A Leith of Faith

Welcome to Edinburgh! The most important thing to know before you visit a city is how to properly pronounce the name of the city, so you

1. Can easily navigate around

2. Don't sound like an absolute idiot

In this case, Edinburgh is most often pronounced in two ways

• Eddin-BUR-Ra - This is probably the way most of the world pronounces it when they're not trying to slaughter it by rhyming it with Scrooge McDuck's Duckburg

• Eddin-BRUH - This is how locals say it. Scots tend to say things quickly and lean into their vowels, so make sure you hit that BRUH hard, like a surfer talking about choice waves.

If you mispronounce it, Luna will be the first to call (howl) you out.

Locals also lovingly refer to it as "Auld Reekie", a nickname it snagged in the 17th Century when it was full of air pollution. The original city was contained by giant walls that surrounded the area now known as Old Town, and since people didn't want to live outside the barrier, they built tall narrow buildings crammed in next to each other. This led to a boatload of chimneys spewing out smoke, blanketing the area in a malodourous haze. Add to that streets chockablock with sewage and the thousands of corpses unceremoniously dumped in plague pits and mass graves, and you've got yourself a real romantic getaway. Edinburgh is now a gorgeous, bustling city but Scots still hold onto this excellent nickname from their sordid past.

Don't get me wrong. Someone in this crowd definitely stinks, but that's not Edinburgh's fault. She's beautiful.

Along those lines, one of our usual go-to activities in a new city is to check out a free walking tour as a way to get acclimated to the area as well as snagging a brief history lesson in the process. Our Edinburgh tour guide gave us a fantastic etymology of a modern slang phrase that originated in Scotland - we'll see if you can figure it out before I finish the story. In the Middle Ages, before they had indoor plumbing in Scotland, instead of a fancy toilet with a bidet attachment that you bought on Amazon that you would trade your entire family for, you did your business in a bucket, ideally in the second oldest brother's bedroom.

The act of dumping in a bucket was one thing but the dumping *OF* the bucket became the main problem as people would routinely chuck it out their window at all hours of the day. This was of course a problem as the main thoroughfare in the Grassmarket District was packed with shops, pubs, and restaurants so the people in the flats above the businesses were often chucking their leavings out onto streets full of people just trying to live their lives without being covered in excrement. In order to stop this, Edinburgh's town council created a new rule that you weren't able to dump your bucket until after 10PM.

The idea here was to avoid the number of people that would be out and about, however, 10Pm was exactly when all the bars closed so the people that WERE out were all drunk, stumbling back to their homes. The main practice before dumping your chamber pot was to shout "guarde l'eau!" (which is French for 'watch out, water') before giving it the ol' heave-ho out the window. Unfortunately this shouting often caused the drunks to look directly up at the sound of the sudden utterance, only to leave them staring directly at the impending feces. So if you were drunk enough, you got "Shit-Faced".

Luna's skyward view is much more appealing than a dropping poop bucket. (Don't ever say I don't compliment you, Katie)

Speaking of booze, we are having a blast trying out the hundreds of scotch varieties available over here. While our go-to in the pub is a pint of Tennents, we try to pick up a different bottle of whisky every time we hit a liquor store so we can sample as many as Scotland has to offer. A lot of bars also offer a "Malt of the Month" - a discounted spotlit whisky, so we always snag one of those if it's a new one. A monthly discount on booze is one of the few promotional things bars can offer in Scotland as Happy Hours and 2 for 1s are banned in the country in an effort to reduce binge drinking in short amounts of time, and any reduced cost for beer or liquor has to be in place for a minimum of 72 hours. But a lack of discounts doesn't this train. Here are some of the whiskies we've tried! My favorite so far is the Loch Lomond and Katie's is the Old Pulteney, but really our go-to is any. Any whisky will do. What's that one? Oh yeah I'll have that. I love that one.

But it's not just the dozens of whisky drams we're throwing down over here that makes us more amiable, as I cannot stress enough how friendly the people of Edinburgh are. Katie and I have travelled through almost 40 countries and we would occasionally encounter anti-American sentiments or gotten shit from locals about being from the US, but I have yet to get any of that in Scotland. Normally my gorgeous Midwest accent would be a dead giveaway that I'm not a Scot, but Edinburgh is a melting pot of ethnicities and backgrounds so the lack of a Scottish brogue isn't uncommon.

It's also much easier to blend in when you're constantly mumbling through a mask and throw in the occasional 'wee' or 'shite'.

When people at my bar eventually figure out I'm from the states, their most common response is "That's great! How are you finding Edinburgh?" Such a kind people. Also! I have been given phone numbers by several different bargoers, eager to welcome us to their city by meeting us out for drinks. We just met up with one couple last week and had an instant connection (shout out Katherine and Angus!), and we're headed to a party at another stranger's house this Friday for a local Burns Night feast - a celebration of Scottish poet Robert Burns where you drink whisky and recite his poetry to your soon to be eaten haggis. Imagine if you took the time to write a little ditty to your Popeye's Spicy Chicken sandwich before wolfing it down and you've got the idea. Take these friendly barflies, add in Katie's grad school cohort and my friends from work, and suddenly we're building a little community over here!

To be fair, I look like this now so it's no wonder I get so many interested parties.

We're discovering so many cool things about our current city and our neighborhood of Leith, and we can't wait to share it with our upcoming visitors. Just make sure you practice your pronunciations so you don't embarrass us. Remember that Edinburgh is Eddin-BRUH, Bunnahabhain whisky is BOONA-hah-ven, testicles are BAWS, and Cockburn is KOH-burn. That last one produced a monstrous response when I biffed it at the bar. Never forget.

Cheers,

Chris