Life in Edinburgh: jumping from summer to fall

Edinburgh Festival Fireworks
The fireworks signifying the end of the Edinburgh International Festival (as seen from our new kitchen window).

August in Edinburgh was a whirlwind of activity: long days filled with festivals, tourists, and fireworks. And then September comes, and the sunsets are suddenly much earlier than they have been, and there’s a tiny, delicate whiff of fall in the air. But that’s not all that is different.

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Comedy at the Fringe: A cheat sheet for Americans

Some of the many Americans in town for the Fringe.
Some of the many Americans in town for the Fringe.

Lots and lots of Americans visit Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. Hopefully, many of you are here to enjoy some of the delightful British and international comedy acts performing here this month. To help you get the maximum amount of enjoyment out of these shows, we’ve put together a little cheat sheet of cultural references which are popular in Britain this year, which may not be familiar to those of you who live on the other side of the pond.

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Edinburgh: Gay for Theater at the Fringe

Flyers and crowds as the Fringe takes over Edinburgh's Royal Mile
Flyers and crowds as the Fringe takes over Edinburgh’s Royal Mile

What a wonderful first week at the Fringe it has been. We have ticket stubs and show flyers coming out our ears, we’re sleep-deprived, and the pedometer on my iPhone is very proud of me. I’ve seen 31 shows already (just 3,162 left to go and I’ll have seen them all).

Looking at the top-rated shows on our theater list at the moment, there’s a theme that runs through many of them: gay gay gay. Some are serious dramatic works, some are hilarious comedies, and some manage to be both at the same time.

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Edinburgh Fringe: Opening Weekend and 2-for-1 days

A rainy day at the Fringe
A rainy day at the Fringe

Wheeeee, this is fun! The Edinburgh Fringe officially started on Friday (although previews had been running since Wednesday), and the crowds showed up right on time. It takes significantly longer to walk across town these days, with all the tourists and flyerers in your way (I need to stop walking like a New Yorker – it only leads to frustration). It’s relatively quiet over in our corner of New Town, but the Old Town is packed to the gills.

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Expat life: How to buy a home in Scotland*

SOLD(*not really a how-to guide of any sort)

The craziest thing just happened: we became the owners of our very own little piece of Edinburgh. It’s an old piece of an old building, tucked away in a corner of the Edinburgh New Town UNESCO World Heritage Site. It combines the wear and tear of an almost-200-year-old structure with the overlaid decor aesthetics of a 1970s-era DIYer, and it’s ours, all ours.  

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The Vegas Wedding

VegasWedding 2

“They can probably get you a student visa. They kept saying how much easier it would be if we were married.” A little over ten years ago, we were living in New York. The company I worked for had just opened an office in Milan, and I had been chosen to staff it. Scott was counting the days until he could quit his job on Long Island to come along.

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