mercy of the Royal Mile. So, future travelers, beware: if you have ears, avoid Brodies 2. If you are stone cold deaf, avoid it still, for the door slams are not only heard with the ears but with your spleen, down to the very marrow of your bones, and you will not sleep through the heart-quickening quakes, and you will become almost homicidal in your wrath. I will now console myself with recollections of today. We got up bleary-eyed from a night of hostel door warfare and went again to Rabbie Burns for breakfast of a bagel and ham sandwich. We headed to the Scottish Museum which had some cool stuff and was a great space but the audio tour was as the locals say rubbish. So it was a lot of aimless wandering which frankly gets boring and frustrating. We were both dragging and were somewhat revitalized by the great rooftop terrace view. 
We then went to the Fringe Office and got tickets for two shows. The first one we saw was Women of Troy, Women of War. The performances were strong overall and the song at the beginning was gorgeous. The actors did the best they could with a somewhat overambitious and overlong piece. The actress who played Hecuba was definitely the standout and impressed the hell out of us. After that, we rushed from the Old St. Paul's Church to Pleasance Courtyard to buy tickets for and see The Joy of Wine, whose flyer had been most persuasively handed to us by one of its stars, Hugh Andrew Jones, while we waited in the ticket line earlier. We got fruit smoothies and settled in for a show that basically made us piss our pants. The actors were shamelessly silly and danced in their undies and they had great chemistry and clever skits and we got a free glass of wine and it was a great way to lift our spirits because it was truly hilarious. We cannot stop saying, "Ciaran Murtagh." We went back to good old Mamma's because it was right across the street from our next theatre venue for a dinner of broccoli and zucchini soup, nachos, salads, and Peronis. We got into a bit of a spat but I'm not going to dwell on it because I think we are both just worn out and had to explode a bit. I guess if you're going to fight with someone the streets of Edinburgh are a scenic place to do it. The last show of the day was No Man's Land by Harold Pinter, and it was great. We'd learned of it when one of the very cute actors (the one in the bottom right corner) from it approached us with a flier last night on the Royal Mile. The acting and overall production were stellar all around on this one -- truly first-rate. That said -- I don't really think I got what was actually going on. I will have to do some research on it. This is no fault of the actors -- they were very talented and fully played each moment -- maybe I'm just thick in the head or it has holes riddled into it from door decibel abuse -- but when it was over I was left with feeling simultaneously satisfied and "...huh?" Maybe that's how it's meant to be. I have no idea. But it was really good. Anyway, being in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival has been awesome. It hasn't even officially started yet, but there are lots of previews of everything going on. The streets are SWARMING with young people who are so excited about what they are doing. There's just a buzz in the air. An overall excitement and joie de vivre. The fireworks from the Military Tattoo just went off. Good God it's loud and the combat-booted Germans in Simpsons t-shirts haven't even stomped back into the room yet. God give me strength!
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