Edinburgh's Fringe, The Biggest Arts Festival In The World, Turns A City Upside Down

Travel season is at its peak. Europe's major cities are fast-emptying. Mediterranean beaches are swelling with families. Travel agencies, hotels, and airlines are offering last-minute deals.

My husband and I run the other direction. We hate crowds. When we plan vacations, now that we're empty-nesters not bound by school schedules, we try to go off season and off the beaten track to avoid, well, people. We seek where no one else is. Avoiding the masses is one of our key criteria.

But once a year we break our rule.

Every August we go to one of the most visited cities on earth, and when it is most jammed with humanity - in fact, to the most densely packed arts festival in the world. Edinburgh, plays host to The Fringe Festival, which takes place every August for three weeks in Scotland's capital, officially kicking off August 1st and running until August 25.

Full disclosure is required: For four years, our son, a musician, has produced and hosted a blues show at the festival. And since we're there anyway, we just go with the mood, enjoy the electricity, free spirit and creativity, and follow the crowds to as many as we can of the thousands of performances taking place on hundreds of stages all over the city.

Among all the comedy, cabaret and theater, there’s plenty to keep visitors entertained.

“From big names in the world of entertainment to unknown artists looking to build their careers, the festival caters for everyone and includes theater, comedy, dance, physical theater, street theater, circus, cabaret, children's shows, musicals, opera, music, spoken word, exhibitions and events,” the official site promises.

Edinburgh Time Out describes the scene as so: “For 11 months of the year, Edinburgh is a relaxed, sedate city, enjoying the calm that comes with a small population. But come August, it all changes. The population numbers explode, the atmosphere becomes continental, and the grey stone façades burst into color.”

Last year, a grand total of 45,464 performances of 2,871 shows were clocked. This year offers no fewer. In fact, there are more than 3,000 shows in the program, “from Uppsala to Uluru and all points in between."  And many are free.

Indeed, not everyone is jumping for joy at the city's transformation. Many locals leave the city - and rent their apartments for astronomical prices. For those who stay, there is no escaping the three-week, round-the-clock party that possesses the city.  “August in Edinburgh is like no place else on earth,” concludes Time Out.

This year, according to The Guardian - and not for the first time - controversy is bubbling over complaints that the Fringe Festival is becoming “too corporate,' betraying the spirit that gave birth to it more than six decades ago.

“There has been a groundswell of complaints about the bigger venues controlling the whole Fringe and turning it into some kind of corporate comedy Disneyland,” the Guardian reports.

It seems unavoidable since some big names from around the world fly in to perform, representing showbiz glitz and glitter, helping to provoke “a genuine backlash against big business…..Across the city the Fringe goes on gloriously doing what it has always done and with plenty of spirit. But with more than 3,000 options, you can’t fail to find something defiantly uncommercial.”

The Fringe started in 1947, when eight theatre groups turned up uninvited to perform at the then-new Edinburgh International Festival, organized to celebrate and enrich European cultural life in the wake of the Second World War.  Because they were not part of the official program, they decided to stage their shows on the ‘Fringe of the Festival’.

For the closing, there is a Virgin Money Fireworks Concert with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra playing on the ramparts of stunning Edinburgh Castle, overlooking the old town.