It's been quite awhile since our last post. Luckily, we haven't fallen off a glacier or been run over by a Scotsman or anything-- we've just been busy. Our return flight from Iceland went smoothly, and we spent a very pleasant final week in Edinburgh with Aram's aunt Joan and uncle Stephen.

This was the room we stayed in

We were lucky enough to be in Edinburgh while the Fringe Festival was going on.

We both enjoyed the opportunity to see a few shows. Going to theater and comedy productions is not something I had ever really thought to do in Philadelphia, though I enjoyed the free things offered to me as a student at Bard very much. I'm not sure why I never took the initiative to seek out productions in Philadelphia, but I'll certainly do so in the future, as long as I can find things that are free or at least cheap.

The first show was saw was without planning at all. We walked to one of the main venues and went to the information booth. We explained we wanted to see something that night, but we had no idea what. The man at the desk was incredibly helpful, almost immediately pointing us towards a showcase finale of a comedy competition that had been going on for some time. Hundreds of comics had been eliminated, and we were down to the final 8. This was a great thing to see for our first Fringe show, because we were able to see a bunch of different comics for just a few minutes at a time. Both of us felt that several were excellent, some were okay, and one or two weren't good at all. Overall it was a lot of fun and the host was hilarious as well.

I was also able to reconnect with Jen Mackie, an old friend of mine from a summer program I did in high school. She's Australian, but she was living in Edinburgh for the summer working at the Fringe Festival.

Sorry for the crap underexposed picture; it's the only one we took of Jen - Aram

We met up for a drink and a free comedic performance-art show at a goth bar called Cabaret Voltaire.  The show was by 19 year-old Yve Blake, entitled "Am I Good Friend?". There is unfortunately no coherent description of it on the Fringe website but it was basically this: Yve, having realized that she is perhaps not a good friend, and that all her friends who seem to like her are really just pretending, sets out to determine through a set of scientific tests what makes the absolute epitome of a "good friend". To reach this conclusion, she uses interactive media, props, dance breaks, and interviews with her real friends, as well as audience participation. She stays in "crazy professor" mode throughout the entire show, improvises impressively, interacts both charmingly and with great humor with the audience, and carries the whole bizarre thing off with an unstoppable energy. To boot, behind all of the rather raucous humor was some real wisdom about what being a friend actually means, as well as a more personal reveal about Yve's behavior as a friend in a particular situation, where she knew that she had been a crappy friend indeed. As an audience member, I got a gift at the end, laughed at all the funny parts with genuine pleasure, and felt that something intelligent had been said about friendship as well. As raw as this show was, and as young as Yve is; really just starting out with her performance art, I was still quite impressed. It was impossible not to love this girl.

Afterwards we got a bite to eat with Jen and a friend of hers, then saw a non-speaking physical comedy act by three Dutch men, called "Nothing is Really Difficult."

I really wanted to like this one a lot because Jen had said it was amazing (she had already seen it at the Adelaide Fringe Festival, and now was paying to see it again), but I'm not sure that I did. I think my expectations influenced my experience of it negatively in that I expected a narrative of some sort, while there was none at all. Aram felt the same way. However, the physical comedy was enjoyable to watch, and there were parts that were truly funny. Mostly it was these three men moving around in difficult ways inside a huge wooden box-- climbing walls, falling out of walls, getting stuck in things, etc. In any case, I have never seen anything like it before.

We also saw Milena Milanova's "Nikotine," an adaptation of Chekhov's one-act play "On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco." This was a one-woman show as well with the use of a puppet as the main (and only) character. Milanova's use of the puppet was skillful, and some parts were funny, but overall both Aram and I thought that perhaps a better selection from or adapation of the original material might have made it a better show. I mean, we all know how Russian literature is, and that wasn't the problem. Certainly the ramblings of an oppressed man forced to give a stern lecture on one of his few remaining pleasures by his overbearing wife is a tedious subject, but it is one available for comedic interpretation, which is what I believe Milanova's intent was. Though I have not read the original text, reading other Chekhov and also seeing Chekhov plays enacted lead me to believe that more could have been done with this. I just felt as though Milanova was "filling time" a lot of the time, repeating things when certainly more could have been found in the original text to include. Also, the description of the piece makes it sound like the main character uses the forced platform of a lecture against smoking to instead go into a detailed rant about the perils of marriage. Instead, he simply repeatedly mentions that his wife is mean, and not much more detail is given. I didn't dislike this piece at all-- it was enjoyable to watch, and as stated, Milanova's work with the puppet was very impressive. However, it didn't live up to my expectations.

We also saw Centralia, which is a play by a small British theater group based on the true story of Centralia, Pennsylvania, which was abandoned (save for 3 people) due to coal fires under the streets raging out of control. The play is supposed to represent the three final residents of Centralia coming to Edinburgh to tell their story.

This was pretty bizarre, but in the end both Aram and I found we liked it quite a lot. The only thing that was a little off was hearing Brits trying to imitate American accents, but it really didn't take away from the show at all. One guy had a great, spot-on Fargo type accent, which was hilarious, though not really the right area of the country.

The final show we saw was called "Morning Edition," where a panel of comedians improvised political comedy based on the morning's newspapers. This was also quite funny, though Aram and I missed some of the more specific jokes because we're not familiar with all the details of recent UK news. Most of it we got, though, and it was amusing. They asked if there were any Americans in the crowd at one point, and when Aram and I (the only ones there, by the way) raised our hands sheepishly, they cracked something about Paul Ryan.

In related news, while in Edinburgh I read a news story about Mitt Romney's running mate selection that basically asked us to consider the possibility that either Mitt Romney has actually gone off the deep end, or Paul Ryan is a grenade placed by the Democrats to purposely make Mitt Romney un-electable. Interesting to see what the view of pieces of American politics is from the other side of the pond. Allow me to add to this that this particular article included the phrase "Has Mittens lost his marbles?"

Gotta love Scotland.

Besides the shows we saw and all the walking around we did, we also went with Joan to Craigmillar Castle. We spent the better part of the afternoon there exploring the fascinating twists and turns of a place that has been added-on-to and changed several times over the centuries. Because of this, there are remnants of floors where there are now only big open spaces, or staircases that dead-ended halfway up into a wall.







On our way back, we took a detour through a beautiful garden. All of this was walkable from Joan and Stephen's house.

I'd never seen a Monkey Puzzle Tree before; I'm told they're considered kind of tacky in Britain

On our final night, the Carters were kind enough to take us out to dinner at a well-known vegetarian restaurant called David Bann's. Everything was excellent: creative without being overly or stupidly so, well-executed, and most importantly of course, it tasted awesome.

We packed our bags early on the morning of August 17th, had a final breakfast of toast, jam, marmite, tea, fruit, muesli, milk, and coffee (I have grown really fond of this kind of open breakfast spread where everything is kind of set out and everyone sits down together and kind of picks at whatever they like), and headed for the bus stop. Our next task was a 23-hour bus ride from Edinburgh to Amsterdam.