La Multi Ani 2008!
Her Dad: [answering phone] Alo!
Her Dad: . . .
Her Dad: Salut!
Her Dad: . . .
I: [singing] Sunt eu—!
I: Un haiduc!
She: Stop that!
* * *
Some things I learned about New Year in Romania:
Pre-New-Year television programs provide an unusual culture blending opportunity for the peasant-gown-clad performers from Etno Folk Music TV to get down and dirty with contemporary pop stars. Etno musicians play folk songs while pop stars jump around the stage doing air guitar; pop stars belt out their most famous hits while the etno musicians tap along on their zithers and goatskin drums. Hilarity ensues.
Pre-New-Year television programs also provide the opportunity for pop stars of the past (e.g. the former lead singer of afore-alluded O-Zone) to compete in live karaoke contests where not the real lyrics, but the stars' mistaken lyrics are displayed on the screen for viewers at home to sing along with at home. After three or four bad mistakes, the buzzer sounds, and the pop star is rushed off the stage. Hilarity ensues.
Learning how to congratulate someone in Romania is easy. Merry Christmas is "Craciun Fericit!" Happy Holidays is "Sarbatori Fericitii!" And everything else (seriously, everything) is "La Multi Ani!" (literally, "For many [more] years!"). New Year provides the unique opportunity to say this in a context where it kind of sort of actually fits.
Looking out the window at around 11:30pm, I noticed that not only were there no people in the city square yet, but not even any signs of preparation. "Oh yeah, it will be there. We'll go down in a while." Sure enough, at exactly 11:50pm, about 4000 Alba Iulia residents simultaneously emerged from the doors of their apartment buildings and shambled towards the city centre like hive-mind zombies. Zombies carrying champagne bottles and glasses. By 11:55pm, the park, which was utterly empty only minutes before, was now packed with people, all shouting and laughing.
No countdown is necessary when your town has a church with a big enough bell. BONG! went the bell, and the air was full first with popping champagne corks, and then with a fireworks display the seemingly emerged from nowhere (it turns out the fireworks were hidden near the walls of the citadel flanking the city square).
When the sparks from a low-bursting firework land on an un-fired fireworks battery, things can get pretty exciting. The crowd was already pretty thrilled with the really nice fireworks display when the launching area to the left shook the ground and exploded into a giant expanding dome of red fire, followed by a series of smaller blue and white blasts. "Oooooooooh," went the crowd, at first thinking this was part of the show, until realizing that, no, setting half the grass of the park on fire probably wasn't part of the show. Luckily, the flames went out quickly on the damp, snow-spotted ground, and shortly afterward the fireworks from that station resumed, where presumably the two operators were still okay. After the show, we wandered over there to check on things. "Yeah," one of the technicians said, "We saw it coming, so we turned our backs so we were safe." Sure, an explosion with the force of a small mortar occurs about 2 meters away, but as long as you're wearing a thick enough coat, no big deal.
New Year tradition dictates that one must smash one's now empty champagne bottle on the ground before leaving a public New Year celebration. Predictably, not many women were wearing open toed shoes. Also predictably, the TV news mentioned that in Bucuresti it took a squadron of 21 street sweepers almost an hour to clean up all the broken glass in the main public square alone.
Her Dad: . . .
Her Dad: Salut!
Her Dad: . . .
I: [singing] Sunt eu—!
I: Un haiduc!
She: Stop that!
* * *
Some things I learned about New Year in Romania: