Monday, January 2, 2017

Весело-весело встретим Новый год / New year celebrations generations apart

January 2

3 января 1960 г.
Близ станции Сиова (Syowa JARE). 
Ходко пошли мы от Лазарева, как только вышли на чистую воду. Теперь опять как в море, никакого льда нет в помине. Тепло (относительно, конечно). Передали мне новогодние поздравления – штук 10 (!) телеграмм.
В океане на пути в Мирный в точке с географическими координатами 66° 27 ‘ Южной широты, 40° 07 ‘ восточной долготы очень весело встретили новый год. Славно потрудились для его хорошей встречи – все было по-настоящему хорошо. Выпустили отличную стенгазету, долго турхались над новогодним номером радиогазеты (я превзошёл себя – писал стихи и пел песни по радио! Шуточные конечно), зато получился отличный выпуск, не стыдно даже по всесоюзному радио пропустить.
Собрались в кают-компании. Ёлка. Скромная выпивка с отличной и разнообразной закусью. По-морскому пышные тосты. (За тех, кто нас помнит и любит! За матерей, жён и невест! За нашу надежду – любимых детей наших!)
Как-то незаметно, в результате скромной (по пол литра столичной и бутылке шампанского на четверых) выпивки, оказалось много веселья, танцев и песен, что запечатлено многочисленными фотографиями (здесь фотографов больше чем людей!)
Легли в шестом часу. Я повторяю, что это не ночь и не утро, а такой же день.
Не впервые встречать мне праздники вне дома, вдалеке от близких. Бывало уже это в Сибири и на Кавказе, на Украине и в средней Азии, в тайге и в горах, в пустыне и в степи. Но в море пока не приходилось. Да ещё в каком море, да ещё какой праздник. Ведь новый год – любимый и по сути единственный из настоящих праздников моих. Новый год 1960-й сулит много поистине нового. Да будет он счастливым!


Translation:
January 3rd, 1960
Near Syowa station (Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition, JARE)

/*Side Note from Masha in 2017*/
So interesting for me to learn that my grandfather visited Syowa station. During my visit to the Japanese National Institute of Polar Research in 2015 I talked about that station a lot, visited JARE museum and obtained some meteorological data collected at Syowa for my research project.
/*end side note*/
After we left Lazarev station and got out of the sea ice, the ship gained a lot of speed. Once again we are at sea, as if we haven't even seen any sea ice. It is warm (relatively, of course). I got new year telegrams - 10 (!) at a time.
We celebrated the New Year in the Southern Ocean on our way to Mirny station at a point of 66
° 27' South and 40° 07' East. We put a lot of effort into this celebration and we did it well. We put out a special issue of the stengazeta/press news and we worked long hours on our celebratory radio program. (I outdid myself, I wrote poems and sang song on the radio. As a joke of course).  But our radio program was really good, I would have not be ashamed to broadcast it over the national radio.
For New Years, we all gathered around in the mess. We even had a new year tree there. We had a few drinks with various chasers. People were saying long elaborate "marine" toast: for those who remembers and loves us; for our mothers, wives and fiancée; for our hope - our children.
We only had 1/2 liter of vodka and a bottle of champagne to share between the four of us at the table, but the party became rather rowdy, with lots of jokes, dances and songs. We have a lot of photos to prove that too (it seems like we have more photographers than people).
We went to bed a little after 5 AM. Once again, we are in the polar day, so there is no darkness at night, it's basically the same daylight. It wasn't my first holiday far away from home and family, I have been celebrating in Siberia, in the Caucus mountains, in Ukraine, in Asia, in taiga and in the mountains, in a dessert and in a steppe. But this was my first New Years at sea. As new year is my favorite holiday. New 1960 is promising to be a rather novel year. Let it be a happy one!


As I was reading and translating this journal entry by my grandfather, I realized that Soviet reality aside, I could have written the same entry. We have been working most of December 31st, so we did not make a lot of elaborate preparations, such as a special radio program. We did however had a really nice buffet style dinner in the mess, where our Christmas tree is still standing.
We had a visit from our ship's captain to read us all the telegrams from Russian Antarctic stations and research vessels and the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) - the organizations that our ship belongs to. It sounded really formal, but it was nice to hear. We did not have too many elaborate "marine" toasts, but our chief scientist went upstairs (with me as a translator) to congratulate the Russian officers and crew members. Soon we all ended up gathering in the crew's (officer's) mess (кают-компания) upstairs and the dancing started. Considering that we had dinner at our usual time of 19:30, I was impressed that we kept dancing till about four in the morning. We did have an abundant supply of food and alcohol, so that probably helped us to cnotinue well into the night.
I was really happy to see us, scientists, mingle with the crew members. Aside from an obvious language barrier, we have a big cultural barrier and many people don't know how to approach each other. Yet, the crew members have been extremely helpful and I personally asked for a lot of favors from them to accommodate various science projects. So it was great to relax a little bit, let louse, dance, enjoy just celebrating a holiday rather than stressing about the limitations of the ship, of the cruise time and other things I have been stressing too much about.
Just as my grandfather said - New Years is my favorite holiday after all.
After the dancing finished I went for a walk outside - the sun was just rising and it was a gorgeous and wonderfully warm morning. I posted a couple of pictures from it in the previous post. I did not experience a polar day during this New Years celebrations, but it was my first time celebrating on the ship.
And just as my grandfather - I am wishing everyone a very happy 2017!

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