The year-end holidays, including New Year’s Eve, are fast approaching. Usually on December 31st, Ruth and I are near the end of travel.

Last December 31st, we were in Istanbul.  We decided to dine at our hotel because we had to leave for the airport at 2 am.  Yuk.  The hotel restaurant was serving a New Year’s Eve buffet.  Before dining we had a celebratory glass of wine in the hotel bar.  It overlooked an enormous, very traditional Christmas tree that was in my line of vision.  What really surprised me was the steady stream of Muslim women, but never men, who simply had to have their pictures taken with this tree.

New Year’s Eve in Turkey, I later found, usually begins with a large family dinner.  The main course, which really surprises me, is traditionally a roasted turkey.  People watch variety shows on TV beginning in late afternoon and play games until midnight.  The National Lottery promises a large holiday payout and many buy a New Year’s lottery ticket.  Just before midnight, State TV channels announce the winner.  At midnight many exchange small gifts.

Another year Ruth & I were in Dublin.  This time we had to leave for the airport at 3 am.  The only food available in the hotel, other than room service, was a buffet in the restaurant costing €75 per person.  We chose room service and headed for the elevator.  The lobby and bar were filled with men and women.   Most had had more than one drink and were upping the volume.  The atmosphere seemed more desperation than fun.  At 8 pm, the elevator door closed on this party scene.  Seven hours later the elevator door opened, and the scene had not changed.  It seemed as if the same partiers had been frozen in time since 8 pm.

New Year’s Eve customs vary around the world.  In the December, 2014, issue of National Geographic Traveler it’s noted that Spaniards eat 12 grapes, one for each month of the year.  It’s called Nochevieja, or old night. Japanese Buddhist temples ring their bells 108 times in a purification ritual. Like Turks, Icelanders watch TV, especially an annual satirical comedy show, before meeting neighbors at a large bonfire (brenna) and watching spectacular fireworks.

I just finished reading a fine book called Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya Von Bremzen.  Last night for dinner Ruth and I had Russian hamburgers, Kotleti.  Yum.  On New Year’s Eve in Russia, people eat and drink, wade through snow to visit neighbors, etc.  In the morning, children find presents under the tree from Ded Moroz, or Father Frost, whose assistant is his granddaughter, Snegourochka.

This year Ruth and I will be in Berkeley, California, when 2015 arrives.   Happy New Year a bit early!

Hank

There aren’t as many Newtowns as I expected to find, and the only one I’ve been to is in Australia. The New York Times calls it “a slightly offbeat suburb that brims with energy….”

I asked the man behind the desk at the big visitors’ centre in The Rocks if there was anything new to explore in Sydney since I hadn’t been there in 2 years.  He looked blank so I walked away.  He called me back and asked if I was interested in trendy neighborhoods.  I said maybe and he said, “Newtown”. He gave me a brochure that called it “Bohemian by Nature” and told me that it was still a somewhat affordable neighborhood in an increasingly expensive city.

The next day Ruth & I went to the mass transit office under Town Hall, and I said to the ticket seller, “We want to go to Newtown.”

“No, you don’t,” he replied.  I told him that one tourist brochure called it the “Pulsing Heart of the Inner Western suburbs–vibrant, bright, and buzzing.”  He looked disgusted but sold us tickets anyway.  It wasn’t very far, between Macdonaldtown and Stanmore on the Green Line about 10 minutes away.

We emerged from the commuter station on King Street, the main thoroughfare that snakes through Newtown, and strolled it from one end to the other, poking our heads into several shops. Many were trendy female clothing stores with not-so-PC names like Million Dollar Babe.  The fashions displayed were mostly 1950s retro or sex-for-sale.  The early afternoon human street traffic seemed mostly to be young men walking dogs and young women, often pregnant, pushing strollers.  The older citizens were sitting outside coffee shops.  We passed a bike seller named Hell on Wheels and lots of temporary-looking stores like Reclaim selling cheap furniture.  It looked like the kind of decaying inner city neighborhood where tattooed males and females with green hair and wearing look-at-me jewelry live for a few years until they get bored and move away.  I read that Newtown was the kind of place where you could dress in the style of any decade and hold anyone’s hand you like.  I took Ruth’s.

Newtown is also the name of the historically African-American community in Sarasota, Florida.  Many came to the area generations ago to work the groves, the rails, or the circus.  Newtown, Wales, original name Bettws Cedewain, has been around since the 13th century.  Newtown, MA, is a thriving community 7 miles from Boston.  In 2012 Money magazine named it America’s 4th best small city to live in.  There are also Newtowns in New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

But the Newtown really on my mind is in Connecticut.  In December 2012, 20 children and 6 adults were murdered there in Sandy Hook Elementary.  To promote healing, construction of a new school to replace the scene of the crime has occurred.

Hank