At long last, the little firecrackers have finally stopped booming more than a couple times a day. 2004 left with bangs, and lots of them and 2005 has come with a chilly silence. The fulcrum between them was purely nuts. Never have I seen a stranger New Year's Eve than here in Silistra. It threw me for a loop at least once an hour or so. I'm still torn between whether it was good or bad. I'll probably have to go with the old half-assed side and call it all very interesting.
At around 10 PM I decided to go out for a walk to see what was happening. It was a cold and foggy night, and would have been creepy even without two very important factors. The first thing I noticed was the blasts that were going off all the time and everywhere. Occasionally I saw flashes of light on apartment blocks in the distance, or saw flares shoot out over my head. Later on, I noticed that I was most of the population outside. And not just on the streets, anywhere. The restaurants were closed, the bars and cafes were shut down, most of the stores were silent and dark. It all came together to make the whole city feel like a giant backlot primed for an urban warfare movie.
I wandered through a lot of town for about an hour before deciding to go home and warm up a bit before the big celebration in the center which I assumed would be gearing up around 11:30. I was a bit wrong.
I got to the center at 11:30 and wandered around watching people trickle in. Fathers were giving their daughters firecrackers and a sprinkling of cops were laughing when the daughters accidentally threw the firecrackers among groups of people. Not once, not once, did I see a police officer do anything other than stand with their arms across their chests. Not that I needed their help or anything, but the way they act here makes the police in America seem downright dystopic in their oppression.
Around midnight, I'd say there were about forty people gathered in the center, with daughters all happily throwing firecrackers toward groups of people. There was no countdown, and when everyone just kind of glanced at the clock and saw "00:01," they all chuckled and said "Chestita Nova Godina!" to anyone standing nearby. I was just about to call it a night, forget about meeting the other Americans and go home to sleep, when a very curious thing started to happen.
People began to show up. And beyond that, people were putting speakers up on the stage, and more and more firecrackers were being thrown among groups of people until the whole central plaza was beginning to look very cloudy. Finally, it was around 12:30 I think, the whole thing suddenly took on unimaginable life. A band was playing traditional Bulgarian music on the stage, all of the lights were slammed on, and within the shadowy haze half the town seemed to be dancing the horo in long snaky lines. It had all turned very Whoville.
Over the river a show of massive fireworks began, and when I walked over to the nearby park, I could look up and see the fireworks go off almost right over my head. And I felt the boom pulse through me and I completely forgot everything, like the fact that I had a camera, until the show was over and I went back to the center and met up with my friends.
At that point, I had the obvious explained to me since I was still confused. Without Christmas, Communist Bulgaria had Dyado Mraz instead of Dyado Koleda, or Santa Claus. Dyado Mraz came on New Year's Eve instead of Christmas and families would treat New Year's Eve the way they now celebrate Christmas Eve. It was, basically, a family holiday until midnight--when everyone migrated to the center to start the party. The tradition, obviously, still holds. So the people who were in the center, failing to count down to the New Year, were just the ones that had arrived early, like me.
Satisfied with that explanation, I carried on with the rest of the night, spending it with the general herd at a nearby club where our favorite band had started playing at--of course--12:30. For some reason, I wasn't in the best of spirits and wound up spending a lot of the night in mildly bitter navel-gazing. Can't explain it, just the way the mood struck me, I suppose. But since I wasn't caught up in overwhelming New Year joy, I'm thinking that the Bulgarian celebration didn't quite have the impact of some of my better New Year's Eves. It all certainly caught me off-guard, but I never caught up to it all. Oh well, probably my fault.
On to frigid, holidayless January. And, more importantly, the homestretch of two years. Expect lots of looking back in the future.
Posted by Rob at January 3, 2005 08:29 PM