Happy New Year's 2015

New Year's Eve is one of the liveliest holidays of the year in Finland.  Fireworks, which are generally banned in Finland, are allowed from 6:00 PM to 2:00 AM on New Years Eve/morning.  And they are not like the fireworks that we can purchase in California.  There are lots of rockets with star bursts, a few cherry bombs, and roman candles, but almost no smaller firecrackers or fountains.

I was with a companionship on a teach early in the evening.   We had a great discussion with Beatrice and her friend, Theresa.  Both are from Kenya and are Christian.  We taught them about prophets, and moved on to telling about Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon.  Beatrice agreed to read the Book of Mormon every day until our next visit and to pray about it.  She offered the closing praryer to our meeting.  Towards the end of our meeting, almost at 6:00 pm on the dot there was a loud explosion and flash next to the apartment.  The fireworks had begun!

Later that evening, Anne and I went for a walk down by the park and embassy row.  There was one father and son setting off star burst rockets over the harbor and several more in the park.  We saw a couple of drunks, but they were the only ones obviously inebriated we saw all evening. At 11:30 we went over toward the main harbor and kauppatori.  But the crowd and traffic was so heavy that we decided to observe things from a distance.  It was quite a show, and I'm sure more spectacular in senattitori, which is in front of the main Lutheran cathedral.

From 9:00 pm on it sounded like a battle was raging all over the city with booms and flashes.  It continued pretty well non-stop, with a slight crescendo at midnight, and then tapered off at about 12:30.

I liked this view of the main harbor area.  The ferris wheel is not park of an amusement park.  We haven't tried it yet - waiting for some of our family or friends to come visit.

This video captures the fireworks at the stroke of twelve on New Year's Eve.  It was really about this intense from 9:30 on until about 12:30.  All kinds of fireworks are for sale, but they are only allowed to be set off between 6 pm and 2:00 am on New Year's Eve.  It was similar to Vladivostok on New Years!  Thousands of people, including many families gathered to watch the fireworks at the kauppatori and senattitori, but people were setting them off all over the city, including in front of our apartment.

We went for a walk on New Year's Eve and thought the ice and rocks made an interesting picture.  Whereever you see a rock face in the winter time there will be these kinds of ice falls.  In warmer weather the water just trickles or drips down the rock face.

The night was fairly clear and this shot of the moon and rock ice seemed interesting.