In case you didn’t know, I’m going to Edinburgh, Scotland this Saturday, August 5th. Well, I’m leaving on Saturday and with travel time/time zone differences, I’ll be arriving Sunday. I’ll be back on August 17th, giving me around 10-11 days of time to enjoy myself.

I’m traveling to Scotland to meet up with my friend Krime Dogg (real name Ed Kramer), who is visiting Scotland to attend a wedding. He told me that I should come along with him, and that he’d have a place for us to stay. That was all I needed to hear. I figured that I’ll probably never have a chance like this (to travel to Scotland and stay for free with people who are native to the country), and that it would be great to have the opportunity to see Scotland from the eyes of people who live there, rather than as a tourist. Granted, I’ll still very much be a tourist, but at least I will have somewhat of an insider presence as well.

Along with Krime Dogg, I will also be traveling to Edinburgh with an old friend named Becky. Becky and I have been friends since my Junior year in college, but we didn’t always keep in contact over the years. We recently were reacquainted through Krime Dogg, and now we’re going to Scotland together! It’s crazy how things work out. Here’s a picture of me and Becky in college (we look much better and much thinner now, thank you very much!).

While there’s plenty of things that I can do while I’m in Scotland, I’m wondering if any of you have suggestions as to what you think I should do? I bought an Edinburgh guidebook, and it seems like there are a lot of awesome things to do. Tentatively, I would like to do the following:

• Visit historical areas around Edinburgh (castles, etc.).
• Visit St. Andrews golf course.
• Perhaps see a Scottish league soccer match (my “team” is called Heart of Midlothian. I like them because the street I live on is called Midlothian Rd.).
• Drink my ass off in a pub.
• Attend the Edinburgh festival, which is a huge art/music/movie festival that runs in August.
• Drink even more at the pubs.
• Maybe get a little work done on my newly purchased laptop.

In addition to these things, I also hope to post a daily diary of my experiences on the trip. I just converted my website to a new piece of software that easily allows me to upload pictures into my posts. This should allow me to show you what I’m doing without posting an entire photo gallery. Also, the new setup has an RSS feed, so you can subscribe to my blog in a service like Bloglines, My Yahoo!, Google home page, etc. Welcome to the 21st century, Jeff Sauer dot com!

There’s just one last thing I’d like to address in this post. Last month, I was sent the link to a website published by Matt Harding called http://www.wherethehellismatt.com/. On this site, Matt has a video of him dancing. It’s actually pretty stupid dance. However, what makes the dance cool is that he’s doing it at various places across the world!!!!!! He covers all 7 continents, all kinds of different countries, and basically any location you can think of. The entire time he is doing the same stupid dance! The video on the site puts together all of these dances to music and is breathtaking.

Now, maybe I’m just trying to copy him, or maybe I just want something for my own, but I am really drawn to his idea, and now I’m hoping that I can do something cool and unique every time I visit another country. Perhaps it will be cool enough to simply have my picture taken, or perhaps I’ll take it a step further. At this point, I really have no idea what I want to do; I just know that I want to do something.

Please leave me comments with your suggestions! I would really appreciate it! Also, leave me a comment if you know of a particular location that you think I should visit!