Edinburgh resembles a hedgehog – both in the bristle of spires on turrets and in its special homeliness. Neither the harshness of the climate and architecture nor the tourist bustle interferes with the feeling of calm coziness. Whichever way you look – the gaze comes up against towers, obelisks, monuments, stone masses with a long bloody history.
Long bloody histories are generally a national specificity of Scotland. Here, on the wall of a building, the history of a famous criminal is told in pictures. Here, a man dressed as Mel Gibson's character from Braveheart is collecting money for children with leukemia and, delighting the crowd, brandishes a mock bloody head in front of it. Here, a pale-faced vampire with fangs comes toward you, inviting those interested on a walking tour of Edinburgh's cemeteries and dungeons, where especially vicious ghosts are found (the walk will start at midnight). Here is the place where criminals used to be executed. For those who still lack horrors, I recommend a tour of the Scottish mountains, lakes and castles: the assortment includes genocide, clan warfare, murders of monarchs, conspiracies, poisonings, scary tales, and so on.
Anyway, so
The climate is maritime. In summer it is cool, in winter it is damp and chilly. All the rest of the time is occupied by the off-season with a temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius. The vegetation is a strange combination of severe northern fir trees and rowan trees with southern magnolias blooming in April. In spring, everything blooms in Edinburgh; the roadsides are full of daffodils, as weedy as our dandelions. From spring until the cold weather, facades, staircases, and windows of buildings are hung with flowers. For some reason, especially lush plants adorn the entrances to pubs – by this sign they can be unmistakably recognized from afar.
On the outskirts of the city lies the North Sea; it can be seen from the city towers and heights, but this proximity is deceptive – you have to trudge and trudge to reach it. Seagulls fly over the city with screams. The River Leith flows through Edinburgh; along it you can take quiet walks through green nooks. The Old Town is tall, gray, with small courtyards and archways that beckon you to look inside, and pubs that are never empty. Drinking establishments seem to compete to outdo each other with their names; some are completely unprintable, like "The Merry ...". It is said that the locals have for centuries enjoyed the pastime of pub crawling – crawling from pub to pub until you drop. It is also said that by tradition the groom would throw a bachelor party before the wedding, and the whole crowd would crawl through pubs, losing "fighters". In the end, the bride had to come to the rescue and drag the lifeless body of her betrothed home on herself.
In terms of pubs, there is complete gender equality here. At four in the morning, girls with squeals tumble out of the doors of beer houses, fall on the doorstep, and in different directions fly shoes, mobile phones, and the contents of handbags. Especially powerful waves of revelers roll through the pubs on big holidays. What happens on the streets of Edinburgh on the night from Good Friday to Holy Saturday – you have to see it; our City Day is calmer.
Tourists should like the little shop "World of Whiskey" on the Royal Mile. If you are lucky, you will meet an old lady there who, with aristocratic intonations, offers you to try a shot: You should try it, dear! In the alcohol departments and souvenir shops, heather liqueur Heather Mist is also sold – something like Baileys, but not thick and with a characteristic soft taste. Among the heather delights, it is worth noting the beer Fraoch: the label assures that it is brewed according to a 4000-year-old recipe. Some say it is "that very" heather honey.
Tell me another!
The local dialect is easily recognized by the rolled, almost Russian 'r'. In Edinburgh there are no problems with understanding, but the Glaswegian accent is one of the three most incomprehensible in the UK, along with Belfast and Cornish. It recently turned out that even computer speech analyzers do not understand it, so for Glasgow they had to write special programs. But educated people, including language course teachers, everywhere express themselves in standard English.
In Scotland they like to emphasize that all the most important world inventions belong to its natives. These are the steam engine, telephone, television, transistor, penicillin, radar, insulin, and Dolly the sheep. The bicycle, if anyone doubts it, was also invented by Scots. They even calculated that 11% of all Nobel Prizes have been received by their compatriots (or their descendants).
Now Scotland ranks third in the world in scientific research, and in some areas (biotechnology, optical engineering, and astrophysics) even first. Dolly the sheep can be seen in the Edinburgh Royal Museum, although there is plenty to see there even without it. High technologies have penetrated life to such an extent that on Edinburgh streets there is Internet access in telephone booths, and visitors to the capital navigate not by maps but by computer guides placed at all busy points of the city. Among Edinburgh's main tourist attractions are 'Camera Obscura', a world of optical illusions, and 'Our Dynamic Earth' – a museum where you walk through halls that imitate all stages of the planet's development. In Glasgow, a few years ago, the Science Museum opened: in a surreal building shaped like a silver bubble, there are four floors of interactive exhibits and a planetarium. In early April, a huge science festival takes place in Edinburgh. Universities, museums, the zoo, and the botanical garden offer their programs; their educational events amaze with variety: from night walks with a flashlight through airplane hangars to a construction master class for three-year-olds. I assert as an eyewitness: it is fascinating.
To be continued.