. . . transliterated Snovim Godom! (Happy New Year!)

On 12/31, we traveled back to Yalta to ring in the New Year. Loys and Virgil booked a few rooms for themselves, our family, and Jason, Anya and Lilly so that we could share this holiday together.

Heading to Yalta

The hotel we stayed at was nice (Loys and Virgil were so generous toward us on this trip!). In the lobby, as we waited for our room keys, we witnessed yet more of Father Frost and the Snow Maiden. This was New Year’s eve, so excitement in the hotel was high.

More Father Frost and Snow Maiden

We checked into our rooms and got settled, and then headed downstairs for a meal at an in-hotel Italian restaurant. The food was very good, and service was good and slow – Ukrainians enjoy taking time at their meals, especially when eating out (which they don’t do as often as we do) so meals lasting two or three hours are not uncommon. It gave us time to talk. The food was very good and we had a great meal.

At the restaurant

A side note: In Ukraine, the marriage industry is quite active. We met an older Canadian man and invited him to sit with us. He was at the other end of the table talking with Jason so I didn’t get to hear much of the conversation, but he mentioned that one of the reasons he was touring Ukraine was to meet up with a girl in one of the villages that he had been writing to. While he never said it, I’m assuming that he was working out a potential marriage to the girl. There’s something about that that troubles me.

Following dinner, Blake really wanted to play pool, and pool playing could be had in the basement, so Molly, Blake and I headed down there. I mention this only because I think this picture is very, very cool.

Blake, concentrating

After playing pool, we went back to the lobby elevators to head back to our room. In the lobby, a string trio was performing. They were good. I mean, really good. They were playing some classical piece and ripping off long runs of 32nd notes; it was amazing.

String Trio

After listening for awhile, we headed back up to the room we had designated as the “party room”. This was the room Loys and Virgil got for our family, on the fourteenth floor with a great view, where all three families were congregating. We played some Phase 10 and MadGab (great fun!) as we waited for midnight. As the last minutes of 2007 ticked by, we all went out on the balcony in anticipation of the fireworks.

We didn’t have a “Rockin’ New Year’s Eve” show for a definitive reference on time, but we used one of our watches as “the” time and counted down the last ten seconds in Russian (hope I got these about right):

Decyet . . .

Devyet . . .

Vocem . . .

Seim . . .

Shaste . . .

Pyatt . . .

Chetiria . . .

Tree (good rolled “r” on this one 🙂

Dva

Adeen

Snovim Godom!!!!

It was something! People on balconies all over the hotel were shouting “Snovim Godom!” and “Da! Da! Da!” (Yes! Yes! Yes!) as the fireworks got going in the city. This was a unique fireworks-viewing for us; we were basically above or at eye-level to most of the explosions. There wasn’t one central fireworks deployment area, but rather dozens of them, some quite close to the hotel (in the parking lot, for instance). After each rocket was set off, we could hear the aftermath: car alarms all over the place were going crazy as cars were jolted with the vibration and the noise.

It was awesome.

Below are some pics we took of the fireworks.

We went back inside after things died down and played some more games, finally going to bed around 2am. From talking to some Ukrainians later, it seems we were pikers when it comes to Snovim Godom partying; many of them celebrate until 4 or 5am.

The next morning at 10:00am we went down to the lobby to enjoy a Ukrainian buffet breakfast, which included such (to us) unconventional choices as broccoli and mashed potatoes. Following breakfast we checked out and drove the hour and a half back to Simferopol.

It was a great way to spend New Years.

Snovim Godom!