WEEKLY WHINE

Poyekhali

It's now been nine hours since the last Yuri's Night party came to a close, and from where I sit, it was fun.

We start in Ankara, Turkey with Aziz, whose party featured space observations and a bit of streaming video online. They had good weather, good music, and all sorts of excitement. Ankara photos

Kerrie in Sydney, Australia says that they had a fantastic time, despite the small size. "Easter is not a good time to throw an event like this in Sydney - you have to compete with the Easter Show, which is our version of a State Fair!" Sydney photos

Willi reports in from Graz, Austria. Three parties took place in Austria, but the other two were somewhat hurriedly organized and so did not appear on the global website in time. Willi's Graz party was quite enjoyable. At the Observatorium Lustbühel, guests played with the geodetic laser, watched Russian space documentaries, and tried to connect with the outside world. "The Yuri's Night T-shirt was an instant success and many wanted their own." Graz photos

Chris's news from London, UK is that about 200 people joined in, with "some very interesting performance art". Server issues seem to be preventing London from uploading their photographs to Y-Drive, but when they do, we'll be able to see what happened there. London photos

Aurelie in Boston, USA says that their afternoon lectures at MIT were quite popular, so much so that they ran out of Yuri's Night shirts. They followed that up with wild and rampant partying in the evening, along with the "small 'last-minute' problems we experienced ... and solved!" There were more technical problems, evidently, but they might have images up as well. Boston photos

In Paris, France, Richard had a terrific time with a variety of people, including a space memorabilia collector who is also Paris's top contemporary art auctioneer, as well as a group of engineers who built a scale model of Sputnik. They brought along a duplicate of the model, the original having been deployed from Mir in 1995. The party took place at Paris's Cafe de Flore, a popular hangout for artists and authors for over a century. "Picasso, Hemingway, Sartre, Simone de Bouvoir, to name a few, all frequented this place. So we were in good company! I think that I can safely say that this was the first time that an Internet event was held in this venue, adding some history here ourselves." Paris photos

Finally, Fernando, a professor at Universidade Norte do Paraná in Londrina, Brazil, had another exciting celebration. "To commemorate in our style we will begin a soccer game in honor of Yuri." There are no photos now, but here's the link. Londrina photos