New Year 2005
My first New Year in Kyiv, spent in a student flat with people from four countries and not enough chairs.
Happy New Year.
My first here. A student flat, people from four countries, not enough chairs, and a table that had been carried in from another room and did not fit. Somebody's mother had sent food from home and it disappeared in twenty minutes.
What I remember most is the noise outside. Fireworks going off in every courtyard for what felt like hours, and people in the street at two in the morning wishing complete strangers a happy new year. In Istanbul we celebrate too, but this had a quality of collective insistence about it that I had not seen.
To everyone starting this year in a flat that is too small with people they are glad to know: that is the correct way to do it.
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