New Years Eve 2007-Anti-Climatic Again

Ever since Y2K Fever, I had found New Years Eve to be a damp squib of an affair, whether waiting for my computer to self destruct and millions of networks and drives to implode and collapse and also being at a party on Camps Bay beach I have found New Years Eve to be overstated and boring.

I was invited by two Muscovites to celebrate the Russian New Year and then head off to a house party.

In Russia, every New Years Eve, Russians gather by Red Square and hear the President deliver a State of the Nation address, if they are not there, they are at home glued to their TV sets or to their radios.

Under President Vladimir Putin things are no different, he described how this would be the year for Russia and this would be the year where they will prove their greatness…again.

It is a brilliant act of nationalist rhetoric. We battled to find it on TV so we looked on our host Leonid Bimbat’s laptop, and first tuned into a channel Russia Today, the so-called English language Russian equivalent to CNN and Al-Jazeera. There is one clear difference, Russia Today is a propaganda machine for Putin, at times scary, but mostly hilarious, some non-Russian journalist was explaining how Putin had used 2006 to cement his position as Russia’s most popular ever leader, he said that their dispute with Georgia and Ukraine was the fault of those countries and their agents and that Russia had shown the opposite of economic imperialism when dealing with the gas crises.

We eventually tracked down Putin’s address and started the Russian New Year in style at 21:00 UK time, with champagne and mackrel.

I then went to a house party in one of the most amazing houseshares I had ever been to. I took some people with me, and the one was a deep embarrassment. He made me cringe and I disowned him. He started acting as if he was Kazakhstan and that he knew the real Borat. It was horrendous.

It was a huge party with tonnes of alcohol, I had a good time, however, it was my first New Years Eve in winter. Unlike the cool breeze and warm summer nights, the wind was blustery and the weather cold. I did not get to bed too late, I know I at least did better than my one friend who was in bed by 22:30

but like I said by way of introduction, the hype is as always too much, young kids should grow up knowing that this night is no different to all other nights…

Lets hope the rest of the year is more exhilarating than New Years Eve

Cheers

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The Champagne being popped at the Russian gathering, the clock in Moscow strikes 12:00 on the laptop in the background. Note the Mackrel