I arrived in the Scottish capital smartly equipped with several sweaters. Residents of Edinburgh, who finally got to take out their sleeveless shirts from the dressers after the whole year thanks to the 15°C weather, however, unlike me, believed that the hot summer was just peaking. They collectively gave in to various, incomprehensibly festive moods. Instead of comfortably sitting down for Sunday lunch, numerous families camping out on the lawns of city parks were joyfully spreading orange marmalade on toast, all sorts of street clowns and jokers were competing for the audience's favour against the ever-present pipers. In short, the Scots started to go wild outside and I was warming myself up in my hotel room by reading the fire regulations wrapped in blankets. "Do not run and do not yell if flames burst out," it said wisely. I decided to oust the blasphemous idea that a fire would be warm at least by the nostalgic memory of hot Spanish nights. Smiling at the idea of how I am forbidding a temperamental southerner from being loud, while her pillow is smouldering with her morning coffee instead of a cigarette, I fell asleep happily, unfortunately, not for long.
The shrill rattling, which would probably have even woken senators at the end of a five-hour meeting, was really unbearable. I sprang out of bed in the dark trying to feel for a button that would turn off the noise. My furious behaviour was stopped by the lit up sign on the TV screen: "Fire, immediately leave the hotel." For a moment, I wondered if this was a bad joke, then I still decided to put on a striped skirt under my nightie with butterflies and ran out the door. Half-dressed confused figures were already running in the corridors (I was not the only one who would take the breath away from the late Versace with their night dress code) and exchanging useful information. The blind ones (i.e. people who forgot their glasses) were asking the toothless ones (i.e. those who did not have time to put in their dentures) for the direction of the emergency exit. Only the Japanese expedition handled the situation perfectly as they, led by a guide, had been waiting in front of the hotel in an orderly fashion for a long time. It would not surprise me if many of its members took cameras out of their pockets and documented the evacuation of the wounded. However, fortunately nothing like that happened. Fire-fighters from the arriving trucks jumped out unnecessarily. There was no fire. A cold-blooded individual was warming up under nearly boiling hot steam in the shower and it accidentally triggered the alarm. He definitely managed to organise a military game, I will give him that. Next time, however, I will take a sweater with me.
