NEW YEAR EVE AT THE RED SEA

Pookie is very happy about my return and doesn't leave me for a minute ! I also think she put on weight ! Sharm el Sheik is situated just at the end of the Red Sea (above Ethiopia). The Egyptian President Mubarak has his week end residence here and very important meetings are taking place here with all politicians of the world. We had the honor to be there at the same time as Tony Blair. Last time every road were blocked because of old George (Bush).

We celebrated New year in Egypt in Sharm el Sheik at the Red Sea together with another couple we met in the hotel, he Danish and she Russian and we really had a great time !

The party took place in this tent, which had been built up for this purpose. There were space for about 800 people ! Everybody was greated by the management of course and walking on a red carpet we got inside. I just felt like a star !

Inside, all tables were beautifully dressed and each guest found on his place a golden bag filled with funny hats, streamers, trompets etc.

as you can see here . The food was served on long buffets and was presented in such an artistic way, that it would almost be impossible to do that here in western countries and only in top restaurants. The cook would ask a fortune to do so ! Look at this flower arrangement all of them are made out of vegetables ! You can recognize carottes, melons, beetroots, salad etc. It was so beautiful that I took pictures of the whole buffet, which I will show soon (when I have recovered from Holidays) on my photo blog.

We were very international ! There were Egyptians, Italians, Britishs, Swedish, Danish and Russians of course ! I should not say Russians because now they are all called different. For me and all the others, russian speaking people were Russians, but no, not at all, since the Soviet Union split up, you are suddenly confronted with countries you never heard of ! It's funny in some way, everybody gets united like the European Union and they parted into several countries !

So the Russians came mostly from Moscow and St. Petersburg, while the others came from Ukraine or Kazakhstan and nobody wanted to be a Russian ! And the other way around, very complicated !

Those from Kazakhstan had an asiatic look, first I thought they were japonese, but I never saw so many japonese speaking russian, so that I started to doubt ! In fact they looked more like a mixture between Eskimos, native Americans and Chinese. These people were all very friendly and also mostly spoke english. The Russians too.

But then the once from Ukraine were a catastrophe ! No other word but russian, no good morning or thank you and eating like primates, I don't want to use the word pig, as I like pink cute pigs and these fat human beings without any education, nobody liked at all. Very simple, they didn't want and therefore had no contact to the other guests.

But everything went very nice, no remarkable incident like in another 5* Hotel, were a ukranian group jumped on the buffet with the desserts after having filled themselves up till the top and then throw the cremes, ice and cakes around and enjoyed this very much.

Of course for them it had been big fun, the others only "appreciated" the fact that they would have high cleaning bills and no way to get any money back because on top of the bad behaviour they were as poor as church mice and had payed "All inclusive".

I really wonder why 5* hotels accepts such "people" but as everybody knows money doesn't stink. Most of the other tourists would therefore not return to this place. Too much is too much !

We were lucky, the hotel management had put the Ukrainians in a corner far away so they could put their noses in the plates and eat with their fingers nobody saw it. (This is true and not an exaggeration)

During the whole meal we had very nice shows, which started with a belly danse (just as at Christmas).

Mr. Gattino remembered his young days and started belly dansing too and had a lot of fun, the spectators too and I think he is on many film and photo souvenirs ! The next were the "Dervish" danser. You already get dizzy when you watch him ! He whirls around and around until the ombrellas are open and his second skirt is over his head !

There were also European danses and a lot of very nice and interesting Egyptian shows, but this will be a subject on my photo blog.

At 11 pm suddenly the Russians and Kasakistanians (not the Ukrainians) got up and wished everybody a happy New Year ! For them it was already midnight. So we wished happy New Year in all languages, Mr. Gattino even tried in russian. The Ukrainians apparently celebrated one hour later as the rest of us. I don't know if some of them landed in the swimming pool as all of them drink Wodka in water glasses !

It really was a very nice feast and we enjoyed so much to be with people of all corners of the world ! A couple even came from Columbia and a few Canadians were there too. I felt again like in Blogville, only this time it was for real !

Wonderful flowers in December ! Nothing special for Australians, but for most of us it is !