Fringe

Largest In The World

In today's world of marketing, superlatives frequently are used to sell products. Biggest. Best. Fastest. Strongest. The skeptics among us don't believe all of those words. However, we are here to report that at this very moment, Edinburgh is hosting the largest arts festival in the world. Repeat, largest in the world. The Fringe Festival.

We are talking about 25 days that feature more than 50,000 performances of 3,500 different shows in 300 venues. It started just this last week. We are talking about a city with a population of 500,000 people hosting that many visitors in a single month. What started in 1947 as an alternative counter-culture event is now definitely mainstream (with a side of funk). The City Center, with the crowds, is nearby (see photo). We have already elbowed our way through this. So here we are, thankfully, and not by accident, in a flat in the quiet neighborhood of Stockbridge. We have booked into talks by famous book authors, into a couple of shows (including Hamlet with super star Ian McKellen), and into the Royal Military Tattoo (bagpipes galore). Exciting stuff.