New Year's Eve! (Winter travels part 2)

One of the nicest parts of my winter travels was getting to stay a few days with Masha and her family in Tula. It was just really nice to see the family dynamic and decorate a New Year's Tree and eat homemade food for a couple of days. And last year Masha spent the holidays in America so she understood our situation. A cool turn of events... They actually invited us to stay for the actual holiday, but we decided to spend it on Red Square in Moscow.

And what an experience! We left our hostel at 7 and went out to dinner, planning on being on Red Square around 9pm for the entertainment. It is the year of the rabbit this year, or as Emily said, more like the year of the playboy bunny based on the waitress's outfit. Anyway, our plan worked except for the fact that there was nothing on Red Square at 9pm except a small number of people milling around. We had to go through metal detectors and police searches to get in (they took our champagne, though everyone told us to bring it; I think that mostly they just take whatever they want), and then the square was covered in a grid of police officers, standing so close together that you had squeeze between them. It was pretty creepy and weird, because the underlying atmosphere was still. not. fun. Even on New Year's, the Russian undercurrent of hardship and gloom kept the mood WEIRD. It was really cold and we just ended up walking laps for three hours. People finally started showing up around 11:30, maybe because New Year's here is a very family oriented holiday and everyone started the holiday at home? We ended up right under the bell tower, where the crowd wasn't very thick at all. After that everyone else crowded in to the other half the square, but the police wouldn't let them past. They were also turning dark-skinned people away from the metal detectors at the beginning of the night, probably because of the recent unrest in the city, so I'm not sure how much of what we saw holds true for every year. Just weird to think that certain people would just never be allowed to welcome the New Year on Red Square...But that's Russia for you.
And there wasn't even a big screen so we could see the yearly address by the President! It was so weird. We saw one guy by himself that we thought we'd talk to for a bit, but he ended up coming up to us while talking on the phone and saying he needed a girl. ????????? He explained: to waltz with. He didn't know how but he was getting instructions from his friend. And he wasn't drunk at all! I finally extracted my hand from him and we bolted.
After the bells chimed and we saw the fireworks (very cool), everyone flooded the streets; marching down the street with thousands of people yelling Happy New Year was actually pretty cool. It is just so strange that everyone was telling us how people would be dancing and singing on the streets, super friendly, talking to each other and so on. I mean, I guess to be fair, there were a few small groups of friends sort of kicking up their heels a little, but it was not in any way a wild party. We headed home around 1 because we had been worked that the metro was going to be PACKED and insane, and it was....totally dead. I mean, no one at all was in the car. We did end the night drinking champagne and eating dunkin' donuts, though, so all's well that ends well.