Tbilisi’s New Year traditions differ from what Americans expect. Fireworks of all magnitudes were for sale in the street kiosks and bodegas for two weeks prior. Firecrackers, bottle rockets, and roman candles (or their equivalents) could be heard here and there for many days prior, day and night, sporadically. On New Years Eve, starting after dark, the intensity increased, and the large colorful sparklies started reaching high above the building roofs of Vake. Not from a central, organized center, but it just seemed collectively done from all around us. Then, after I thought we had reached a plateau of near perpetual booms, about ten minutes before midnight, the rate, altitude, and intensity doubled. It was pretty impressive. If you like the choreographed precision of a well-done show, synced with F-16 fly-bys, this was not your eve. If you wanted to see a chaotic, probably unsafe, citywide razzle-dazzle surrounding you, this was your eve.
Oh, and it is good luck to eat a roasted suckling pig on New Years Day here, as it is in many other places. So, entrepreneurial types with a connection to a pig farm and a large enough car would set up near markets and sell pigs out of their trunk.
Christmas is not for a few days in this part of Christendom, so the streets have been freakishly quiet during the holiday period leading up to it. Besides the tumult of New Year’s eve, it has been very quiet. A lot of folks have this whole week off from work and school. Many shops are shuttered.
New Year pigs. Poor guys. Smelly car, I imagine.
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profteigen reblogged this from qc-in-tbilisi and added:
traditions differ from what Americans expect. Fireworks of all magnitudes were for sale in the street kiosks and bodegas...
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qc-in-tbilisi posted this
