Happy New Year

The photos don't really do justice to the scale of the celebration.

Many cities around the world have their unique New Year's Eve traditions. New York has Times Square, Paris fireworks at the Eiffel Tower, and in Milwaukee idiots fire guns in the air and pretend that bullets disappear into the ether. I have to say, however, that I think the coolest New Year's Eve celebration I have witnessed has been here in Bishkek. Yes, Bishkek.

In the past few weeks all over town there have been card tables set out on street corners with Kyrgyz gentlemen selling large colorful sticks about a foot or two in length. I really didn't pay too much attention to it at the time. Come New Year's Eve it became readily apparent that these colorful sticks were in-fact high grade fireworks.

At midnight, all over the city there were extremely loud and colorful fireworks displays. I'm not talking about a few people shooting off bottle rockets and firecrackers in a their neighborhoods. I am talking about industrial grade, professional type fireworks exploding all over the city, everywhere. Whether looking out the front, side, or back windows, it did not matter. They were even going off up by the mountains. If you shot one of these things off in the U.S., or even had one in your possession without an ATF license, you would be arrested on the spot. They are apparently not concerned with burning down the city (given the concrete Soviet style buildings it is probably not a high concern). I watched as some partiers piled out of the nightclub outside the gates of our apartment building, went out into the street filled with cars, and shot off these monsters. Multiply that by about a hundred or two hundred times and that was what Irene and I saw as we hung our heads out the window in amazement. I guess this is a benefit of having a porous border with China. The fireworks went on throughout the early morning and even the next day. I understand we will have another display tonight, which is Russian Orthodox Christmas Eve. I suspect that even though only 20% of the population is Russian Orthodox, the Kyrgyz won't let the opportunity to shoot off some fireworks pass them by.