Edinburgh / Amsterdam / Prague

I keep starting my posts with this sentiment but: it has been so long since I last wrote. I’m writing from the Amsterdam airport. I’m on the tail end of a two week Europe trip.

Edinburgh to Amsterdam to Prague to Amsterdam to USA.

I left for this trip feeling a little burnt out with life back home but I return feeling cautiously recharged.

Edinburgh

I’m in Edinburgh. I’ve come here on a bit of a whim. Months ago I message Rupert about visiting Edinburgh Fringe. Weeks ago, Rupert reminds me that the festival’s happening. Burnt out with work and desperate for an escape, I book a ticket to Edinburgh to see the fest.

This is my first international trip of the year. When I arrive, I’m pleasantly surprised by a few things

There are way more Asian people, more racial diversity than I expected
Everyone seems so happy, joyful
Everything is so close. We stay in an Airbnb on the royal mile and all of our shows are within 20 minutes walking distance
The weather is pleasantly cold. Hovering between the high 50s and low 70s
Sticky toffee pudding is so damn good

As were their crisps. I love this brand. I first had it in London a year ago. I loved it so much I ordered one from Amazon UK. Others do not seem to love them as much as me but more for me I suppose

The fest has taken over the entire city. There are more than 300 venues playing shows at any given moment. You can’t walk down the street without getting flyers for at least 3 different shows. Even the streets are taken over by performers—ranging from clowns to fire dancers to magicians.

We end up seeing 3-6 shows every day.

During this trip I see some of the best shows of my life.

Some highlights

Stamptown Comedy
- I can’t do it justice by writing down what happened but here are some highlights.
  - As we walk in a dude on rollerblades wearing merch (hat, shirt) that says Dylan keeps rollerblading around. He throws himself into the performance. Some dudes in skin suits come out and dance behind him. He air drums to September by Earth Wind Fire. His finale song is Ridin Solo by Jason Derulo. They keep playing it throughout the show and he keeps running on stage
  - Main host comes out—sooooo funny. One of the funniest live dudes I've seen in my life. Zach Zucker. Plays this weird Brooklyn accented character the entire time. One of his main gags is to point at his ring whenever anyone in the crowd laughs and says "I'm married" llllllmaooooooo laughing as I sit in my chair writing this now
  - At one point he crowd works and talks to a girl named Caroline. Then he literally starts mumbling the entire song Roses by Outkast. Literally goes through 75% of the song. You think he'll stop but he just plows through. Takes a good 2-10 minutes with the entire gag
  - A woman called the Virgin comes out. Small, wearing black trash bags with a bunch of dark makeup on. Very trashy, disheveled looking. Her thing is to be filthy and pretend that God impregnated her and act super creepy. Actually pulls it off and it's so weird and dark that people are caught off guard but really like it. She goes around “baptizing” people with her drool. She asks permission from each crowd member but I still cringe each time they let her do it. She births a piece of raw steak and that becomes her prop the entire night
    - Weirdest, creepiest, most disgusting thing I’ve seen in a while but I was very engaged
- This may be arrogance but when I watch shows I usually think to myself “I could totally do that.’ This was the first show in a while where the talent / skill level was so far beyond me that I couldn’t think that. Inspiration.

The Man Who Thought He Knew Too Much
- Very charming four person play (with musical accompanist) where a frenchman gets caught up in an international conspiracy
- The most interesting part of the show was how they framed the stage with their bodies. E.g. a scene where a character is aiming through a scope: the shooter is in the back of the stage looking through an imaginary scope on an imaginary gun while the other actors form a scope upstage with their bodies (two actors form a circle with their hands while the third actor stands in the middle of the circle). As the shooter adjusts the scope, so too do the actors forming the scope upstage.
- So simple but so creative.
Grand Opera Hotel
- A man starts a new job at what appears to be a old haunted hotel. On his first day he stumbles on what he thinks is a ghost singing opera (it turns out to be a coworker). The story focuses on the pair’s budding romance and how they connect with each other (they only meet face to face at the end of the show).
- The first part of the show was a little dry but I was very pleasantly surprised when the latter half turned out to be an opera! I haven’t watched a musical where they delay singing until the second half of the show.
The Umbiliical Brothers
- A unique format where the actors were onstage with green screens. They’d play skits on the green screen that would display on the larger screen above them.
- Interesting gag where they videoed specific audience members and greenscreened the actors’ mouths over their faces and dubbed over them
A couple of Asian performances—4/4/4 (4 asian actors play 4 white IRL characters who had pretended to be Asian characters), Unforgettable Girl (solo show about an Asian mail order bride), Chris Grace as Scarlett Johansson (solo show talking about whitewashing roles)—ranging from decent to terrible.
- Every Asian show we watched focused too much on Asianness in relation to white people. Which I understand given Edinburgh and most of the performers were pretty white. But it felt overdone.
- We’ve seen so many Asian works lately that highlight Asianness without endlessly comparing it to whiteness. I wanted to see more of that.

Besides shows we also did a day trip to Loch Ness. Overrated in my opinion. It’s a lake with a castle and I’ve seen plenty of lakes and don’t care much for castles.

