Pickles and Explosions

How do Mongolians spend New Year’s?   Apparently, it involves a lot of both pickles and fireworks.  We knew we were going to be pretty exhausted, getting up at 4 am on New Year’s Day morning to head out to the countryside for the first sunrise.  But we hadn’t bargained on what sounded like an aerial bombardment of our apartment building from 8 pm until 1 am.  Like the Chinese (though they’d hate the comparison), the Mongolians love their fireworks.  And as an upside (?) here, anyone can buy them, and you can shoot them off wherever you want!  I’m used to neighbors having pretty tame firecrackers, but having professional size fireworks going off right next to my building all night is something else.  I did find myself looking around at the smoke detectors before going to be bed and seeing if the balcony door was locked – in case we had to throw ourselves out of an on-fire building in the middle of the night.  I can assure you, it was a restful night.

As might be expected, the other big aspect of the holiday is lots of drinking – and this is where the pickles come in.  A friend reported that there was a literal run on pickles at the Polish store on Saturday, with customers buying cases upon cases of pickles.  [Breaking news from the Polish store is what passes for hot gossip in our little expat community.  We happily pass many hours discussing when a new shipment of UHT skim milk might come in, or debating how long past the expiration date you can drink said valuable milk.  I vote 1-2 months post-date is fine.  No illnesses yet!  Anyway....]   When making the approximate calculation of one pickle per one shot of vodka, I think we can assume that there was A LOT of vodka consumed in this country over the weekend.  Last year President Elbegdorj made a big anti-alcohol pitch over the holidays, even giving the New Year’s toast with a glass of milk, but I think the impact was minimal.  I mean, this is a country where one of their favorite things is alcohol made out of milk (airag).  

But, one thing I do have to admire in this – Mongolia is not a country of moderation.  Anything they decide to do, they go for it wholeheartedly.  This has upsides and downsides, depending on what we’re talking about, but I like the enthusiasm.  This is not a timid country.  Basically on a whim, they went and took over the world once, so we should all be happy that they now put their energy into celebration rather than conquering!  And it’s a good attitude to start a new year with.  Bring on the pickles!

A woman on New Year's throwing milk into the air as an offering to the sky gods.