BootsnAll Travel Articles

An Insider's Guide to Festive Edinburgh (1 Aug 2001)

By: Carita Groundstroem

Carita Groundstroem, Festival Guide Extraordinaire

1 August 2001

Imagine yourself slightly overwhelmed: surrounded by people you don't know, events you can't control, and weather that constantly seems to work against you. Now, that's just me on a good day.
Add a few thousand tourists and the excitement of eight simultaneous festivals – and you're right where I want you.

My name is Carita, and I am a blond nutcase. In my opinion this should give me the right to park anywhere I like and for my occasional spells of ditsyness to be accepted as normal. You will soon learn to see this and hopefully learn to love me for who I am. If you choose not to, you can at least point a finger and laugh at me. I appreciate comedy value as much as the next person.

Here's the deal: this year I am not only privileged to cover the Edinburgh festivals for BootsnAll, but I'm also producing my own play in the Festival Fringe. Well, co-producing, to be exact. What it means in practice is that I can take you backstage. Well, I will take you backstage whether you like it or not. You get to take part in the gossip, and you get to take part in my stress, but you also get the highs of the atmosphere, the performances and the silly things people do to get attention. (Personally, for our play, we decided taking our clothes off was not the right marketing approach. This of course may change in times of desperate measures. But I will return to that later.)

For me the summer started yesterday. I can't quite describe what happened, because it completely caught me off-guard. After living three years in Edinburgh you would assume that the place would be familiar in all circumstances, and that the weather – a constant cold, wet and windy phenomenon – would not take you by surprise. But like magic, overnight, it was like a strange sense of happiness had taken over the whole city, and all that bottled-up energy that Edinburgh had been keeping inside had been let out, as if someone had fired a start gun and a race had begun.

The festivals in Edinburgh liven up the city every year. Walking around the centre with one street performer's act blending into numerous others, you're suddenly surrounded by the United Nations. People from every imaginable country are there to enjoy the most diverse art mix in the world. Salsa and belly dancing, jazz and blues, the odd juggler in the street, opera performances from every part of the world and a few body parts bouncing about as freely as they can without the risk of falling off. Whatever you are looking for, it is there. If you're not finding it, look harder, for despite the fact that the city is the embodiment of chaos, half the fun is finding what you never knew was there – at random.

The season starts with the Jazz and Blues festival, mostly outdoor events taking advantage of the summer that just began, and there I was at the Grassmarket, walking right in the middle of it, watching old ladies in very provocative dresses (a la Moulin Rouge) dance around to a brass band, while the stages on both sides of this engaged in different styles of jazz.

The party is just starting, and if you bear with me, I will take you through it. We may get lost on the way, but in all honesty, the Edinburgh Festival is no time to take shortcuts.

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