Five Things That Edinburgh Taught Me

I have been living and working in Edinburgh since September 2019. I managed to experience the immense beauty of the romantic Scottish capital within and without the pandemic. On the 19th of September 2019, I was born again, leaving Greece and starting a new life in Scotland. I am effectively two years old, even though I was born in April 1990.

In this article, I will try to highlight how Edinburgh’s magnificence appeals to my own life’s itinerary and the person I want to be. There was a certain frame of mind that allowed the city to move from the darkness to its greatness. This is my truth and I cannot help but share it. I am always inspired when I walk these streets.

Reconcile with your Past

Where do I begin? Edinburgh was not always the beautiful tourist destination that it is today. The city’s past is tied to brutal sieges, inhuman and unjust witch trials, pandemics that eradicated large percentages of Edinburgh’s population. Edinburgh does not hide its dark past under the carpet.

Instead, it projected its darkest days to educate, entertain and inspire. At some point, you might run across a tour guide that is dressed like a plague doctor. There are many reminders of the hardships that form Edinburgh’s tragic past. When you step into the Old Town, you get a glimpse of how the city was built in layers surrounding the dark and dirty closes when there was no sewage. There are a lot of stories if you open your ears and listen carefully. The great quality of life with the open spaces, the gardens, the artists was not always the case. We sometimes tend to forget about it. A good life is never a given.

A good life is earned. It requires transforming from who you were to who you want to be. The currency is the present and it is such an amazing currency to possess.

Start Anew but with Intelligent Design

This is something I often feel when I walk down Frederick Street heading to Stockbridge. When I am in the heart of the New Town I realize that someone from the past, a great ancestor to this city, saw all of the chaos that surrounded the Old Town and decided to build the New Town with completely different scope.

There is an antithesis impossible to miss. Everything in the Old Town was hectic, dirty, and unsanitary. The New Town was precisely designed to have open spaces, water running, gardens, and places of leisure. Nowadays the Old Town is as beautiful but when James Craig won the competition to start designing the New Town in 1766, the Old Town was horrible.

When I get to enjoy the serenity of the Dean Path, I try to remind myself that people more than two centuries ago worked hard to leave a legacy like that. This is the love that one receives from their ancestors. This is how one should look at the future. Is there anyone going to receive that love from me?

Honestly, I often feel that this city has taken good care of me. I get that feeling when I lie on the grass in the Princes Street Gardens with a book or a couple of good friends. I feel that when I can walk a zebra crossing and the incoming driver will stop and smile, which is not exactly the Greek way that I was used to. There is something genuinely nice about the people in Scotland. You hear about it before you get to live here and I will confirm it any day.

Intelligent design. Planning. Visualizing what and where I want to be and dragging that image from the sphere of inspiration into reality. Someone visualized Calton Hill Greek temple. Someone else visualized the clock tower at Balmoral. Someone even visualized the adventures of a young officer named Edward Waverley. Someone visualized the love that I would receive a couple of centuries ago.

I am forever grateful!

Civilization but also Nature

If you ask me, I would say that Edinburgh is one of the few places on Earth that manages to see these two forces not as opposing but as complimentary. The skyline does not block one’s view of the Forth Canal or the Pentland Hills or the coast.

This has been the realist vs romantic dispute of the Industrial Revolution. On one hand, human beings are viewed as the rulers of the world that cut it down to size with science and technology and seafaring, etc. On the other hand, nature is dark and unexplainable, and sacred and it only shares its blessings with whomever it chooses. The first notion was the destructive notion of industrialists and the second one is the autocratic and obscurantist notion of the romantics.

Unparalleled harmony, as nature and green spaces, hills, beaches embrace Edinburgh’s urban environment without the latter disrupting the former. This has taught me not to go against my own predispositions in order to satisfy a plan. Accordingly, I should not let my nature get in the way of what I want to morph into. These things are meant to grow simultaneously without disrupting each other. It is easier said than done but there seems to be a golden ratio, somehow.

Seize the Day for it is fairly short. The Night Too.

During the winter the day can be as short as six hours which comes as a shock at first. It is also very long and beautiful during the summer so no complaints there. It is impossible to live in Scotland if you allow the darkness or the weather to get in the way of the things you want to do. Impossible. Let me repeat that. Impossible.

That made me reflect on how Greeks stop swimming at the sea as soon as September comes. So the temperature is 30 Celsius degrees during both August and September and yet they will stop. People here will run and cycle in the snow and rain and go wild swimming. This made me reflect on my own courage. The weather has my willpower tempered like a Scottish broadsword or so I like to think.

I never waste a good day by staying indoors anymore. Never. Because the sunshine is scarce and invaluable. So, I would like to think that I have started to seize the day more. More work, more love, more physical activities. More Edinburgh on a good day or a bad day or a short one.

Don’t Forget Romance

In Edinburgh’s central train station there is a caption, “This is the only train station to have the name of a fictional character.” Waverley as in Edward Waverley, the daring young captain of the army that delves into the unknown of the Scottish Highlands to find himself. A hero becomes the person that he wants to be through adversity. The archetype of the romantic hero, warrior, scholar, lover.

I want to be Edward Waverley. Fight more, learn more, love more. This is a source of inspiration that can’t be overlooked because Sir Walter Scott and his rocket-shaped monument intended it to be so. The writer clearly wanted us to breathe in deep and fill our lungs with the hope that we will grow into the person we want to be. Romanticism wants us to be braver, penetrate the darkness and come out victorious no matter the trials of life ahead.

I will celebrate these two years with a big smile on my face. Edinburgh has offered me and keeps offering me too many things to count. Great friends, inspiration, taking care of me. I am forever grateful and in love forever!