We stopped by Glencoe on the way back and that was stunningly beautiful.

On the ride back to Edinburgh we got into a fender bender and stopped for a few hours in the town of Callander. A small town with a main street with a few restaurants and pubs. The pub we went to had a small group of old Scottish people playing guitar and singing Karaoke. After a few drinks I mustered the courage to join them. They asked me to pick a song—something exciting. I picked my go-to Can’t Feel My Face by The Weeknd. Killed it. The Scottish grandmas and grandpas clamored for more but I—in my humble ways—passed the proverbial mic to the next performer.

After a few more songs we got the bus fixed and rode back to Edinburgh.

Overall Edinburgh was amazing. Loved the city. Loved the fest. Could absolutely see myself living there for a year.

On my traveling companion: I am consistently impressed by how directly Rupert lives his life. Of all my friends I think he is the most direct in seeing something he wants and attempting to get it. Where others might refrain due to embarrassment or hesitation, he seems to go forward with no doubts. E.g. after the Stamptown show he wanted to stick around to meet the cast. I went home while he waited and met everyone. He ended up hanging out at the bar with them and doing magic tricks for them. I had a legitimate excuse for leaving (I had to book my next leg of the trip) but in the end that was still an excuse to not linger and wait and try to meet the cast.

Fun fact—In a weird chain of events:

King of Scotland is defeated in battle
They build a wall and move everyone inside the borders
With no room to build horizontally, people start building vertically
Edinburgh ends up with the tallest buildings during this era (12-14+ stories high. Unfortunately most of them burn down)
People start throwing their waste out of these high storied buildings (shouting GARDYLOO which is french for “watch out for water” because the Scots love France)
When drunkards hear people shouting this—in confusion—they instinctively look up and get smashed in the face by a dookie
1. People also instinctively put their hands up leading to broken fingers :(
Leading to the phrase shit faced drunk

Amsterdam

I was reluctant to leave Edinburgh (I could have stayed 2-3 more days enjoying the fest) but my time had come.

I landed in Amsterdam. I’d toyed with the idea of living there since my company has a branch office in the city and I wanted to check it out directly.

Honestly—a little underwhelmed. In contrast to the beautiful old castles of Edinburgh, Amsterdam was pretty modernized. There were plenty of positives—beautiful canals lining the streets, easy access for cyclists, a globalized food scene—but it didn’t capture my heart as much as Edinburgh.

The nightlife was great. It seemed to transform into a completely different city when night came.

Did all the usual stuff

canal tour
red light district (nothing crazy 🙊)
Rijksmuseum (we did this on a whim and was in and out pretty quickly)
Walking tour
Smoked weed from one of their coffeeshops
Albert Cuyp Market

Ate all the usual stuff

Stroopwafel
Fries—had way too many fries in this country
Cheese!!!! Had some amazing cheese while I was there
Indonesian! Was surprised to see so many Indonesian restaurants in the city. Karin later told me it’s because the Dutch had colonized Indonesia

I’m glad I went. Would not go out of my way to visit again but if I ended up there on a long layover I’d enjoy it.

Someone on the trip told me that Amsterdam was a city to relax in and that rang true. Perhaps a little too relaxing after the excitement of Edinburgh.

Prague

A few days into Amsterdam, Harry and I felt we’d be a little bored staying there a week so we booked a trip to Prague.

This was the classic European city experience we were looking for. Castles! Old beautiful bridges! Town squares! A river!

Some previously unknown facts of Prague

There are a ton of Koreans there! As far as I can tell it’s because a famous Korean drama (Lovers in Prague) ran back in the day and Koreans have been visiting the city ever since
Prague has great beer! We had their beloved Pilsner Urquell several times and even visited the museum
For some reason there are tons of Thai massages there. Not entirely sure why
Good meat and cheese

Overall, Prague was a beautiful, old European city. I’m glad I went. Will likely be some time before I visit again (if ever). Somewhat of a weird thought to know that you’ve visited a place for the last time but oh well.

Back to NY

Every time I travel I step away enough from my old life to re-examine what I want to do better and what I want going forward.

This trip was no different.

I want to do work I enjoy (or at least feel engaged with).
1. A number of experiences this trip reinforced this belief: reading Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and seeing how the characters loved their work
2. Watching Zach Zucker and Stamptown have so much fun on stage
3. Conversely, I still don’t want to be a starving artist. For all the shit talking I do about my job sometimes, it’s truly amazing how many resources I have because of it and what I’m able to do with them. I guess the balancing act is maintaining a job that pays well while reminding yourself there’s a vast world beyond it. Spending the money on enriching experiences.
I gotta get my shit together. Nothing fantastic in life happens by chance (or at least it’s very unlikely for me) and I want to be a person who can build a life I want instead of waiting for it to happen to me.
1. There are so many distractions in this world. So easy to forget what you want out of life. So easy to let things go to a mediocre homeostasis.
2. I wonder if in the past—pre internet—it was easier to stay focused on things
3. Can’t blame everything on the internet though