Meeting the New 2011 in a kiosk

Hello lovelies. This is the blog about the little moments that make our life human.


The infidel that I am, I have given up trying to achieve a grand New Year celebration because, let's face it, it's half as fabulous and twice as expensive as you plan it to be. In an attempt to secure a good time, I decided to celebrate with my wife (a.k.a. "Y"). Believe it or not, we cooked banitsa with 30 fortunes to share between us two, I cooked some bloody steak with a mean cheese sauce, and we nailed it!... At 11.30 we were slowly balancing, arm in arm, on the slippery ice on our way to a friend's party nearby. We hoped to find an open shop on our way, to get some party-fuel. 

Here is the moment that I wanted to share with you today: we found one. 

Inside, with no TV or other form of entertainment visible to us, sat a man. Outside was -13 degrees, there were 25 minutes left until the new year but this man was not with his family, not with his friends, not even alone at home in front of the TV. He was alone, selling alchocol & cigarettes to everyone else who could afford to go out to celebrate. Surely, to sell was better than not to sell, but didn't every sale of a bottle of wine to red-cheeked, jolly strangers remind him that he was stuck working in the cold?

Y. & I spoke about it for a bit, then cheered up & had a great New Year. I am glad we were together, that we were healthy and could afford not to work when one should celebrate. Even if it is a lame celebration when most people tell stories about a "crazy, sick" night, which they don't remember because they drank all the booze that the kiosk man sold them at 11.35pm on Dec 31st.